Now that a preventable crisis has the gripping attention of the world’s leaders, what other catastrophic crisis on the horizon is also something that we can identify NOW and act to alter if we become statesmen rather than politicians?

First, AGRICULTURE — our seeds are controlled by one or two companies that have installed terminator genes, don’t allow farmers to reuse the seeds in subsequent years, and we have a mono-culture crop for most food items … this is a recipe waiting for disaster. One world drought or insect boom or climate change or new disease and the mono-crop is all gone. We must encourage small agriculture once again for security’s sake, as a national strategic concern (just as Saudi Arabia once grew wheat for security concerns as well). The government should encourage public seed swap / seed sharing internet groups as a backup to the often failing government and corporate efforts. There should be NO LAWS preventing farmers from using saved seed — this profit maximizing law threatens your life because it threatens your food supply. The government makes laws and says “No” to many things, and this is one of them because of the risks that the corporations will all so deny … just as they did for the current banking crisis. That’s how profit maximization works. It doesn’t care about social, environmental or other costs like this.

The stakes are way too high here foks to let our food supply policies be determined by corporations rather than public officials thinking things through for the public good (instead of saying let’s just let the profit-seeking corporations do it … witness this month’s stock results). Frankly “terminator genes/seeds” should be outlawed, plain and simple, because of the catastrophic risk. So the firms make less money, big deal. I would not let their actions threaten the food supply of my country, would you?

For the rest of the article on Future Catastrophic Risks, click on the link.

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