Well, it looks like my vague idea of writing conservation gardening articles for my local paper might become reality soon! Ironically I won't be able to share the results with Wildlife Gardeners. Too bad.
But they wouldn't have appreciated the following, anyway. In an effort to broaden my horizons, I'm trying to look more at the other side of various environmental and farming issues. At the top of my list: genetically engineered foods, and the companies who make them.
My previous assumption was that Monsanto was the Evil Empire. However, that assumption was based almost entirely on other people's opinions - and rather left-wing opinions, at that. As a favorite teacher of mine used to say, "get to the source". To that end, I have been following one of Monsanto's blogs.
Okay, so for the most part the articles there smell like highly sanitized corporate tidbits - but no large company with half a brain would publish a blog of anything *but*. However, the most recent post caught my eye.
Some months ago there had been rumors going around that Monsanto was actively squelching outside research on their products. This originated with an article in Scientific American, which in turn originated with a group of disgruntled scientists. And it turns out, those scientists made a mistake.
Oops! So Monsanto is not squelching research - or if it is squelching research, it at least isn't doing it in the manner that was reported by Scientific American.
There are other scary issues with Monsanto and GE foods and plants that I need to look into yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that some of them are similarly based on mistakes, slanted journalism, or poor journalistic research.
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