nietp:ordinarytalk: sapper-in-the-wire: tilthat: TIL

[dragonlady7]

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nietp https://nietp.tumblr.com/post/628347057143431168/ordinarytalk-sapper-in-the-wire-tilthat :

ordinarytalk https://ordinarytalk.tumblr.com/post/628169748757299200/sapper-in-the-wire-tilthat-til-soviet :

sapper-in-the-wire https://sapper-in-the-wire.tumblr.com/post/188545210812/tilthat-til-soviet-scientists-defended-the :

tilthat https://tilthat.tumblr.com/post/188544135897/til-soviet-scientists-defended-the-worlds-largest :

TIL Soviet scientists defended the world’s largest seed bank during the 28 month Siege of Leningrad when it couldn’t be evacuated. 9 scientists starved, surrounded by tons of crops and fruit, refusing to destroy ‘the future of Russia’. https://amentian.com/post/voWR

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“The US-led invasion of Iraq resulted in the razing of the country’s national seed bank in Abu Ghraib—not to mention the implementation of American-style seed laws, which mean that if Iraqis want to buy new seeds, they will have to pay for yearly usage licenses.”

Not only that, the U.S. made it illegal for farmers to save their own seeds to plant next year.

From the English-language paper The Express Tribune https://tribune.com.pk/story/342986/control-by-seed:

Farmers were strictly banned from saving their own seeds: this, in a country where, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 97 per cent of Iraqi farmers planted only their own saved seeds.

With a single stroke of the pen, Iraq’s agriculture was axed, while Order 81 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=870 facilitated the introduction and domination of imported, high-priced corporate seeds, mainly from the US — which neither reproduce, nor give yields without their prescribed chemical fertiliser and pesticide inputs.

This was done under the guise of “helping get Iraq back on it’s feet” after Saddam Hussein’s agricultural practices collapsed wheat production in the region. You can read more about Order 81 here https://www.globalresearch.ca/order-81-re-engineering-iraqi-agriculture/870. It was a pretty blatant power play for a U.S. agribusiness monopoly in Iraq. Much like in the U.S., this has led to the collapse of small family farms in favor of large-scale industrial farmers.

The U.S. has done this before, multiple times, including to its own farmers. And very few people outside the affected areas know about it.

Also I know the sentence on TIL is purposefully phrased like that to sound more ridiculously patriotic and make fun of those Soviet scientists but literally nowhere in the article does it say that they did it for the “future of Russia”. In fact it specifically states: ”One of them said … saving those seeds for future generations and helping the world recover after war was more important than a single person’s comfort”. More than 90% of the collection of the Pavlovsk Experimental Station is found in no other research collection or genebank.