audio, stills, text and or video: Go to http://www.zReportage.com to see more - From the deserts of Africa to the labs and fields of California, the Midwest and Mexico, biotechnology is synonymous with empty promises. Behind this green revolution is propaganda where there should be probing, superficial talk where there should be deeper truths..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Sep. 24, 2003 - Dixon, California, U.S. - ERIK FREESE harvests genetically engineered corn at his farm. Freese likes farming the GE corn because there are less weeds and it is easier to harvest with his combine during the corn harvest. Freese now grows 800 acres of genetically engineered corn for animal feed. He controls mustard, watergrass and other weeds with RoundUp, then plants a winter crop such as wheat right over the top of the corn stubble..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Apr. 07, 2004 - Grass Valley, California, U.S. - LORI BRENNAN, a retired Kaiser nurse, reads all the ingredients on the food she purchases to make sure they are organic at the Briar Patch community market..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 06, 2003 - St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. - Corn is ready for pollination inside the greenhouses at Monsanto..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 19, 2003 - San Rafael, California, U.S. - PERCY SCHMEISER, a farmer from Bruno, Saskachewan, Canada, holds up Monsanto's technology agreement during his talk at the Bioneers conference..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Apr. 09, 2004 - Davis, California, U.S. - Since 1999, when gene studies officially got top priority at the Davis Ag college, 10 genetic experts have been hired to work on everything from genetic evolution to the biochemistry of vegetable crops..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Jan. 02, 2004 - Davis, California, U.S. - RAOUL ADAMCHAK, an organic farmer at UC Davis picks organic lettuce..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 01, 2004 - London, England, United Kingdom - MARJORIE ANGLIN of London does her food shopping at the Iceland store. The store prides itself on the food you can trust motto and selling non-GM food. 'It's important to know what you are buying,' she said. 'There are too many things they are putting in food and not telling customers.'.
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 23, 2003 - Capulalpam, Mexico - ANTONIA GIJON pounds masa into round patties to be flattened and cooked as tortillas on her wood burning stove..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 23, 2003 - La Trinidad, Mexico - ESTEBAN SANTIAGO CRUZ, 62, leaves Tortilleria La Asuncion after buying 20 tortillas. He buys the tortillas because he lives in a remote area and already has run out of the corn he grew to eat..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 23, 2003 - Capulalpam, Mexico - LUIS ARREORTUA MENDEZ carries maize from the government store, known as the Dioconsa, while his daughter ELISA ARREORTUA and wife GUDIELIA CHAVEZ MARTINEZ follow him..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 23, 2003 - Capulalpam, Mexico - MICHELLE ALEJANDRA CORTES TORO, 5, carries flowers where transgenic corn was discovered in 2000 by University of Berkeley scientists David Quist, David Chapela and native scientist Lilia Perez. The corn was planted from seeds from the government store Diconsa by her parents Alberto Cortes, 55, and Olga Maldonado, 41. It's an hour and a half drive over switchbacks from the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca to the village of Capulalpam..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 23, 2003 - Capulalpam, Mexico - ALBERTO CORTES, 55, offers freshly picked corn from his field for his children to eat in his home. When the the family runs out of their homegrown corn they pay more money to eat the Capulalpam farmers corn than the corn sold at the government store for fear of consuming transgenic corn..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Oct. 23, 2003 - Capulalpam, Mexico - As the early morning light shines inside her kitchen, ANTONIA GIJON pounds masa and cooks tortillas on her wood burning stove..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 07, 2004 - Fisso, Mali - JIDATA WALET DOUNA, 20, carries wood to burn in the coal fields with her daughter RAHMATOU WALET MOHAMED, 1, tied to her back in the Bela Village. Women who often balance food on their heads are strong and the main source of labor in the coal fields..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 15, 2004 - Niono, Mali - RHISSA AG MOHAMED ALHASSANE, 10, is covered with dust from making bricks. The world health organization says Niono has the world's highest death rate from Malaria..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 09, 2004 - Bela, Mali - A donkey skull bakes in the sun as a young boy herds his donkeys in the background in Keredji Molla. A nearby well is a gathering point for Bela from miles around. They use the donkeys to pull the bale of water from the well back to their villages to drink. Children of the Bela villages work herding cattle, burning wood for coal and making bricks instead of going to school. Many here have died from hunger, infections and malaria..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 09, 2004 - Bela, Mali - FARMER TALFI YATTARA holds a pickax as he walks through a Bela village where people gather the wild rice with the Xa21 gene..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 09, 2004 - Niono, Mali - As MOGHAYE OUALET ALHOUSSEINI, 22, works digging up coals from burning wood, her son YASSE AG AHMEOLOU, 1, shields his eyes from the smoke in the early morning in the Bela village of Fisso. The coal will be sold at the market. Even though women do most of the labor, they exercise little or no decision making roles in their Bela communities. The village chief said those that don't work don't eat..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 16, 2004 - Niono, Mali - HATTA OUALET ABOUBAERINE, 38-40 years old, says she had nine children but four have died. She doesn't want her youngest, a 6-year-old boy, to attend school because he helps her by herding cattle and doing chores..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 16, 2004 - Niono, Mali - At the Lere Primary School, there isn't enough money for school supplies. Second grader BEIOLI ABOUROU TRAVRE sits because he doesn't own any school supplies while his classmates ALI AG ABOUBACRINE and FATEUMA ARBY try to do the lesson. Only Bela children who live in Lere can go to the school because the Bela encampment in Fisso is a two-hour donkey-ride away..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 16, 2004 - Niono, Mali - Women from the Bela village of Fisso use large pestles and mortars to pound millet grain. They will mix it with water and sauces into a mash-like substance that will be cooked for meals. Women provide the bulk of the labor force in the villages..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 16, 2004 - Niono, Mali - Mali microbiologist SOUNGALO SARRA, who works at the rice research center outside Niono, inspects the rice plant Oryza longistaminata. A gene found in the wild Mali rice intrigues scientists around the world because it is resistant to bacterial blight disease..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Mar. 07, 2004 - Lere, Mali - MOHAMED AG AHMEDOU, 2, eats a few grains of rice for dinner. UC Davis scientists cloned a blight-resistant gene from Malian wild rice, but the Bela people have yet to benefit..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Jan. 02, 2004 - Davis, California, U.S. - AUDREY ADAMCHAK, 2, opens a bag of popcorn at the farmer's market. Her mother, Pamela Ronald, a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, bought the popcorn and ice cream at the market. Her husband, Raoul Adamach, is a certified organic farmer who likes to feed the children organic food..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Jan. 15, 2004 - Ukiah, California, U.S. - SHARON PALTIN is dressed like a genetically modified ear of corn at the Ukiah Brewing Company for the kick-off party for the measure H initiative to make Mendocino GMO free..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Dec. 29, 2003 - Davis, California, U.S. - One of the last remaining tomatoes sits on a vine at Sacramento State for testing. The tomato was from the mislabeled seeds distributed from the University of California seed bank. Erwing is planning to freeze some of the tissues of the tomato plants in case of a need for future DNA analysis. Several students at CSUS lost experiments over the past two years using the seeds..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Apr. 09, 2004 - Davis, California, U.S. - ELIZABETH MAGA with the Animal Science Department of UCD pets a goat in a cage where transgenic goats are kept. The transgenic goats are babies from Peppercorn, which is funded by Pangene to genetically engineer goats with high protein production in goat milk. The University of California, Davis cut the funding when Pangene didn't pay its share of the bills, but Mega is hopeful she'll be able to continue her work with additional funding..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Apr. 15, 2004 - Richvale, Illinois, U.S. - BRYCE LUNDBERG and his dog CHIEF get pelted with rice and barley during the planting season on his organic rice farm..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
May 07, 2004 - Davis, California, U.S. - Greenhouses glow in the evening at UCD. The 27,000-square foot greenhouse complex, paid for by the UC and the National Science Foundation, was completed last year. Conventional and biotech plants are nurtured inside by teams of plant breeders..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Apr. 24, 2004 - Sacramento, California, U.S. - A workman waits for the next sling of rice to be lowered into the Ken Shin Ship headed for Japan at the Port of Sacramento. Eighteen bags are included in one sling and fourteen slings are dropped at a time into the hold of the ship for transport. California's rice exports are up 20 percent over the last six years..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
May 20, 2004 - Hardin, Illinois, U.S. - Non-GMO grain makes its way up a conveyor belt to a barge on the Illinois River at the Jersey County Grain elevator..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
May 20, 2004 - Saskatchewan, Canada - PAT NEVILLE of Saskatchewan, Canada, holds kochia weed after clearing his land to plant while his son CALE NEVILLE gets a broadcaster ready to spread crested wheat grass and his other son LUKE NEVILLE finishes working the Harrow. Cale was one of the sons that reported the fields were full of contaminated canola last year. The canola spread from the bufferzone all the way to the house and Monsanto had to come and dig it up. The farmer is now in a class action suit against Monsanto for losses of his organic crop to Genetically Engineered Canola..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
May 20, 2004 - Hardin, Illinois, U.S. - BRUCE CANTRELL of the Illinois Official Grain Inspection and BOB VETTER, a grain miller at Jersey County Grain Co., wait to inspect and secure a barge. Cantrell checks and collects samples of grain from the barges for testing..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
May 20, 2004 - Hardin, Illinois, U.S. - PHIL THORNTON says he can hit golf balls off his older cement silo used to store GMO grain across the Illinois River at his Jersey County Grain Co. He has segregated GMO and conventional grain in different silos for loading on barges on the Illinois River. Thornton had to divert a barge on it's way to Japan to the animal feed system because the DNA testing lab determined that the corn was laced with Starlink..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
30 a.m. in an attempt to shut the conference down and take over the street. ..A decade since the debut of gene-spliced food, biotechnology is a dominant presence in world agriculture. But the distribution of biotech foods is uneven. Dancing around deeply divided opinions over the technology's health and environmental safety, and over its social and economic effects, the global food industry approaches genetic engineering with a double standard. In much of Europe and parts of Asia, where consumer mistrust is greatest and labeling is required, food manufacturers take pains to eliminate genetically engineered ingredients as much as possible. In the United States, a land of seemingly infinite grocery choices, food purveyors rarely make distinctions between what's genetically engineered and what's not. People who want to avoid biotech foods are left trying to sort it out on their own. ..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
Apr. 15, 2004 - Assumption, Illinois, U.S. - LEON CORZINE helps dust a neighbor's field of non-GMO soybeans. Corzine says non-GMO soybeans contains more weeds then GMO soybeans, which are grown at his farm. Although, his soybeans are gentetically modified, he helps out neighbors during harvest..
© Renee C. Byer/Sacramento Bee/zReportage.com/ZUMA
