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May 16th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Academic research is often dictated by corporations that endow
professorships, give money to universities, and put their executives on
education boards.
Here’s what happens when corporations begin to control education. ~ Jill Richardson
“When I approached professors to discuss research projects addressing
organic agriculture in farmer’s markets, the first one told me that ‘no
one cares about people selling food in parking lots on the other side of
the train tracks,'” said a PhD student at a large land-grant university
who did not wish to be identified.“My academic
adviser told me my best bet was to write a grant for Monsanto or the
Department of Homeland Security to fund my research on why farmer’s
markets were stocked with ‘black market vegetables’ that ‘are a
bioterrorism threat waiting to happen.’It was communicated to me
on more than one occasion throughout my education that I should just
study something Monsanto would fund rather than ideas to which I was
deeply committed. I ended up studying what I wanted, but received no
financial support, and paid for my education out of pocket.”
Unfortunately, she’s not alone. Conducting research requires funding,
and today’s research follows the golden rule: The one with the gold
makes the rules.
A report just released by Food and Water Watch
examines the role of corporate funding of agricultural research at land
grant universities, of which there are more than 100.
“You hear again
and again Congress and regulators clamoring for science-based rules,
policies, regulations,” says Food and Water Watch researcher Tim Schwab,
explaining why he began investigating corporate influence in
agricultural research.
“So if the rules and regulations and policies are
based on science that is industry-biased, then the fallout goes beyond
academic articles. It really trickles down to farmer livelihoods and
consumer choice.”
The report found that nearly one quarter of research funding at land
grant universities now comes from corporations, compared to less than 15
percent from the USDA. Although corporate funding of research surpassed
USDA funding at these universities in the mid-1990s, the gap is now
larger than ever.
What’s more, a broader look at all corporate
agricultural research, $7.4 billion in 2006, dwarfs the mere $5.7
billion in all public funding of agricultural research spent the same
year.
Influence does not end with research funding, however. In 2005, nearly
one third of agricultural scientists reported consulting for private
industry. Corporations endow professorships and donate money to
universities in return for having buildings, labs and wings named for
them.
Purdue University’s Department of Nutrition Science blatantly
offers corporate affiliates
“corporate visibility with students and faculty” and “commitment by
faculty and administration to address [corporate] members’ needs,” in
return for the $6,000 each corporate affiliate pays annually.
In perhaps the most egregious cases, corporate boards and college
leadership overlap. In 2009, South Dakota State’s president, for
example, joined the board of directors of Monsanto, where he earns six
figures each year.
Bruce Rastetter
is simultaneously the co-founder and managing director of a company
called AgriSol Energy and a member of the Iowa Board of Regents.
Under
his influence, Iowa State joined AgriSol in a venture in Tanzania that
would have forcefully removed 162,000 people from their land, but the university later pulled out of the project after public outcry.
What is the impact of the flood of corporate cash?
“We know from a number of meta-analyses, that corporate funding leads to results that are favorable to the corporate funder,” says Schwab.
For example, one peer-reviewed study
found that corporate-funded nutrition research on soft drinks, juice
and milk were four to eight times more likely to reach conclusions in
line with the sponsors’ interests. And when a scrupulous scientist
publishes research that is unfavorable to the study’s funder, he or she
should be prepared to look for a new source of funding.
That’s what happened to a team of researchers at University of Illinois
who were funded by a statewide fertilizer “checkoff” after they
published a finding
that nitrogen fertilizer depletes organic matter in the soil.
Checkoffs
are a common method used to market agricultural products, and they are
funded by a small amount from each sale of a product – in this case,
fertilizer. Richard Mulvaney, one of the U of I researchers, feels it is
twisted that, in this way, farmers fund research intended to promote
fertilizer use with their own fertilizer purchases.
Often the industry influence may be more subtle. Joyce Lok, a
graduate student at Iowa State University, said,
“If a corporation funds
your research, they want you to look at certain research questions that
they want answered. So if that happens it’s not like you can explore
other things they don’t want you to look at… I think they direct the
research in that way.”
John Henry Wells, who spent several decades as a student, professor and
administrator at land grant universities sees it a different way.
As an
academic, he hopes that his research is relevant to real world problems
that agriculture faces at the time.
If scientists use fundability as an important criteria of
selecting research topics, research intended to serve the needs of the
poor and the powerless will be at a disadvantage. However, Wells says
that this is hardly a new phenomenon: land grants have existed to serve
the elites since their creation in the 19th century.
“As its basis, the land-grant university was intended to cater to a
narrow political interest of landowners and homesteaders – individuals
who had the right to vote and participate in the political structure of
a representative democracy.” he says.“Contemporarily, it is not so
much that the land-grant university has been corrupted by modern
agro-industrial influence, as it has been historically successful in
focusing on its mission in the context of our Constitutional framework
of governance.For the land-grant university, its greatest strength – a
political collaboration spanning the top-to-bottom echelons of
influence – has been its greatest weakness.”
Land grant universities and the USDA itself first came into being at a
time when the academic view of agriculture was fundamentally changing –
even if most farmers at the time ignored the advice of academics,
dismissing them as “book farmers” who knew little about actually working
the land.
Will Allen writes about this period in his book The War on Bugs, telling the story of Justus von Liebig, a prominent agricultural chemist in Germany.
“In the 1830s, Liebig began asserting that the most essential plant
nutrients were nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.His theories fueled
the development of chemical fertilizers and ushered in a new age of
agricultural science and soil chemistry in the 1840s and 1850s.Though
many of Liebig’s theories were wrong, he was the first great
propagandist for chemistry and for chemical-industrial agriculture.”
Perhaps the most significant of his mistakes was his belief that organic
matter in the soil was unimportant.
Dozens of Americans studied under Liebig and returned to the U.S. to
continue their work. Two of these students established labs at Harvard
and Yale, and soon “all agricultural schools and experiment stations in
the country followed their lead.”
Thus, practically from the start, the
elites in this country served the interests of those who peddled
chemical fertilizers and other agricultural inputs – even if that
wasn’t their intent. No doubt many were enticed by the prospect of
founding a new, modern, scientific form of agriculture, as they felt
they were doing.
The unholy trinity of industry, government and academics promoting
industrial agriculture and de-emphasizing or dismissing sustainable
methods has a long history and it continues today.
In its report, Food
and Water Watch advocates a return to robust federal funding of research
at land grant universities. But government is hardly immune from
serving the corporate agenda either.
Take, for example, Roger Beachy, the former head of the National
Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the agency in the USDA that
doles out research grants. Beachy spent much of his career as an
academic, collaborating with Monsanto to produce the world’s first
genetically engineered tomato.
He later became the founding president of
the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Monsanto’s non-profit arm,
before President Obama appointed him to lead NIFA.
As Schwab noted, policy is often based on research, but good policy
requires a basis in unbiased, objective research. In a system in which
corporations and government both fund research, but due to the revolving
door, the same people switch between positions within industry,
lobbying for industry, and within government, what is the solution?
“When you ask the question, did I
ever outline a research plan with the explicit notion of is this going
to be fundable, I would say no. But I thought very deeply about whether
my research plan was going to be relevant, and one of the indicators of
relevancy would be if the ideas I put forward would get the attention of
trade associations, private industry, benefactors, etc.”
Jill Richardson – May 11, 2012 – SignsOfTheTimes
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