In President Bush’s latest national budget proposal, there is a 1/3 cut in funding for agricultural research at our land grant colleges (that would be schools like MU and KU). This is part of a multi-year drive by this administration to completely eliminate regular public research funding. When that happens, the future of agricultural research at our land grant colleges will belong to biotech conglomerates like Monsanto.
Under the present system, researchers obtain research dollars from the government with the focus of research being on improving crops and the health of the consumer. When that is taken over by big business we’re in trouble, and it’s already started.
When large conglomerates start paying for the research, and they already have, it won’t be for the betterment of humanity, but for the expansion of the bottom line. Does anyone have any doubts about that?
Additionally, the research facilities at these land grant colleges have been established with tax dollars, and the researchers are being paid salaries with tax dollars. Nevertheless, the conglomerates get the ultimate benefit of the research in the way of corporate profits, and the conglomerates can put any price on the new technology they want … and they’ve proven that they want as much as they can get.
With the cost of gas and food going up astronomically, and some of that is because congress has allowed government agencies that are supposed to protect us from greedy conglomerates to be staffed by representatives of those very conglomerates, isn’t this plan to turn over our land grant research to big conglomerates the last straw? We can only change this with our voice and our vote.
I saw this joke on the editorial page of the Star.
“I’m personally not too concerned about the rising price of food at the supermarket because I can’t afford the gas to get me there anyway.”
Maybe it wasn’t really a joke.
