A recent article, "Small technology offers big reward," stated: "Tiny, highly specialized tools known as nanoparticles have the potential to transform agriculture and make current 'precision ag' devices look like blunt implements in comparison.

"Nanotechnology in farming is in its infancy but researchers envision a multitude of uses for nanoparticles -- structures so diminutive they can affect the function of living organisms much more precisely than current agricultural chemistry.

By "current agricultural chemistry" may I assume the article was referring to things like Bt cotton, over which a quarter of a million farmers have committed suicide and 8 million more have left farming? Bt cotton is, of course, "genetically engineered." And, the farmers who committed suicide were doing so because the expensive genetically manipulated seeds they planted failed.

Might I also assume the article refers to Roundup, now understood to kill liver cells even in diluted doses?

Might I further assume the article refers to the genetic modification of monocrops (or even to the "improved" system that invented monocropping, which itself threatens the food supply) to better receive and tolerate poisons -- the same "technology" and monocropping that are responsible for colony collapse disorder?

Well, perhaps these "scientists" will "engineer" a new "bee." A pollinator drone, perhaps, one controlled from bunkers in Nevada.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, have had a "relatively high" rate of "mishap" occurrences, which is just beginning to approach the number of accidents of, say, an F-16.

So, I guess that tiny pollinator drones might miss the flowers they're supposed to pollinate, especially if someone spilled a (genetically engineered) energy drink on the console in Nevada.

Maybe tiny magnets ...?

Genetic engineering, genetic modification and nanoization all assume that humans are better equipped, smarter, more wise than nature when it comes to the creation of living organisms, e.g., plants. And every such modification creates thousands of "unintended consequences," which then have to be dealt with, through famine and greater business profit opportunities. These "sciences" do not actually presume that humans can improve plants or improve food. These "sciences" are corporate-funded efforts to control food and the people who eat it. If you do not eat, it should be of no concern to you.

No one, once again, no one has any idea whatsoever the effects, damage, replication, or escape from "control" possible when nanoparticles of any kind are ingested by humans over the long term. The hope is that these particles will have effects that can be controlled by those who own corporate farming, ergo those who own corporate farming will be able, by extension, to control those who eat.

When will the naive, childish and often psychopathic fascination with pretended "control" give way to the mature understanding of place, integration and cooperation? Or will it? We have nearly succeeded in destroying the natural world as we knew it. This article cheers for more of the same. Full speed over the cliff! What a rush, huh?

Caren Black

Farmer

Astoria, Ore.