Haiti to Monsanto: F*** You

In the hit documentary Food Inc., seed company Monsanto was vilified (and rightly so) for their legal attacks on farmers and seed harvesters for infringing their patent rights. Now, not only does Monsanto have to deal with problems like its public image, weeds becoming resistant to its weed-killer Roundup, and their general dislike by environmentalists; their gift to Haiti, 475 tons of hybrid seeds, will most likely not be accepted, and probably burned. Haitians see the move as an attack on their sustainable farming lifestyle, or as Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay put it, "a very strong attack on small agriculture, on farmers, on biodiversity, on Creole seeds ... and on what is left our environment in Haiti."
Kudos to the poor Haitians, who, even after their nation was devastated by an earthquake earlier this year, still resist the Americanized notion of letting corporations take care of you, if only for their future benefit. I can't imagine the difficulties they currently face, so compound that in five or ten years when Monsanto holds farmers liable for using their seeds, forcing them to buy them and suing them if they happen to drift into their field, since Monsanto can't seem to be held responsible for their own wayward seeds.