In his new book, the Japanese American peach farmer unearths his family’s painful, hidden history and explores its impact on his identity.
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February 14, 2012
Today, some will feel the sting of cupid’s arrow and fill their days with red roses and chocolate (hopefully fair trade) and a romantic dinner at a fancy restaurant. Other people call today Black Tuesday and will boycott all the hype and commercial schmaltz and stay home, maybe alone, eating leftovers. Still others will eschew people and proclaim their love of profit above all else. This is a love story about the latter category. Sure, we may not consider these two dollar-signs-in-their-eyes
He’s a mad scientist who got rich producing chemical agents for war in his lab and is now trying to pawn off those old toxic chemicals as pesticides and herbicides and squeeze as much money as possible out of raindrops. He calls himself GE Seed King, but we know him as Monsanto.
She ran away from her small hometown in Arkansas to take over every suburb and rural town in America and is now setting her sights on urban centers and every country in the world. To her inner circle, she’s known as Big Box Mama, but to us, she’s Walmart.
Like other celebrity power couples these two have a gossip page on Facebook tracking their every move and informing anti-fans of their latest exploits. And, like TomKat and Brangelina before them, they even have their own portmanteau: Walsanto.
Food & Water Watch has created this fictional social media romance as part of its wider campaign to pressure Walmart to refuse to sell Monsanto’s GE sweet corn.
The couple met, like so many today, over the internet after they both decided to give Twitter a try. Monsanto took to the web seeking a retail “mate” to sell his latest science experiment, GE sweet corn, and make his next fortune. After being turned down by Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and General Mills, he set his eyes on industrial food darling, Walmart.
Though the relationship got off to a rocky start because of Monsanto’s seedy past, Walmart eventually warmed up to her suitor after she saw the size of his bank account and his potential to make her even richer. Today, the couple plans to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a lab-made GE dinner prepared by Monsanto and maybe a few corny poems and Valentine’s Day cards.
Curious to see how this sordid affair will play out? You’re in luck: Walsanto Watch is your No. 1 source for the play-by-play for the relationship, publishing paparazzi photos of the two together, analyzing their Twitter discourse and letting us poke fun at their ruthlessness.
It seems as though Walmart and Monsanto are on their way to a horror-storybook ending with Monsanto’s untested, unlabeled and potentially unhealthy GE sweet corn on Walmart’s shelves everywhere, which is really bad news for consumers. Fortunately, they haven’t tied the knot yet and there’s still time to break up this diabolical duo. You can help stop this match made in hell by:
No matter how you feel about Valentine’s Day, Food & Water Watch hopes you’ll choose love of workers, farmers, the environment and consumer health over Walsanto’s love of profit and sign the petition and follow the misadventures of this titan corporate twosome.
March 23, 2023
In his new book, the Japanese American peach farmer unearths his family’s painful, hidden history and explores its impact on his identity.
March 20, 2023
March 9, 2023
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