This is a sample letter that you should use as a guide if you share the opinions of Trent Loos and Janet H. Thompson on Monsanto's recent announcement of team up on Agenda 21.
Dear Mr. Grant and Monsanto’s Board of Directors:
It has come to my attention that Monsanto has officially joined the United Nation’s Agenda 21 movement by joining the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
This is unnecessary, counterproductive and will lead to many problems for both Monsanto and your customers. As life-long agricultural producers, my family and I encourage you to reconsider lending your good name to such an organization.
Agenda 21 was birthed in 1992 at the UN’s “Earth Summit” at Rio de Janeiro. Agenda 21 is Maurice Strong’s plan to advance “the environment” through local governments all over the globe. Local governments, especially if they sign up as dues-paying members of ICLEI, are encouraged to limit what people do on their own property for supposed benefits to the environment.
In the name of nebulous, indefinable concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, ecosystems, social justice and environment (amongst many others), a small group of people make centralized decisions about what can and cannot be done on an individual’s property.
At its core, Agenda 21 is an aggressive (albeit very clever) assault on private property.
Private property is necessary for Monsanto’s success because it is vital to each and every one of your customers. Private property is core to a free and prosperous, market-based economy.
I know that you have joined WBCSD in an attempt to demonstrate to detractors that you are doing good work and that your technologies, voluntarily purchased by farmers throughout the world, are, in fact, good for the environment.
Your technologies allow us to be more efficient. By its very nature, efficiency is good for the environment. It means we produce more food with fewer inputs. Were that not the case, farmers would not voluntarily purchase your products. Were it not for a profit motive, farmers would have no incentive to become more efficient. Were it not for private property and the surety that we personally will benefit from excellent care of and improvements to our land, no incentive for excellent care or improvements would exist.
Development improves the world around us. One need only travel to a few choice countries in the world to gain first-hand evidence of this fact.
“Sustainable Development,” though, as defined and advanced through Agenda 21, is the opposite of what it claims to be. We have many examples in history – even recent history! – of top-down, centralized decision-making leading to wide-spread starvation and degradation of land. Long-term, thoughtful investments in property improvement are traded for short-term survival decisions.
Never in the history of free-market civilization have ideas been as important as what this one is today. I beg of you to fully understand what is behind that to which you have signed up, and then to make a brave and responsible decision for the future of Monsanto and every Monsanto customer.
Thank you for your time. Thank you for your wonderful products.
Sincerely,