Syngenta loses $218million lawsuit

SOURCE: Jeri DiPietro (ofstone@aol.com)
SUBHEAD: Corn producers claimed contaminated crops hurt sales to China in lawsuit over GMO seeds.

By Margaret Cronin Fisk on 23 June 2017 for Bloomberg -
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/syngenta-ordered-by-jury-to-pay-218-million-to-kansas-farmers)


Image above: The logo of Swiss agrochemicals maker Syngenta is seen in front of a cornfield near the company's plant in Stein near Basel Switzerland illustrating another lawsuit in 2014. Photo byArnd Wiegmann. From (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syngenta-seed-trans-coastal-idUSKBN0HB2OQ20140917).

[IB Publisher's note: This is likely a good thing for Kauai if it hurts Syngenta and ultimately reduces their impact of experimental pesticides on the environment and people here. This however, is in no way a rejection of GMO technology. It is merely punishment of Syngenta for letting  factory farms lose money they might have made in China selling them GMO corn grown in America and developed in Hawaii.]

Syngenta AG was ordered to pay $217.7 million to a group of Kansas farmers who claimed the company carelessly marketed its genetically modified corn seed, causing contamination of U.S. crops and a rejection of export sales to China by officials there.

A Kansas jury issued the verdict Friday in the first trial brought by U.S. farmers alleging Syngenta caused five years of depressed corn prices. Several other trials are pending as lawyers pursue suits on behalf of some 350,000 corn growers claiming as much as $13 billion in losses.

The win gives momentum to claims by farmers from more than 20 states who are suing the Swiss agrochemical giant. Syngenta faces its next class action in a Minnesota court in August, where farmers are seeking more than $600 million.

“This drastically changes the complexion of the upcoming litigation,” said Anthony Sabino, law professor at St. John’s University in New York. “A jury found the plaintiffs’ claims of depressed prices so convincing that, not only did the jury give them a win on the liability, they awarded the entire amount of damages asked for. That is not an everyday occurrence.”

A dozen Kansas farmers attended the 13-day trial. The only farmer in the courtroom Friday, when the jury returned its verdict after four hours of deliberation during two days, was Bret Kendrick, 52.

“I’m relieved that things turned out the way they did," Kendrick said. "I’m very happy, especially for Kansas farmers." Kendrick farms 6,000 acres in southwestern Kansas.

Jury Verdict

The Kansas City, Kansas, jury awarded only compensatory damages and no punitive damages. The farmers’ lawyers had asked for $217.7 million for lost sales plus punitive damages.

Syngenta said it would appeal the verdict. “We are disappointed with today’s verdict because it will only serve to deny American farmers access to future technologies even when they are fully approved in the U.S.,’’ the company said in an e-mail. “The case is without merit.’’

More than 7,000 Kansas farmers claimed Syngenta rushed its GMO seed to market before getting approval from China to export grain there. In 2013, China stopped shipments after calling the corn contaminated by the GMO seed. The farmers also claimed Syngenta misled them on when the Chinese would approve the seed.

In all, China barred an estimated 1.4 million metric tons of U.S. corn from entering the country, effectively cutting the U.S. out of the world’s fastest-growing market, the farmers contend. Corn futures tumbled as demand for American corn weakened, they claim.

And while Syngenta’s GMO seeds were approved by the Chinese a year later, corn from Ukraine and other countries continues to supplant U.S. crops, the farmers said.

The average U.S. cash corn price has fallen 20 percent since the 2013 Chinese ban on U.S. shipments, while futures on the Chicago Board of Trade fell 15 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Price Trends

During the worst drought since the 1930s, cash prices peaked in August 2012 at $8.26 a bushel. On June 22, the price of a bushel of corn was $3.30, up from a seven-year low of $2.73 a bushel in September. The farmers blame the lower prices on the Chinese rejection. Syngenta said this wasn’t a factor.

The Swiss company was under pressure because Monsanto Co. had a seed that was equal to Syngenta’s that already had Chinese approval, Scott Powell, the farmers’ lawyer, told jurors Thursday.

“Syngenta rushed this product to market to serve its own commercial interests,’’ he said. “No consideration was given to the farmers.’’

Powell, citing a company document, said Syngenta’s then-CEO, Mike Mack, knew that China would object to his company’s seed, but that Mack wanted to “pressurize’’ China into accepting it.
“For Syngenta, there was no risk,’’ he said. “It was all on the backs of farmers.’’

Loss Analysis

Syngenta did nothing wrong and the farmers suffered no losses, Mike Brock, the company’s attorney, told jurors in closing arguments Thursday.

“Important approvals were in place before the seed went into the ground,’’ he said. Syngenta began marketing the seed in 2011 following U.S. approval the prior year.

The Chinese rejection didn’t cause corn prices to crater, he said. A 2010 corn drought in China forced it to buy foreign corn, and a 2012 drought in the U.S. led to a spike here, he said. A 2013 corn glut sent prices plummeting. Rain, particularly in the corn belt, shapes the corn market, he said.

China’s decision to block Syngenta’s seed wasn’t for safety reasons, but done as a “pretext’’ to lessen its dependence on U.S. corn, Brock said. “They wanted to slow down the export of corn to China.’’

China Watch

Syngenta wasn’t required to wait for Chinese approval and that country was using its biotech regulations to control trade, Brock said. The rejection of U.S. corn was part of that strategy, he said.

The trial in Kansas City, Kansas, comes as state-owned China National Chemical Corp. is completing its $43 billion acquisition of Basel, Switzerland-based Syngenta.

U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum, who is overseeing the Kansas City trial and most of the litigation, has certified eight statewide classes and had said Friday he’d schedule another trial for January or February. Farmers in 14 additional states are awaiting class certification by the Kansas judge.

Grain exporters Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and Cargill Inc. have accused Syngenta in separate suits of carelessly allowing its seed to taint U.S. corn, causing the Chinese rejection. Those suits are pending in state court in Louisiana, with Cargill’s headed for trial next year.

The case is In Re: Syngenta AG MIR 162 Corn Litigation, 14-md-02591, U.S. District Court, District of Kansas (Kansas City).


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GMOs - China - Syngenta

SUBHEAD: China pushes public to accept GMO food products as Syngenta takeover nears.

By Shuping Niu on 21 May 2017 for Bloomberg -
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-22/china-pushes-public-to-accept-gmo-as-syngenta-takeover-nears)


Image above: A bowl of genetically-modified "Golden Rice." Photograph by Imaginechina. From original article.

China will carry out a nationwide poll next month to test the public’s acceptance of genetically-modified food, a technology the government says would boost yields and sustainable agriculture in a country that’s seen consumption soar.

Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University and two other Chinese colleges will carry out the survey, said Jin Jianbin, a professor at Tsinghua’s School of Journalism and Communication. The poll, sponsored by the government, will be carried out in tandem with a campaign on social media to broadcast basic knowledge on GMO technology, which is widely misunderstood in the country, Jin said.

China is the world’s fourth-largest grower of GMO cotton and the top importer of soybeans, most of which are genetically modified and used for cooking oil and animal feed for pigs and chickens. But public concern over food safety issues and skepticism about the effects of consuming GMO foods have made the government reluctant to introduce the technology for staple crops.

A 2012 trial of so-called Golden Rice -- a yellow GMO variant of the grain that produces beta-carotene -- caused a public storm after reports that the rice was fed to children without the parents being aware that it was genetically modified.

“Many Chinese turn pale when you mention the GMO word,” said Jin in his small office. Some still believe GMO food can cause cancer and impair childbirth, due to misleading reports in newspapers and social media, he said. A recent decision by a local legislative body against growing GMO crops has added to public confusion, Jin said.

‘Half-Cooked Rice’

The national survey aims to discover what the public’s concerns are so that the government can resolve the confusion, Jin said. “If the government pushes ahead before the public is ready to accept the technology, it would be embarrassing -- like offering a pot of half-cooked rice to eat.”

Jin said he expected the poll result to show that the general public’s perception of GMO is still negative, but “as more people get to know the technology, more would be willing to accept it.”

The lack of an authoritative scientific institution to answer questions, the widespread illegal cultivation of GMO crops, and public mistrust of government authorities after a series of food scandals have all contributed to skepticism about GMO, Jin said.

Producers of GMO crops claim they offer improved yields, enhanced nutritional value and resistance to drought, frost and insects. Critics have raised concerns over safety and potential adverse ecological effects.

Last year, the U.S., the world’s largest producer of GMO crops, mandated that food makers label products with modified ingredients. EU lawmakers this month objected to imports of herbicide-resistant strains of corn and cotton.

Syngenta AG, which produces genetically modified seeds for corn, is gearing up for rapid expansion in the country after shareholders accepted a $43 billion offer for the Swiss agribusiness by China National Chemical Corp. The Chinese state-owned company is expected to complete the deal this month.

The American Chamber of Commerce in China had complained that U.S. strains of GMO suffered from slower and less predictable approval for import into China. Chinese and U.S. officials have agreed to evaluate pending U.S. biotechnology product applications by the end of the month, including corn and cotton.

China itself has spent billions on research of its own GMO technology over the past decade, but has not allowed commercial production of grains, with scientists citing public resistance as part of the reason for the delay. China has said that it will allow commercial production of modified corn and soybeans by 2020.

Government officials have said that the country would introduce the use of the technology first on feed grains after cotton. China’s corn consumption is estimated to grow nearly 20 percent in the coming decade on demand for protein-rich meat and dairy products.

---

Syngenta sells Hawaii Sites

SUBHEAD: IB Publisher's note - this is because of the extent of military operations throughout the state of Hawaii and on Kauai the large Syngenta presense at and around the PMRF where research and development and testing of new weapon systems takes place.

By  Jessica Else on 12 May 2017 for The Garden Island - 
(http://thegardenisland.com/business/local/syngenta-sells-hawaii-sites/article_330d8eae-ebd4-55a0-8acb-cb1246eedcbb.html)

An Iowa company is taking over the Hawaii Syngenta sites, including the location on Kauai’s Westside, but day-to-day activities will stay the same, according to company representatives.

The purchase agreement between Hartung Brothers, Inc. and Syngenta was announced Thursday. The deal should close by the end of June for an undisclosed amount.

“There are no planned reductions (in staff) resulting from this,” said Paul Minehart, Syngenta spokesman.

Syngenta’s Kauai location employs about 100 people.

Hartung Brothers, Inc., is a seed company founded in Madison,Wisc., in 1975, that has been providing seed corn production, processing and distribution services to Syngenta since the 1980s.

“We are extremely pleased to have this agreement with Hartung Brothers for our Hawaii sites,” said Ed Attema, Syngenta head of Global Seed Operations, Production & Supply in a press release. “The goal has been to have our employee talent base and facilities maintained and to contract work with the new owner, and that will be achieved.”

All employees will be offered employment by Hartung when the acquisition closes, according to the release.

Part of the agreement includes Syngenta contracting current Hawaii-based seed production activities from Hartung. According to the release, the purchase “ensures ongoing crop innovation will continue to be part of Hawaii agriculture, which plays an important role in food production for the U.S. and around the world.”

Bennette Misalucha, executive director of Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, welcomed the new agribusiness to the Hawaii agriculture community.

“Hartung Brothers, Inc.’s purchase of Syngenta’s Hawaii operations will ensure the preservation of jobs and continuation of seed production activities on Oahu and Kauai,” Misalucha said.

Activists who have been asking the state to regulate pesticide use by the agribusiness companies on the Westside are keeping an eye on the sale, hoping to see a change in practices.

“It would be refreshing if a company came in, grew something non-toxic and profitable, (so) that we could have jobs that are safe from continual pesticide exposure,” said Jeri Di Pietro, of Hawaii SEED.
Di Pietro said she hopes Hartung Brothers will use practices that remedies the soil.

“Even the worst soil can be made healthy again, we need to see what this new company has in mind,” she said.

In August, Syngenta Seeds announced a potential $43 billion sale of the company to China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) and the deal between the state-owned ChemChina and the Swiss-owned Syngenta is nearing completion.

In a Wednesday announcement, the two companies said the takeover has won support from about 80 percent of Syngenta’s shareholders.

The transaction required 67 percent of shareholders to accept the acquisition. According to a timeline provided by the companies, the first half of the settlement will be paid on May 18 and the second half will be paid on June 7.

ChemChina is headquartered in Beijing and owns production, research and development, and marketing systems in 150 countries and regions.

Since the August announcement of the pending sale, Hawaii locations have been exempt from the deal by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment.

Even so, Syngenta officials have been planning to sell its operations on Oahu and Kauai since the announcement of the possible ChemChina buyout in August.

The purpose was to pursue a different operating model by contracting Hawaii-based seed production activities with the new owner, according to a news release, while maintaining a commitment to developing agricultural innovation in Hawaii.

This isn’t the first time Syngenta has entertained the idea of selling or merging the company. In August 2015, Monsanto abandoned a $47 billion proposed takeover of the company.

Though Hartung is taking over the reins at Syngenta’s Hawaii locations, the family owned agribusiness plans to keep the focus on providing customers with quality seeds and services, as well as maintaining a strong workforce.

“Our company is very much a family business rooted in the work ethic instilled in us by our parents Lorna and Galen Hartung,” said Dan Hartung, president, Hartung Brothers, Inc. “We are excited about the opportunities this acquisition will bring our current customers.”

He continued: “It will also allow us to expand our customer base with new capabilities. We are very impressed with the current Hawaii management team and employees. Their dedication, knowledge and pride shows in all they do.”

Syngenta works about 4,000 acres on Oahu and Kauai for inbred and hybrid seed production sites and was established in Hawaii in the late 1960s.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: ChemChina takeover of Syngenta 5/5/17
Ea O Ka Aina: China's suicidal food strategy 9/30/16
Ea O Ka Aina: China to take over Syngenta? 2/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO Corn Wars 8/28/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Oxfam at Odds over GMO's 4/14/10
Island Breath: TGI#24 - Down with King Corn 2/28/08
Island Breath: GMO Free China 12/22/05


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The Banality the Anthropocene

SUBHEAD: When my uncle becomes blind to the violence of his own corn, he becomes blind to Standing Rock, and more.

By Heather Anna Swanson on 22 February 2017 for Cultural Anthropology -
(https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1074-the-banality-of-the-anthropocene)


Image above: Barn along Highway 1, south of Fairfield, Iowa. Photograph  by Ken K. From original article.

I want to propose an Anthropocene territorialization and a subject-making project in which anthropologists might want to engage. The territory of which I write is a place called Iowa.

There are plenty of troubling things about the Anthropocene. But to my mind, one of its most troubling dimensions is the sheer number of people it fails to trouble.

For many living in precarious situations, the Anthropocene is already life-altering, life-threatening, and even deadly. It comes in the form of a massive flood or a rising tide that takes their homes away. Or as an oil well that poisons the river on which they depend.

But for others, especially the white and middle-class of the global North, the Anthropocene is so banal that they do not even notice it. It is the green front lawn, the strip-mall parking lot, the drainage ditch where only bullfrog tadpoles remain.

Iowa lies at the heart of this banal Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, here, is wholesome. It is the cornfield and the industrial pig farm. It is the 4-H county fair and eating hot dogs on the Fourth of July. It is precisely this banality, this routinized everydayness (see Arendt 1963), that makes the Iowa Anthropocene so terrifying.

I write of Iowa not from the outside, but from a place of connection. I, too, am Iowa. Without it, I would not be where I am. My mother and father were born and raised in Iowa, and its mid-twentieth-century agricultural modernization and postwar dreams for better futures propelled their upward mobility.

It allowed them to get off the farm and become the first people in their families to go to college. Iowa’s industrial agriculture and its surpluses thus made my own scholarly career possible.
Indeed, we are all implicated in Iowa.

We are all entangled with the everyday violences of industrial agriculture and nationalist projects in a way that substituting an organic latte for the hot dog or shopping at Whole Foods won’t solve.

We cannot make ourselves clean. The urbanized coasts are made possible by the production of the heartland. New York is standing on Iowa (cf. Moore 2010).
How is it that Americans, especially white middle-class ones, learn not to notice such entanglements, to not be affected? How do we learn not to see the damage around us?

Iowa is objectively one of the most ruined landscapes in the United States, but its ruination garners surprisingly little notice. Less than 0.1 percent of the tallgrass prairie that once covered much of the state remains. You’ve seen the Anthropocene J-curves: the rise of atmospheric CO₂, human population growth, and dammed rivers, to name a few (Steffen et al. 2015). The decline in Iowa prairie makes a reverse J.

Between 1830 and 1910, Iowa lost a whopping 97 percent of its prairie acreage. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The reorientation of Iowa’s landscape toward capitalist agricultural production has resulted in the obliteration of worlds that once occupied it. The American Indians who carefully tended the prairie through burning and bison management have been forced out of the state.

Nearly every acre has been privatized. Today Iowa ranks forty-ninth out of the fifty U.S. states in public land holdings.

Ninety-nine percent of its marshes are gone. The level of its main aquifer has dropped by as much as three hundred feet since the nineteenth century, largely due to the extraction of irrigation water. Water quality is a mess, too.

Between 2010 and 2015 more than sixty Iowa cities and towns had high nitrate levels in drinking water due to the leaching and run-off of agricultural fertilizers. And those same fertilizers wash down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, where they have created an aquatic dead zone the size of Connecticut.

Few people, either within or beyond Iowa, notice the profundity of these changes. When my uncle, a farmer in northeast Iowa, gazes out at his cornfields, he does not see the annihilation of the prairie, the loss of the bison, or the displacement of American Indian communities.

He does not notice the contamination of groundwater, even though he had to redig his well a few years ago due to bacterial seepage from a nearby pig farm. He simply shrugs off such things and wonders what the crop prices will be next year.

Blindness proliferates: when my uncle becomes blind to the violence of his own corn, he becomes blind to others in neighboring farmhouses, in the neighboring towns, in neighboring states. He cannot see Standing Rock, and he cannot see why Black Lives Matter might matter to him.

It isn’t exactly his fault that he doesn't notice. White middle-class American subjectivities are predicated on not noticing. They are predicated on structural blindness: on a refusal to acknowledge the histories we inherit. As Deborah Bird Rose (2004) has shown in the case of Australian settler colonialism, dreaming of futures requires blindness to the past.

Michel Foucault’s work reminds us that the discourses that shape our subjectivities are not just words; they are also the bricks of the prison, the institutional form of the clinic (see Hirst 1995). But we have failed to see that they are also the monocrop cornfield. Iowa’s landscape infrastructure produces us and the Anthropocene.

The cornfield is an assemblage that brings the so-called common good of progress and nationalist growth into being. It produces grain futures markets and cheap hamburgers. How can we better see its terrors and erasures?

One of these terrors is that there are countless Iowas beyond Iowa. I currently live in Denmark, where I am a member of a research project called Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA).

One of my colleagues, Nathalia Brichet, uses the term “mild apocalypse” to draw attention to the normalized degradation of Danish landscapes. In the midst of Denmark’s rolling fields and highly managed forests, the Anthropocene continues to be stubbornly hard to see.

Donna Haraway has called for curiosity as both scholarly method and political practice, as an antidote to these learned blindnesses. In her book When Species Meet (Haraway 2008), she becomes curious about who and what she touches when she reaches out to pet her dog.

That curiosity becomes a radical practice of tracing and inheriting histories, such as the dog-herding practices of livestock-based Australian colonization efforts and the making of purebred dogs.

But in a world of structural blindness, such kinds of curiosity do not come naturally. They must be cultivated. But how? How, in the words of Joseph Dumit (2014), do we wake up to connections?

Can we imagine corollaries to Bible study meetings or consciousness-raising groups in which people would be encouraged to trace the histories of the landscapes they inhabit, a process that might draw them into new ways of seeing themselves and their worlds? I imagine such practices as a multispecies analogue to Foucauldian genealogy (see Foucault 1970).

Might exploring the genealogies of Iowa cornfields, for example, denaturalize them and counter the power of their banality?

Might they enable Iowans and all of us to become more curious about the conditions of our own subjectivities and, in turn, how we might transform the landscapes with which they are entangled? This is the important work of making curiosity more common, of troubling the Anthropocene.

References

Arendt, Hannah. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press.

Dumit, Joseph. 2014. “Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time.” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 2: 344–62.

Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon. Originally published in 1966. 

Haraway, Donna. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hirst, Paul. 1995. “Foucault and Architecture.” In Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments, Volume 4, edited by Barry Smart, 350–71. New York: Routledge.

Moore, Jason W. 2010. “‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part One: The Alchemy of Capital, Empire, and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545–1648.” Journal of Agrarian Change 10, no. 1: 33–68.

Rose, Deborah Bird. 2004. Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonization. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press.

Steffen, Will, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney, and Cornelia Ludwig. 2015. “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration.” Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1: 81–98.

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EPA files complaint against Syngenta

SUBHEAD: In January farm workers on Kauai were exposed to restricted use restricted use insecticides.

By Staff on 15 December 2016 for Environmental Protection Agency
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2016/12/epa-files-complaint-against-syngenta.html)


Image above: Pearl Linton hand-pollinating corn plants at a Syngenta seed farm on Kauai in 2013. Photo by Craig Kojima. From (http://www.staradvertiser.com/2016/12/15/business/business-breaking/epa-alleges-syngenta-exposed-workers-to-pesticide/).

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has filed a complaint alleging that Syngenta Seeds, LLC violated numerous federal pesticide regulations meant to protect agricultural workers at its crop research farm in Kekaha, Kauai. EPA is seeking civil penalties of over $4.8 million for the violations.

On January 20, 2016, 19 workers entered a Syngenta field recently sprayed with a restricted use organophosphate insecticide. Ten of these workers were taken to a nearby hospital for medical treatment. Restricted use pesticides are not available to the general public because of their high toxicity, potential for harm and impact on the environment.

“Reducing pesticide exposure is a high priority, as it directly affects the health of farmworkers,” said Alexis Strauss, EPA’s Acting Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest.

“EPA is committed to enforcing the federal law that protects those who spend long hours in the fields. We appreciate working with the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to respond to this serious incident.”

The company named in the complaint does business as Syngenta Hawaii, LLC., a subsidiary of Syngenta AG, a global enterprise that produces chemicals and seeds.

The EPA complaint states that Syngenta misused the pesticide “Lorsban Advanced,” and it failed in its duties to adequately implement the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act’s Worker Protection Standard.

Specifically, EPA alleges that Syngenta failed to notify its workers to avoid fields recently treated with pesticides. The company then allowed or directed workers to enter the treated field before the required waiting period had passed, and without proper personal protective equipment.

After the workers’ exposure, Syngenta failed to provide adequate decontamination supplies onsite and failed to provide prompt transportation for emergency medical attention.

An inspector from the Hawaii Department of Agriculture was present at the Syngenta facility when the exposure incident occurred, prompting the State’s immediate investigation.

In March, HDOA referred the matter to EPA for follow-up investigation and enforcement. In April, EPA inspectors conducted a series of inspections, which led to the complaint.

The active ingredient in “Lorsban Advanced” is chlorpyrifos, which in small amounts may cause a runny nose, tears, sweating, or headache, nausea and dizziness. More serious exposures can cause vomiting, muscle twitching, tremors and weakness.

Sometimes people develop diarrhea or blurred vision. In severe cases, exposure can lead to unconsciousness, loss of bladder and bowel control, convulsions, difficulty in breathing, and paralysis. Symptoms can appear within minutes and may last days or weeks.

For EPA’s complaint please visit: (https://www.epa.gov/hi/matter-syngenta-seeds-llc-dba-syngenta-hawaii-llc)

For more information on pesticide Worker Protection Standard visit:
(https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-worker-safety/agricultural-worker-protection-standard-wps)


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Kingdom of Corn

SUBHEAD: Will endless stretches of corn stubble and abandoned farmhouses be as common as they are now.

By Gene Logsdon on 27 January 2016 for The Contrary Farmer  -
(https://thecontraryfarmer.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/the-kingdom-of-corn/)


Image above: A cornfield between Kalona and Iowa City, Iowa featured in New York Times. Photo by Tony Cenicola. From (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/travel/iowa-caucus-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html).

You can find a stunning photo of the kingdom of corn in, of all places, the Sunday New York Times travel section Jan. 7. I stared at that photo on and off for three days, transfixed by what it silently said for all of us who know corn.

In the photo, taken in rural Iowa, there’s one lonely farmhouse, surrounded by winter corn stubble as far as the camera can see. Miles in every direction of nothing—nothing — but corn stubble on low rolling hills, as forlorn a sight of human habitation as an artist could depict to me.

To a corn farmer the scene probably brings more good feeling than bad because the thickness of the stubble indicates a very good crop there last year. All that stubble also indicates that little erosion will occur there over winter and as it decays and is worked into the soil, the fodder will add to the organic matter content.

But there is an ominous message in that photo too. The photographer could easily have taken a similar picture just about anywhere in Iowa where the farmhouse would be abandoned. Corn has been replacing farmsteads for fifty years at least because it looks like an easy and comparatively uncomplicated way to make money but requires constant expansion to do so, like all industrial businesses.

Over the years pasture and oats and even wheat dropped out of the kingdom of corn. Grazing livestock and fences disappeared. Woodlots vanished. Crossroad and village stores closed. The number of farmers dropped precipitously. Over 60% of the land today is owned by non-farming investors.

In fact, 21% of Iowa farmland is owned by people who do not even live in Iowa. What is particularly rankling about these figures is that some 40% of that corn is grown to feed piston engines. This is a travesty especially now that gasoline is so cheap. Everyone I talk to except corn farmers themselves admits it. Ethanol from corn is not a sustainable process. It is not profitable without subsidies.

But our leaders, neither Republican nor Democratic, have the moral fiber to oppose the corn kingdom because they believe that without all that corn, the farm economy of the midwest would collapse at least for awhile.

That is the history of corn kingdoms. The Mayan civilization was a corn kingdom and it collapsed. The Mississippi mound building culture was a corn culture and then it collapsed. Corn is such a wondrously productive crop that we can’t resist growing more and more of it, even on land not fit for row crop cultivation, until it destroys the diverse ecology that keeps nature thriving.

I know parts of Iowa quite well because as a younger journalist I travelled there doing stories for Farm Journal magazine. I have friends there still and write for Draft Horse Journal which is based there.

I don’t get homesick in Iowa because it is so much like my part of Ohio, only the houses in rural areas are closer together here. I would have difficulty in taking a picture of that much acreage of corn stubble here that did not include more than one house.

But the story is the same in both places. We have a painting on our living room wall by local artist Pat Gamby which depicts a lonely farmhouse in our county surrounded right up to the porch with corn stubble. The barns are gone, the pasture is gone, the garden is gone, the people are gone and the house is abandoned.

Our hills do not generally stretch out as long as the ones in Iowa and so in the spring, runoff water on those Iowa hills can gain much more speed as it goes downhill. I have seen gullies in Iowa, even in this so-called no-till era, that are plainly horrifying. This is the fallacy behind all the good talk and practice of winter cover crops and true no-till.

In reality many of these fields, no matter how well protected in winter, are so often worked up fine and level and beautiful for good germination in the spring and then, if heavy rains fall, gullies open up than can swallow a tractor.

We have discussed this subject regularly on this blog. Responders to my posts have mixed feelings, as I do. I certainly couldn’t disagree with “daddio7” a few weeks ago when he pointed out that I was “probably wrong” in predicting the end of factory farms.

As he reminded me, “we need factory food farms for the same reason we need factories for everything else.” As he remarked, we could no more survive on organic food from small farms that we can provide a handmade car for everyone.

But I also agree with Stanton in his rebuttal, that cheap factory food is more costly in the long run and that although small farms are not very profitable they can make some money and do it without government subsidy. And not-for-profit garden farming could provide a lot more sustenance if we really got serious about it.

There is surely something to be said for both opinions. All I know for sure is that something significant is happening in the way society looks at food production and it does not favor large scale industrial farming.

I wonder, if 30 years from now, endless stretches of corn stubble and abandoned farmhouses will be as common as they are now.


See also:
Island Breath: King Corn 2/28/08
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Syngenta's problem with GMO corn

SUBHEAD: Syngenta facing legal blitz in several states over GMO MIR162 corn contaminating exports to China.

By Crey L. Biron on 27 October 2014 for Mint Press News -
(http://www.mintpressnews.com/syngenta-facing-legal-blitz-genetically-modified-corn/198193/)


Image above: syngenta Spanish language technical manual for Agrisure Viptera MIR162 GMO corn. From (http://www.syngentaenvivo.com.ar/2014/manual/files/maiz_agrisure.htm).

An unusual cluster of legal filings in recent weeks has capped a tumultuous year for the Swiss biotechnology giant Syngenta Corp., and highlights ongoing concerns over the inability of the United States to keep genetically modified crops separate from conventional crops.

This month, three class action proposals were filed on behalf of farmers in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, with the potential to include almost anyone who grew or sold corn commercially across the country over the past year. The moves came just weeks after similar lawsuits were filed by two of the country’s largest grain exporters, Cargill and Trans Coastal Supply.

All of these legal actions revolve around genetically modified corn hybrids that Syngenta began selling in 2009. While those products have been approved for general use in the U.S., they have not been approved in China, and there is no formal indication as to whether they will be.

The problem for U.S. corn farmers and exporters is that the current commodities system in this country makes it almost impossible to compartmentalize the country’s massive corn production. Instead, corn from different farmers, fields and states is all consolidated as a single product.

Last November, Chinese authorities found traces of Syngenta’s hybrid – known as MIR162, under the brand name Agrisure Viptera – in massive shipments from the U.S. So, they rejected the entire sale, and have taken similar actions since then.

It remains unclear why the Chinese government made this decision. The Beijing government has approved the cultivation of several genetically modified products, notably cotton, and has even given a preliminary nod to hybrid food staples such as rice. It also imports large amounts of genetically modified soybeans each year.

Yet analysts say there exists a distinct tension between the government’s clear desire for greater use of genetically modified agricultural crops and the public’s ongoing suspicion of these products. Last month, the Beijing government reportedly launched a public relations campaign to try to sway public opinion on the issue.

Whatever the reason for China’s refusal to green-light MIR162 products, U.S. farmers, grower associations and trade analysts say the recent rejections have hollowed out the lucrative U.S. corn trade with China. In turn, this has also depressed prices across this country.

“These class actions seek to represent nationwide and statewide classes of growers or exporters relating to the economic losses arising out of the Chinese rejection of U.S. corn as a result of Syngenta’s MIR162 presence in that corn,” Adam Levitt, a partner with Grant & Eisenhofer in Chicago and a lead attorney on the class action out of Illinois, told MintPress News.

“The complainants are asking for monetary damages and other relief for growers and others harmed as a result of what we allege is Syngenta’s improper conduct with respect to the marketing and sale of MIR162 corn seed.”

Billions in losses
MIR162 hybrids have been genetically modified to make corn seeds resistant to several pests. These seeds are currently planted on only around 3 percent of U.S. fields, according to the Illinois complaint, but their impact is being felt across the country.

Levitt’s client, Hadden Farms, says it buys only seeds that have not been genetically modified, but alleges that it has been harmed by this year’s devastated corn market – resulting, Hadden Farms says, from Syngenta’s release of its MIR162 products and the Chinese reaction.

Levitt, who is also the head of Grant & Eisenhofer’s Consumer Practice Group, says the cases are being transferred to a single court for pretrial arrangements, and he is hoping they will all go forward together following a hearing in early December.

While the monetary damages alleged to have been incurred by the plaintiffs have not yet been defined, estimates have been staggeringly high. According to analyses released by the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA), by April of this year China’s decision had likely already resulted in $2.9 billion in losses across U.S. corn, distillers grains and soy sectors.

The association, which represents companies handling almost three-quarters of U.S. grains, further estimated that losses for the coming fiscal year could be far higher, reaching up to $3.4 billion. This is due to Syngenta’s controversial decision this summer to release a second generation of its MIR162 technology, known as Duracade.

“Following … widespread harm, Syngenta’s decision to release Duracade … again illustrates that Syngenta has acted in reckless disregard of the consequences of inflicting widespread harm to the U.S. corn market,” the Illinois complaint states.

The NGFA, which declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing legal actions, is quick to note that it is a firm supporter of genetically modified organisms. Indeed, several of the plaintiffs in the new lawsuits are well known for their support of GMOs in industrial agriculture, with Cargill being a notable example. Yet this is also what makes the new cases unique and, for Syngenta, potentially troubling.

“The NGFA stressed that it strongly supports agricultural biotechnology and other scientific and technological innovations,” a release from the association stated when it released its analyses in April.

“However … the impacts of the trade disruptions resulting from the detection of unapproved Agrisure Viptera MIR 162 provides a ‘case study’ on the ramifications of commercializing crop biotechnology before securing import approvals from major U.S. export markets.”

For its part, Syngenta is adamant that it has fulfilled its responsibilities to regulators and farmers. It also appears to dispute the significance of the Chinese market for U.S. corn producers.

“Syngenta believes that the lawsuits are without merit and strongly upholds the right of growers to have access to approved new technologies that can increase both their productivity and their profitability,” a spokesperson for the company told MintPress in a statement.

“Syngenta commercialized the [MIR162] trait in full compliance with regulatory and legal requirements. Syngenta also obtained import approval from major corn importing countries. Syngenta has been fully transparent in commercializing the trait over the last four years.”

The spokesperson noted that since Agrisure Viptera’s approval in the U.S. in 2010, the product has demonstrated “major benefits” for farmers in preventing pest-related losses. Indeed, it is important to note that the new class actions have not been joined by major corn-grower groups.

“The plaintiffs to the lawsuit are individual farmers acting on their own behalf and are in no way representative of the position of state or national corn growers associations,” Jennifer Myers, of the National Corn Growers Association, told MintPress.

China’s significance Yet the new complaints do not only accuse Syngenta of disregard for its products’ potential impact on the U.S. corn market. Instead, as Levitt, the attorney, notes, they also allege that the company has engaged in misrepresentation around the marketing of its MIR162 products.
“[A]lthough it knew that it lacked approval from Chinese authorities,” the Illinois complaint states, “Syngenta has misinformed farmers, grain elevators, grain exporters, and the general public into believing that regulatory approval of MIR162 corn from China was imminent and that the lack of Chinese approval would not impact the corn market prices.”

In part, these allegations revolve around a fact sheet that Syngenta offers on Agrisure Viptera. Critics say the document, addressed to farmers, plays down the importance of the Chinese market for U.S. corn.

Noting “the recent market noise regarding Chinese import acceptance of corn,” the fact sheet states that “The vast majority of corn produced in the U.S. is used domestically.” It also points to a “misconception that China imports more grain than it actually does from the U.S.”

Citing unreferenced figures from the analyst Informa Economics, Syngenta reports that over the past five years China has imported only around 0.5 percent of all U.S. corn.

“Given that traditional major markets are legally able to accept Agrisure Viptera grain, farmers can have confidence in planting this innovative technology for its potential to increase yield and grain quality,” the fact sheet continues. “Since very few U.S. grain outlets actually export to China, most have no reason to restrict your right to plant the latest technologies.”

Yet the complaint cites U.S. Department of Agriculture data that the U.S. exports up to a fifth of its corn production and that China has rapidly become the country’s third-largest market for this commodity. According to this analysis, Chinese imports were “on track to meet or exceed these numbers” this past fiscal year.

Still, the USDA does acknowledge that China has been a “significant source of uncertainty in world corn trade.” Neither the USDA nor the office of the U.S. Trade Representative agreed to comment for this story.

Contentious commingling While the recent spike in legal action around Syngenta’s MIR162 products is notable, this is not the first time that GMO-related regulations in other countries have negatively impacted on U.S. agricultural exports. Last year, for instance, the European Union temporarily froze its approvals process for new genetically modified foods, and dozens of other countries have similarly moved to more tightly regulate their markets.
Meanwhile, airborne “contamination” of traditional crops by the pollen of genetically modified hybrids has been officially confirmed repeatedly in recent years. In a survey released earlier this year, a third of U.S. organic farmers reported having experienced problems in their fields due to the nearby use of genetically modified crops, and over half of those growers have had loads of grain rejected because of unwitting GMO contamination.

The USDA is currently studying whether genetically modified and traditional crops can “coexist.” But others say that conflicts such as the one around Syngenta will continue.

“The broader issue here is around biotech companies introducing products before governments and consumers have accepted them,” Ben Lilliston, the vice president of programs at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis think tank, told MintPress.

“The current push for GMO labeling is related to this, too, as it’s concerned with products being pushed onto the market that haven’t adequately been through the regulatory structure that most people think is needed.”

Meanwhile, Cargill and other major grain groups, including Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland, currently refuse to accept any Agrisure Viptera corn. Lilliston says that the new legal actions, particularly by Cargill and Trans Coastal Supply, underscore a broader, though little-discussed, trend in the industry to move back toward non-GMO ingredients, particularly for food products.

“There is today fairly significant growth in the non-GMO market in the United States. Cargill and others recognize that and are trying to figure out how to set up the infrastructure needed to segregate traditional and genetically modified crops,” Lilliston said.

“More and more food companies are rebelling against GMOs because they don’t really get any benefit from using these ingredients. In a sense, they’ve been carrying water for the biotech companies for a long time, and this is now costing them a lot of money to fight the GMO-labeling campaigns. So you’re seeing a lot of fraying.”

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Farming vs poisoning the land

SUBHEAD: The difference between a farmer and a global chemical corporation. It's important to know.

By Andrea Brower on 11 February 2014 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrea-brower/the-difference-between-a-_3_b_4764902.html)


Image above: "Just Up The Path", a retouched photo of an old farm by Mike Savad. From (http://fineartamerica.com/featured/farm-barn-just-up-the-path-mike-savad.html).

We are witnessing a strange, though remarkably predictable public discourse, where State lawmakers claim that those "truly serious about supporting local farmers" must abolish Counties' rights "forever," and transnational corporations call themselves "farmers."

Legislators attempt to contort the "Right to Farm" into a mechanism for chemical companies to evade health and environmental concerns, as water grabs by these same companies undermine the actual rights of farmers. Meanwhile, the Hawaii Farm Bureau advocates the interests of a few mega-corporations as synonymous with the interests of local farmers (despite never having asked the farmer members that they professedly speak for).

The intentional blurring in the difference between farmers, and the global corporations that use Hawaii as a testing ground for their new technologies, demands some clarity.

Dow is the largest chemical company in the US. Their list of manufactured goods includes napalm, chlorpyrifos (used as a nerve gas during World War II), plastics and Styrofoam. They have managed nuclear weapons facilities, and more recently diversified into the coal business.

Dow has refused compensation or environmental cleanup for the over half a million victims of the Bhopal pesticide plant disaster. They have been charged by the EPA for withholding reports of over 250 chlorpyrifos poisoning incidents, and only upon recent government mandate began to address their century-long legacy of dumping dioxins into Michigan's waterways. They have knowingly allowed their pesticide product DBCP to cause permanent sterility in thousands of farm-workers.

DuPont started as a gunpowder and explosives company, providing half of the gunpowder used by Union armies during the Civil War and 40% of all explosives used by Allied forces in World War I. During peacetime, DuPont diversified into chemicals; some well-known products include Nylon, Teflon and Lycra.

World War II was particularly advantageous for DuPont, which produced 4.5 billion pounds of explosives, developed weapons, contributed to the Manhattan Project, and was the principal maker of plutonium.

Along with Dow, DuPont was rated in the top five air polluters for 2013 by the Political Economy Research Institute. DuPont is responsible for 20 Superfund sites, and is recipient of the EPA's largest civil administrative penalty for failing to comply with federal law.

Syngenta was formed through the merging of pharmaceutical giants Novartis and AstraZeneca's agrochemical lines. They manufacture highly dangerous pesticides likeparaquat and atrazine that are banned in their home country of Switzerland, but used largely in poorer countries (as well as Hawaii). Paraquat is a major suicide agent.

Syngenta has lobbied exhaustively in the European Union to block a ban on its bee-killing neonicotinoids, including threatening to sue individual EU officials. It has hired private militias to murder farmer activists. Syngenta is responsible for 18 Superfund sites in the US.

BASF is the world's largest chemical company, and makes plastics, coatings (automotive and coil coatings), fine chemicals (feed supplements, raw materials for pharmaceuticals), and agricultural chemicals. During World War II it was part of IG Farben, dubbed the "financial core of the Hitler regime," and the primary supplier of the chemicals that were used in Nazi extermination camps.

For nearly three decades following the war, BASF filled its highest position with former members of the Nazi regime. Five of BASF's manufacturing facilities in the US rank amongst the worst 10% of comparable facilities for toxic releases. In 2001 they were fined by the EPA for 673 violations related to illegal importation and sale of millions of pounds of pesticides.

Monsanto was founded as a drug company, and its first product was saccharin for Coca-Cola -- a derivative of coal tar that was later linked to bladder cancer. They have manufactured some of the world's most destructive chemicals, including Agent Orange (with Dow), PCBs and DDT. Monsanto was heavily involved in the creation of the first nuclear bomb and in 1967 entered into a joint venture with IG Farben.

Monsanto is a pioneer of biotechnology; their first product was artificial recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH). They have sued food companies that have labeled their products as rBGH-free. They are a potentially responsible party for at least 93 Superfund sites.

Clearly these corporations are not "farmers." But what, then, of their impact on farmers?

The task of a corporation is to aggressively and competitively use their capital to make more of it. In addition to financial benefit in weapons, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics, the aforementioned corporations now fatten their earnings in our agri-food system. Most notably, when court decisions in the 1980s opened the door to exclusive property rights on seeds and other life forms, they turned their eye to the profitability of dominating the agricultural inputs market.

Consolidation and concentration in the seed industry has been rapid -- in 1995 the world's top 10 seed companies controlled 37% of commercial seed sales; today 10 companies account for 73%.

Through mergers and acquisitions, the stockpiling of patents on genes and traits, and unprecedented cooperation and collusion, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta, Monsanto, BASF and Bayer -- the "Big 6" -- have rendered competitive markets in seeds, biotech traits and agrochemicals "a relic of the past."

Together, these markets provide them $50 billion per annum in sales. Since they took ownership of the market, seed prices for US farmers have more than doubled as their options have narrowed.

Beyond controlling the market, the agrochemical / seed oligopoly also largely determines the worldwide agricultural research agenda, accounting for over three-quarters of private sector R&D in seeds and pesticides.

Public sector research is marginalized and distorted by the dominance of their funding, and their gene monopolies severely thwart critical scientific inquiry and innovation.

Farmers' rights to innovate, share and save seed, and cultivate the agricultural biodiversity upon which we all depend is also supplanted by the new corporate rights to privatize what has always been considered "common."

The R&D that the Big 6 choose to invest in, and take our agri-food system in thedirection of, reflects their single structural mandate -- to grow profits for their shareholders. Thus, as their initial pesticide+GMO combo technologies fail, they move to speed-up the pesticide-treadmill with crops engineered to withstand heavy dousing in more toxic 2,4-D and dicamba.

Seventy percent of Big 6 research funding is dedicated to biotech, which after nearly 20 years of commercialization has been "inefficient and expensive" for developing anything besides herbicide-resistant and insecticide-producing commodity crops that are processed into unrecognizable form.

Corn and soy production now covers over half of US farmland, thanks largely to the policy-influence of the agrochemical corporations and other mega-agribusiness. Seeds (with pesticides) by DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, and Dow account for more than 80 percent of corn acreage and 70 percent of soy acreage.

American commodity farming today is a "zero long-run profitability" endeavor for farmers, but it is incredibly lucrative for the Big 6, grain traders and makers of processed foods.

Many of the "externalities" of a corporate-enriching food system are paid for by farmers. According to a report by Food and Water Watch, herbicide-resistant weeds created by Big 6 technology can cost farmers as much as $12,000 for an average-sized corn or soybean farm or $28,000 for an average cotton farm.

In other words, as pesticide+GMO combos fail, the agrochemical companies that produce them benefit from selling more chemicals. Additionally, farmers increasingly face loss of crops and livelihoods due to pesticide-drift and death of honeybee populations.

Farming communities also suffer the most severe health impacts of an increasingly pesticide-intensive agricultural system. Exposure to pesticides is associated with elevated risks of certain kinds of cancer, Parkinson's disease, autism and other neurological effects, reproductive and developmental disorders, and respiratory disease. Farmworkers' children are at particularly high risk of exposure and pesticide-related illness.

Most generally, the continued success of these corporations lies in the entrenchment of an industrial-style, pesticide and fossil-fuel intensive agri-food system in which our genetic commons are privatized and farmers' choices are reduced to Big 6-seeds and chemicals.

They will morph to adapt to changing circumstances -- the industry is working to secure patents on conventional breeding, companies are shifting to crossbreeding in areas where GMO technology has failed, Monsanto has diversified into big data and weather insurance, and the Big 6 are sweeping-up genes related to environmental stress to secure their dollar in climate change. But one thing will remain constant -- their sole mission to grow their wealth (and power), which has not been a benign process for farmers.

Whether one is skeptical, hopeful, or a mix of both about the science and technology of genetic engineering, we must differentiate between what is good for Dow, DuPont, Monsanto, Syngenta, BASF and Bayer, and what is good for farmers and farmworkers.

As we debate various policies related to the agrochemical corporations' experimentation in Hawaii, we do a grave disservice to the future of food and farming locally and globally when we allow the relationship between farmers and mega-agribusiness to be obscured.

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China rejects GMO corn

SOURCE: Teri (gypsieme@hotmail.com)
SUBHEAD: The Chinese government rejects over a million tons of Syngenta genetically modified corn.

By Richard Lopez on 27 December 2013 for LA Times -
(http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-china-rejects-shipment-of-gmo-corn-20131227,0,2126813.story#ixzz2ohuqVdW5) 


Image above: Harvesting GMO corn. From Frpm original article.

China rejected two shipments of U.S. dried distillers' grain, a corn byproduct, because it contained genetically modified material, state media reported Friday.

China's top food-quality watchdog rejected the two shipments because they contained MIR162, a special insect-resistant variety of maize developed by Syngenta, a Swiss maker of seeds and pesticides.

The first shipment, 545,000 tons, was rejected last week in Shanghai, state media said. The second shipment, 758 tons, was rejected Monday.

MIR162 is not on the Chinese government's short list of approved grains considered genetically modified organisms, or GMO.

Still, Chinese consumers remain wary of GMO crops and some nationalist-leaning pundits have suggested the Western-dominated technology leaves China’s food supply vulnerable.

The U.S. is the world’s largest corn exporter and China is its No. 3 customer. The Asian nation is expected to buy a record 7 million tons of corn in the 2013-14 marketing year.

Chinese authorities said the shipments have been returned and are urging American officials to improve their "inspection procedures to ensure they comply with Chinese quality standards."

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It’s not about eating the corn

SUBHEAD: Spraying a wide array of pesticides on a mass scale have impacts on our island and our health.

By Gary Hooser on 21 February 2013 for GaryHooser -
(http://garyhooser.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/its-not-about-eating-the-corn/)


Image above: Aerial view of Makaweli plantation village once surrounded by sugarcane fields. Now threatened by GMO pesticides. From (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aerial-makaweli-kauai.jpg).

It’s not about eating the corn

Not for me anyway. The decision to eat or not eat the corn is only a small reason I support the labeling of genetically modified foods and hold deep reservations about the industry as a whole.

People on my island are getting sick. Many believe their sickness is being caused by the secondary and cumulative impacts connected to the growing of genetically modified organisms.

Yet when I’ve asked these companies directly and officially in writing to disclose what chemicals and in what quantities they are spraying, the industrial agrochemical GMO companies on Kauai have refused to do so.

For me, that alone is enough to keep me from buying their products or supporting their industry, and to support full labeling requirements.

63 countries around the world including all of Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand require mandatory labeling of GMO products. Some countries have banned these products completely.

Many questions exist and many doubts persist. There are valid health concerns ranging from allergen sensitivities to hormonal disruption to cancer, related to the GMO’s and to the pesticide spraying that accompanies them.

There are concerns about the globalization and corporate ownership of the worlds food supply. There are ethical and moral questions pertaining to the concept of corporations owning patents on living organisms both plant and animal, and to the increased diminishment of bio-diversity. All valid reasons consumers may not want to buy these products and thus the need to require labeling.

For me, it’s personal.

Kauai is ground zero in the GMO industry. These industrial agrochemical operations dominate the landscape of Kauai’s west side and are now moving into the southern and eastern land as well. The fields of mostly genetically modified corn not intended for human consumption grow on approximately 12,000 acres of prime farmland stretching from the base of the mountains down to within just feet of the pristine ocean waters.

These crops are subject to spraying with toxic pesticides up to 6 days a week.

Over 200 residents of WaimeaValley have filed suit claiming negative impacts from pesticide laden dust blowing into their homes and onto their bodies. Biologists estimate over 50,000 sea urchins died last year in near shore west-side waters.

People in all parts of Kauai County are growing increasingly concerned about the impacts that result from these companies spraying their fields with toxic and experimental chemicals that then flow into streams and near shore waters and cling to the dust which blows daily into neighborhoods and schools.

Yet these agrochemical companies, who are required by law to keep records of their pesticide use, tell me blithely to go elsewhere for the data.

About half the land used for GMO production on Kauai are public lands upon which zero property tax is paid. But they refuse to disclose to the public what they are growing or what they are spraying on these public lands. These large transnational corporations transfer their end products to related subsidiaries, benefit from Enterprise Zone and other GET exemptions and consequently pay zero GET tax on the products they produce.

State law and terms of the public lands lease/license require compliance with Hawaii’s environmental review law Chapter 343HRS, yet no documentation demonstrating compliance exists; no exemption declaration, no environmental assessment and no environmental impact statement.


Image above: GoogleEarth view of westside Kauai communities most affected by GMO pesticide health issues fbetween Kekaha (upper left) to Eleele (lower right). Note, just about all cane fields in this area are now controlled by Syngenta (west), Dupont-Pioneer (center) and DOW-AgroScience (east). From GoogleEarth. Click to enlarge.

Growing genetically modified organisms, using experimental pesticides and spraying a wide array of restricted and non restricted pesticides on a mass scale have impacts on our island, our health and our environment. There are direct impacts, secondary impacts and cumulative impacts but we don’t know what those impacts are because they have never been properly evaluated – and the companies in question won’t even give us the information needed to make a proper evaluation.

So yes, I support labeling. Absolutely.

Labeling, mandatory disclosure and a permitting process that requires a comprehensive review of the significant environmental and health impacts to our island and our community caused by this industry – I support them all, because as you can see this is about much more than just eating the corn.

• Gary Hooser is a member Kauai County Council – Former Director of the Office of Environmental Quality Control for State of Hawaii – Former Hawaii State Senator and Majority Leader.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Rising against GMOs 2/13/13
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO Chump Change 2/5/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Dr. Vandana Shive on Kauai 1/5/13
Ea O Ka Aina: New Mexico & GMO labeling 12/22/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Kaiser Permanente avoids GMOs 11/14/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Seed Savers Exchange Market 10/22/09
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO Transparency 9/26/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Those fighting GMO labeling 9/20/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Prop 37 & GMO Labeling 19/9/12
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO Health Study in Rats 9/19/12
Ea O KA Aina: Hngary denies GMOs & IMF 9/7/12
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO Companies Stung By Argentina 8/21/12
Ea O Ka Aina: India turning away from Biotech 8/9/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Vandana Shive on GMOs 7/21/12
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO labeling on California Ballot 7/14/12
Ea O Ka Aina: GMO Skull & Crossbones 4/29/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Poland bans GMO corn 4/6/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Walmart to sell unlabeled GMO corn 2/21/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Three Island Anti-GMO Rally 2/18/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Monwanto suppresses GMO labeling 2/2/12
Ea O Ka Aina: GMOs Uber Alles 1/28/12
Island Breath: Genetically Modified Kauai 12/8/08
Island Breath: Syngenta Poisoning Part Two 3/1/07

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Migrating Maize

SUBHEAD: The American corn belt shifting north with climate as Kansas crop withers and dies.

By Alan Bjerga on 15 October 2012 for Bloomberg News -
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/corn-belt-shifts-north-with-climate-as-kansas-crop-dies.html)


Image above: Detail of painting "The Picked Field" by Les Kouba of migrating Canadian geese landing in a Minnesota corn field. From (http://www.artbarbarians.com/gallery2/main.asp?artist=29&pic=8995).

Joe Waldman is saying goodbye to corn after yet another hot and dry summer convinced the Kansas farmer that rainfall won’t be there when he needs it anymore.

“I finally just said uncle,” said Waldman, 52, surveying his stunted crop about 100 miles north of Dodge City. Instead, he will expand sorghum, which requires less rain, let some fields remain fallow and restrict corn to irrigated fields.

While farmers nationwide planted the most corn this year since 1937, growers in Kansas sowed the fewest acres in three years, instead turning to less-thirsty crops such as wheat, sorghum and even triticale, a wheat-rye mix popular in Poland. Meanwhile, corn acreage in Manitoba, a Canadian province about 700 miles north of Kansas, has nearly doubled over the past decade due to weather changes and higher prices.

Shifts such as these reflect a view among food producers that this summer’s drought in the U.S. -- the worst in half a century -- isn’t a random disaster. It’s a glimpse of a future altered by climate change that will affect worldwide production.

“These changes are happening faster than plants can adapt, so we will see substantial impacts on global growing patterns,” said Axel Schmidt, a former senior scientist for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture now with Catholic Relief Services.

While there is still debate about how human activity is altering the climate, agriculture is already adapting to shifting weather patterns.

Northward Shift 
 Agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. is investing in northern U.S. facilities, anticipating increased grain production in that part of the country, said Greg Page, the chief executive officer of the Minneapolis-based company.

“The number of rail cars, the number of silos, the amount of loading capacity” all change, Page said in an interview in New York. “You can see capital go to where there is ability to produce more tons per acre.”

Losses in some areas will mean gains in others, Page said. A native of Bottineau, a small town on North Dakota’s border with Canada, Page said that when he was in high school in the 1960s, “you could grow wheat -- or wheat. That was it,” he said.

“You go to that very same place today -- they can grow soybeans, they can grow canola, they can grow corn, they can grow field peas and export them to India,” he said. “A lot of that has been to do with the fact that they have six, eight days more of frost-free weather.”

Reduced Harvest 
 This year’s U.S. drought was the most severe since 1954, according to the Palmer Drought Index, which has measured such weather phenomena since 1895. The hot, dry conditions pushed estimates for the country’s corn harvest to the lowest level in six years and the projected average cash price to an all-time high. August was the 330th consecutive month in which temperatures worldwide topped the 20th-century average, the U.S. National Climatic Data Center said last month.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in January updated its plant hardiness map for the first time since 1990, shifting many regions into zones that are 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in the late 20th century.

The data show a climate in transition, with agriculture needing to adapt, said Wolfram Schlenker, an environmental economist at Columbia University in New York. Even small changes in average temperature may shift climate patterns, affecting rainfall, evaporation rates and the ability of plants to thrive in certain environments, he said.

Crop Signals
“We’ll see a real mix of crop signals and climate signals,” he said in an interview. For farmers in poorer countries, adaptation to new weather patterns “can be a matter of life and death,” he said.

Crop insurance paid out to farmers experiencing lost yields may top $25 billion this year, with the biggest losses concentrated in Midwest states, according to Kansas State University. Corn yields may average 122 bushels an acre this year, the lowest since 1995, the USDA said last week.

Western Kansas is in its second year of severe drought. Last year was the third-driest in Dodge City since record- keeping began in 1900; this year, the town’s temperatures were above-average every month through July.

Ebbing Ogalalla
Weather has always been harsh in the region where Dust Bowl storms first blew, requiring farmers to rely on low-water crops like wheat to survive. The harnessing of the Ogalalla Aquifer, a massive underground lake that runs from South Dakota to west Texas provides about 30 percent of U.S. irrigation groundwater, has allowed corn to flower where rainfall can’t support it. New varieties of hybrid plants and genetically modified seed have also helped.

That expansion may be ebbing with the drought, and the Ogalalla.

Ty Rumford, who manages High Choice Feeders LLC south of Scott City, Kansas, is planting less corn and more triticale to feed the 37,000 animals in his company’s two feed yards. A hardier crop is necessary as water availability falls, he said.

“When the wells were put down here in the ’40s, they went 30 foot down into a 180-foot-deep aquifer,” he said. “Those wells were pumping 1,500, 2,000 gallons a minute in the ’50s. Now we’re at 135 feet deep, and they’re pumping 200, 250 a minute. We’ve got to make sure we have enough water.”

Triticale works for feedlots because it’s used on-site in cattle rations, lowering costs, Rumford said. Its appeal is less for farmers who grow crops for the marketplace, he said.

“We’re consuming everything we grow, so it’s not important to have an outside market” for triticale, he said.

Most Valuable
Corn, meanwhile, is too embedded in American life to lose its position as the country’s most valuable crop, Rumford said. The grain was worth $76.5 billion last year, more than twice the value of soybeans and five times that of wheat.

Most U.S. ethanol comes from corn. Cattle eat corn. High- fructose corn syrup is a common sugar substitute. Shippers such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM), based in Decatur, Illinois, are set up to trade and process corn. Farmers buying insurance against losses have a wealth of data for the grain. Policies for triticale, canola, or edible beans, for example, are less common in Kansas because of a lack of actuarial data.

For the most part, the country’s mid-section, with its infrastructure, its soil and its usually beneficial weather, will remain the nation’s Corn Belt, said Jerry Rowe, manager of the Heritage Grain Cooperative in Dalton City, Illinois, traditionally the second-biggest corn-producing state.

All Economics
“I don’t have a place to store pinto beans, OK?” said Rowe, who has managed his community’s grain elevator for 25 years. “This is corn and soybean ground. The reason someone else is more diverse is because there’s more money in being diverse. It’s all economics.”

Still, the hotter, dryer weather pattern may change crop rotations even in the heart of the Corn Belt. “Wheat acres will be very high” next year, said Tabitha Craig, who sells crop insurance for Young Enterprises Inc., an agricultural services and input dealer in New Hartford, Missouri.

Climate change will probably push corn-growing regions north while making alternatives to the grain more important elsewhere, said John Soper, the vice president of crop genetics research and development for Pioneer, the seed division of DuPont Co. (DD) The company’s researchers anticipate more corn in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, traditional Canadian wheat-growing areas, while sorghum and sunflowers may experience a revival in Kansas as rainfall declines and irrigation becomes less practical, he said.

Better Seeds
The company is developing new varieties of corn, both in traditional hybrid and genetically modified seeds, while boosting research in sorghum and other crops that don’t need irrigation in areas where they’re expected to make a comeback, he said.

Still, fighting drought with better seeds and new trade sources only mitigates the effects of climate change, said Roger Beachy, the first head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture and now a plant biology professor at Washington University in St. Louis. New crops -- and new markets for those crops -- will be needed to ease what will be a wrenching transition for some farmers and consumers, he said.

“We need to use biodiversity and crop varieties to our advantage,” said Beachy, whose work with Monsanto in the 1980s and 1990s led to the first genetically modified food crop.

“Can a farmer make as much money raising chickpeas as corn? You have to create value for the farmer. We need to get the scientists and the economists talking to one another about this.”


.

GMO Transparency

SUBHEAD: Demanding the labeling of GE foods creates needed transparency and frees us from the control of a secretive system

By Tiffany Hervey on 26 September 2012 for Honolulu Weekly -  
(http://honoluluweekly.com/cover/2012/09/gmo-transparency/)


Image above: Detail of Occupy Monsanto poster for recent (9/17) demonstration on Maui.  From (http://occupy-monsanto.com/tag/maui/).


In an election year, citizens’ right to know not only what’s in our food, but whether our candidates took biotech money, is a crucial issue in Hawai‘i, where so many GE crops are grown. 

Taking control of Hawaii’s food supply is not an issue pitting hippies and liberals against economic progress. Rather, it is about understanding how the agrichemical farm industry seeks to control our food system by keeping us in the dark as to what, exactly, is in our food and being released into our environment.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs),are produced by genetic engineering (GE), the splicing of genes from one species into those of another. These are not combinations that can happen in nature. If anything, the industry has evolved to permit the use of food as a weapon for ignorance and oppression. The antidote is for our citizenry to understand how the plantation agricultural system is still in place and why, so that we can evolve beyond it.

After the illegal overthrow and military annexation of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the foreign elite that came to power discouraged small farming by sabotaging land reform measures and monopolizing Ag land for mono-crop plantations.

Non-food crops

As sugar and pineapple closed down, agrichemical companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Pioneer Hi-Bred (owned by DuPont) bought most of the high quality farmland in Kunia and the North Shore because they had the money to outbid independent Hawaii farmers, says Al Santoro, the recently retired owner of Poamoho Organic Produce in Waialua. “Pioneer even bought some Dole land that had a producing mango orchard and cut down the trees to plant [GE] corn seed,” Santoro recalls. “So now they have converted a local food crop to a non-food, export crop.”

While local agriculture’s diverse sectors (organic and conventional food crops, biofuels, nursery, ranching, biotech), all must compete for the same limited resources, biotech has floated to the top. “Our government has not prioritized Ag resources in line with the State’s goals of food sustainability,” Santoro says.

From 1980 to 2008, land in crops on Oahu declined by about 36,900 acres (77 percent) due to the closure of sugarcane and pineapple plantations, according to a 2011 report prepared by Plasch Econ Pacific LLC for Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting. The report, Oahu Agriculture: Situation, Outlook and Issues, highlights that from 1994 to 1999, acreage in vegetables, melons, and fruits other than pineapple actually increased by about 4,600 acres on Oahu. Unfortunately, this gain was then followed by a 1,700-acre decline during the past decade.

This decline parallels GE seed companies’ replacing sugar and pineapple companies as the largest users of farmland on Oahu in the last decade. GE companies like Monsanto are the highest bidders for farmland, according to the report, which goes on to state that, since 1990, seed crops have been Hawaii’s greatest agricultural success, with statewide acreage increasing at an average rate of over 300 acres per year. Oahu, home to some of the highest quality farmland in the state, predominantly produces major export crops of seeds and ornamentals.

In a nutshell: Most of the land that could be used to grow food is used to produce non-edible exports.

Sidestepping the local economy

While the 10 million pounds of GE seed corn grown in Hawaii annually is valued at approximately $250 million a year, that doesn’t mean our local economy profits.

“In the case of the GMO corn seed companies none, zero, not any of that value is spent in the local economy,” Santoro explains. “No excise taxes are collected, nor state income taxes, because the farm product is not sold in Hawaii, but sent back to mainland research facilities.” The principal contribution Monsanto makes to the local economy is the hiring of workers, usually low-paid field hands, while the holders of high paying jobs, like Vice President Fred Perlak, are from the mainland.

“Because these [biotech] companies are treated as ‘farmers’ they get away with so much unregulated,” says GMO labeling activist Walter Ritte, citing the example of Molokai. “Monsanto is the largest employer on our island, largest land user, largest water user. But Monsanto produces nothing we can eat. They control the Chamber of Commerce; give money to our schools and clubs. We have to stop calling them farmers.”

Purchased policy

A majority of current House and Senate legislators received campaign donations directly from the biotech companies operating in Hawaii, as well as from their lobbyists,during the 2010 election cycle. Monsanto directly gave $34,750 directly to state legislators, according to data compiled by [followthemoney.org] from the Hawaii Elections Project and the state’s Campaign Spending Commission (CSC). Monsanto lobbyists John H. Radcliffe and George “Red” Morris gave totals of $43,591 and $13,750, respectively, to legislators (see sidebar, right).

Following the money to audit local lawmakers’ loyalties isn’t easy. Dow Chemical is not listed under “Agriculture,” like Monsanto, but hidden instead as “General Business (Chemical & Related Manufacturing)” industry. Loihi Communications, owned by Alicia Maluafiti, a Monsanto lobbyist, is registered with the state as a lobbying company, but cannot be found under “Lawyers & Lobbyists.” Instead, it’s listed in the “Uncoded” section. Maluafiti is also executive director of the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, of which Monsanto Hawaii VP Fred Perlak is president.

According to records filed with the CSC for the 2010 election period, Gov. Neil Abercrombie received $1,000 from Monsanto, $300 from Alicia Mulafiti/Loihi Communications, and $600 from Dow Chemical. Additional records listed on [followthemoney.org] show Abercrombie receiving $1,000 from Monsanto Hawaii VP Fred Perlak, and $6,000 each from Monsanto lobbyists George A “Red” Morris and John H. Radcliffe.

Right to know

About 90 percent of all soybeans, corn, canola and sugar beets grown in the U.S. are grown from GE seed, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (DOA). FDA guidelines state that food containing GMOs doesn’t have to be labeled as such and can even be labeled “all natural.”

Common ingredients like corn, vegetable oil, maltodextrin, soy protein, lecithin, monosodium glutamate, cornstarch, yeast extract, sugar and corn syrup are commonly produced from GE crops. It follows that most processed foods–breakfast cereal, granola bars, tortilla chips, salad dressing–contain one or more genetically modified ingredient. In the absence of long-term studies of the human health effects of GMOs in food, many consumers are wary.

But safe or not, people just have a right to know what’s in their food, Ritte says. “Labeling is symbolic of the whole basis of our democratic system,” Ritte says. “We have the right to know and to choose. Our lawmakers say what they stand for,and label themselves with a party. We have to be able to do that with the food we put in our bodies.”

Label debate

All Hawaii counties outside Oahu have voted in favor of GMO labeling bills. Twelve GMO labeling bills were presented at the Hawaii State Legislature in 2012, and none made it to a vote. On May 9, the Honolulu City Council voted in favor of Resolution 12-57, introduced by Tulsi Gabbard, which pushes for state and federal labeling of food containing GMOs.“This resolution is really about freedom and the consumer’s right to make informed choices,” Gabbard stated.

Council Chair Ernie Martin disagrees, saying that labeling would cause an increase in food prices. “A Honolulu City Council resolution urging the Hawaii State Legislature to require a labeling requirement has little chance of producing the desired outcome,” Martin explained in an email.

“Current food processing, transportation and storage do not lend [themselves] to the simple separation of GE and non-GE foods. Labeling would most certainly increase the cost of food to all local consumers,” the councilman wrote, adding that those wanting non-GM food “already have an option in organic [which is required to be GMO-free].” Last election, Martin received $250 from Monsanto, $500 from VP Fred Perlak and a total of $5,000 from lobbyists Maluafiti, Radcliffe and Morris, according to records filed with the CSC.

Fed bedfellows

An FDA commitment to labeling is unlikely, given the agency’s close ties to biotech companies.

“There was a hijacking of the FDA when Monsanto’s former attorney Michael Taylor was in charge,” explains Jeffrey M. Smith, director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and author of Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette, which link GMOs to toxins, allergies, infertility, immune dysfunction and more.

A former Monsanto attorney, Taylor filled the newly created post of Deputy Commissioner for Policy at the FDA in 1991, became Administrator of the Food Safety & Inspection Service for the USDA from 1994 to 1996, then returned to Monsanto to become Vice President for Public Policy. In 2009, he returned to the FDA as senior advisor to the FDA Commissioner, and since 2010, as FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods, he has reigned as US food safety czar.

“[Taylor] ignored the repeated warnings of FDA scientists who were concerned about health dangers and demanded long-term studies,” Smith explained in a phone interview. “According to 44,000 secret internal documents from the FDA files made public, the consensus among the scientists was that GMOs were dangerous, but the person in charge of policy was Michael Taylor… His policy ignored the scientists, claimed that there was no difference and that no testing was necessary.”

Farm Bureau bunk

Looking at the sector breakdown of Hawaii’s 2010 election cycle, the top contributors to candidates highlight another giant hurdle in the way of food security: urban sprawl. The biggest campaign funders were the finance, insurance and real estate sector, which gave $2,409,219 to legislators, and the construction industry, which gave $1,685,246.

A recent broadcast of PBS Hawaii’s “Insights” hosted a discussion between Dr. Kioni Dudley of Save Oahu Farmlands Alliance, Glenn Martinez of the Hawaii Farmers Union, Cameron Nekota of developer DH Horton Schuller, and Dean Okimoto, owner of Nalo Farms and Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation president. The four debated over Hoopili, a housing development that would drop 11,750 houses on top of 1,500 acres of productive farmland.

Farm Bureau president Okimoto spoke in support of rezoning the farmland for development. “We planned this for 30 years and we’re always saying the city should take the time to plan better,” he argued. “This is the first time the city and state has planned and now we’re dissing them.”

Dudley countered that no one was aware in the ‘70s, when the idea for this community began, that the land below the freeway was so valuable to Hawaii’s food supply. “It was all pineapple,” Dudley explained. “We just drew the line because of the freeway. Even in 2009, no one realized…we get 30 percent of our fruits and vegetables [for local consumption] from that land.”

Jeffrey Smith says that, on a visit to Hawaii, he learned that the Hawaii Department of Agriculture (DOA) doesn’t require testing to determine whether food crops have been contaminated by pollen drift from biotech research crops. “The biotech industry claim that their small buffer zones protect against contamination is especially laughable in Hawaii and to Hawaiians. who know that seeds travel far and wide,” Smith relates.

Smith points out that the biotech companies operating in Hawaii do not offer any plan for how to deal with seed and crop movement in case of hurricanes or flooding where GMOs may be carried out of their boundaries; and there’s no insurance policy against resulting damage that could occur to the environment, the economy or health.

“[The HDOA] has none of the tools necessary to protect the land and the people,” Smith says. “So companies like Monsanto completely call the shots and will never be held accountable.”

Food as weapon

Coined during the Vietnam War, in which chemicals such as Monsanto’s Agent Orange (dioxin) herbicide were used, the term “food as weapon” has been adopted by physicist and author Vandana Shiva. According to Shiva, the growth of biotech agribusiness in the U.S. goes hand-in-hand with U.S. foreign policy to deliberately create hunger in order to make the world dependent on our food supplies.

More than 40 countries, including Japan, China, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, South Korea and Taiwan, already require some form of labeling for GE foods. Several counties in California have banned the planting of GMOs, either through ballot initiative or county ordinance. Colorado’s Boulder County is planning to phase out or strictly limit the planting of GE crops by farmers who lease land on 16,000 acres owned by Boulder County Parks and Open Space. The Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee voted in support of their Food and Agriculture Policy Council’s recommendation to phase out the planting of any further GMO crops like corn or sugar beets, which had been grown on some of the land during the last decade.

Hawaii has a tricky situation, because so much of our land is privatized. Today’s major Ag landowners have ties to the same estates or Big Five companies that owned the pineapple and sugar plantations. Appealing to lawmakers and landowners that are paid well by biotech companies might seem like a losing battle; however, there are still actions an informed citizenry can make in an effort for a healthier, more food self-sufficient Hawaii.

The power is and always lies with the people, who can hold our lawmakers accountable by demanding to know their positions in the upcoming elections, and voting for City Council, mayoral and State Leg. candidates who are pro-labeling and against rezoning Ag lands for development. Hawaii’s agriculture is dominated by exports (about 85 percent of sales in 2008), while most of our food is imported (about 66 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed in Hawaii).

While an interruption in shipping for whatever reason would obviously be detrimental to Hawaii’s dependency on imported food, the Plasch Econ Pacific report reminds us that it would also make it difficult to export, thereby freeing about 65,000 acres statewide (according to a 2010 estimate) for replanting to supply local markets. The report proffers that if increased food self-sufficiency were to occur, then, instead of sending dollars out of state for imported foods, more money would be spent in Hawaii, thereby increasing jobs and incomes locally.

It’s a two-pronged process: Demanding the labeling of GE foods creates needed transparency and frees us from the control of a secretive system; demanding locally grown food liberates our economy and provides true security.

2010 CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

Key:
Monsanto
Morris M. = Monsanto lobbyist George A “Red” Morris;
Radcliffe M. = Monsanto lobbyist John H. Radcliffe
Loihi M. = Monsanto Lobbyist Loihi Communications
Perlak M. = Fred Perlak,VP, Monsanto
Koehler M. = Paul Koehler, Community Affairs Director Monsanto Hawaii
DuPont
Syngenta
Syngenta Crop Protection

Neil Abercrombie, GOVERNOR
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$6,000 (Morris M.)
$6,000 (Radcliffe)
$1,000 Perlak M.)

Joe Souki, HOUSE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$2,000 (Radcliffe M.)

Ken Ito, HOUSE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Radcliffe M.)
$500 (Morris M.)

Donna Mercado Kim, SENATE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$500 (RadcliffeM.)
$500 (Loihis M.)

Joey Manahan, HOUSE (D)
$1,000(Monsanto)
$1,000 (Radcliffe M.)
$750 (Morris M.)
$250  (DuPont)

James Kunane Tokioka, HOUSE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Radcliffe M.)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$750 (Syngenta Crop Protection)
$500  (DuPont)

Sharon E. Har, HOUSE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$850  (DuPont M.)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$1,000 (Radcliffe M.)
$500 (Syngenta)

Clifton K. Tsuji, HOUSE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$500 (Syngenta Crop Protection)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$750 (Radcliffe M.)
$100 (Loihi M.)

Sylvia Luke, HOUSE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)
$500 (Radcliffe M.)
$750 (Morris M.)

Kyle Yamashita, HOUSE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,500 (Morris M.)
$750 (Radcliffe M.)
$150 (DuPont)
Jerry Leslie Chang, HOUSE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Radcliffe M.)
$1,000 (Morris M.)

Brian T. Taniguchi, SENATE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)

Robert Herkes, HOUSE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$2,000 (Morris M.)
$1,500 (Radcliffe M.)

Will Espero, SENATE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$250 (Radcliffe M.)
$200 (Loihi)

Russell S. Kokubun, SENATE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$400 (DuPont)

Calvin K Y Say, HOUSE (D)
$2,000 (Monsanto)
$400  (DuPont)

Roz Baker, SENATE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$500 (Radcliffe M.)

Pono Chong, HOUSE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)
$2,000 (Morris M.)
$600 (Radcliffe M.)
$250 (Loihi M.)

Mark M. Nakashima, HOUSE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)
$250 (Morris M.)
$250 (Radcliffe M.)

Angus L K McKelvey, HOUSE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$500 (Radcliffe M.)
$350 (Loihi M.)
$250  (DuPont)

Jill N. Tokuda, SENATE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)

Ryan I. Yamane, HOUSE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)
$1,000 (Morris M.)
$1,500 (Radcliffe M.)

Blake K. Oshiro, HOUSE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)
$500 (Radcliffe M.)

Clayton Hee, SENATE (D)
$1,500 (Monsanto)
$1,500 (Radcliffe M.)
$200 (Loihi M.)
$200  (DuPont)

Scott Y. Nishimoto, HOUSE (D)
$250 (Monsanto)
$250 (Loihi M.)

Suzanne N. J. Chun Oakland, SENATE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)

Brickwood M. Galuteria, SENATE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)

Ronald Kouchi, SENATE (D)
$1,000 (Monsanto)

Isaac W. Choy, HOUSE (D)
$500 (Monsanto)

Michelle Kidani, SENATE (D)
 $250 (Koehler M.)

Henry J. C. Aquino, HOUSE (D)
$300 (Loihi M.)

Tom Brower, HOUSE (D)
$250 (Loihi M.)

Marcus R. Oshiro, HOUSE (D)
$250 (Loih M.)

Glenn Wakai, SENATE (D)
$450  (DuPont)

Barbara C Marumoto, HOUSE (R)
$250 (DuPont)
.