A new coalition is trying to throw sand in the gears of industrial agriculture’s chemical treadmill. And this one just may have what it takes to slow it down. I’m referring to the fight over USDA approval for Dow AgroScience’s new genetically modified corn seeds (brand name “Enlist”), which are resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D.

This is part of biotech’s “superweed” strategy, by which they hope to address the fact that farmers across the country are facing an onslaught of weeds impervious to the most popular herbicide in use, Monsanto’s glyphosate or RoundUp (and in some cases impervious to machetes as well!). Of course, this is a problem of the industry’s own making. It was overuse of glyphosate caused by the market dominance of Monsanto’s set of glyphosate-resistant genetically engineered seeds that put farmers in this fix in the first place.

One of the older herbicides, 2,4-D is a pretty nasty chemical—it’s been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, kidney and liver problems, reproductive effects, and shows endocrine disrupting potential—which is one of the many reasons farmers prefer the more “benign” glyphosate. In fact, on the basis of the scientific evidence, especially related to human cancers, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) several years ago to withdraw its approval for 2,4-D. Earlier this month, the petition was summarily denied.

So it’s interesting to see this new coalition’s opposition to 2,4-D getting so much traction so quickly. Perhaps it’s because the group—dubbed Save Our Crops—isn’t made up of environmentalists and sustainable agriculture types, but rather Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic conventional farmers and large food processors (and Organic Valley, the organic co-operative organization which is both a producer and a processor).

The basis of their concern isn’t so much the health effects, but the fact that their farms may end up as collateral damage from the increase in the use of 2,4-D that will occur if Dow’s seed is approved. After all, the use of glyphosate went through the roof once Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready seeds took over the marketplace. These farmers expect 2,4-D to follow the same path. (Rodale News estimates a 60 to 80 percent increase.)

The problem has to do with pesticide drift—an issue with many pesticides, but a particular problem with 2,4-D, which unlike glyphosate is highly volatile. While its volatility was in one context considered a strength, at this point even Dow itself acknowledges that it’s a concern. In an article on the battle over the new seed’s approval, The New York Times offers an illustration of what these farmers have to fear:

To Jody Herr, it was a telltale sign that one of his tomato fields had been poisoned by 2,4-D, the powerful herbicide that was an ingredient in Agent Orange, the Vietnam War defoliant.

“The leaves had curled and the plants were kind of twisting rather than growing straight,” Mr. Herr said of the 2009 incident on his vegetable farm in Lowell, Ind. He is convinced the chemical, as well as another herbicide called dicamba, had wafted through the air from farms nearly two miles away.

As explained by Rodale News, 2,4-D-resistant plants will alter the way farmers use the chemical, encouraging them to apply it later in the season to more kill weeds (you normally wouldn’t apply a herbicide on a field full of mature plants). This fact makes it particularly problematic since, as Rodale News put it:

… not only are humidity and temperatures higher, but also neighboring tomato plants are leafing out, making them most susceptible to the drift. If the chemicals don’t outright kill plants like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, and other favorites, they could cause severe twisting and other deformities to occur as the plants in the drift’s path grow, rendering the harvest useless.

Which is just what farmer Herr saw in his field. Indeed, it is tomato farmers who may be the most at risk. Rodale also reports on a study produced by scientists at Ohio State University, which simulated the effects of 2,4-D drift on tomatoes [PDF]:

Experts found that the migrating pesticide vapors sparked late bloom, which diminishes the marketable red part of the tomato and stimulated growth of unmarketable green growth, which can’t be sold. In fact, just tiny amounts—1/300th of what was applied to field crops—caused significant field loss on neighboring tomato farms.

Ohio researchers concluded that realistic drift from corn or soy fields treated with either dicamba or 2,4-D will result in a 17 to 77 percent reduction in marketable fruit for neighboring farms and gardens.

These are, of course, estimates from a simulation. But the farmers and processors behind Save Our Crops would rather not be the guinea pigs in the real-world version of this experiment.

For its part, Dow assures the USDA that its new version of 2,4-D doesn’t have the same volatility—and the company will “urge” farmers to use the new, branded version rather than the far less expensive generic version of 2,4-D that’s been on the market for decades. How reassuring.

Indeed that’s where I get worried. If I had to guess, I suspect that the USDA will approve Dow’s new seed but with restrictions on things like planting acreage and use of recommended formulations and so on (though there’s always the chance the agency will punt the final decision until after the election). In any event, restrictions are only as good as their enforcement, and the USDA doesn’t have an inspiring track record. Farmers have routinely violated planting restrictions on GM seeds in the past—while regulators have a history of acceding to industry’s demands to reduce the restrictions rather than enforce them.

The public comment period on the 2,4-D-resistant seeds ends today. According to the Center for Food Safety 365,000 people have already submitted comments to the USDA. An additional 143 farm, environmental, health, fisheries groups and companies will submit a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack expressing their opposition to the GMO seeds. Save Our Crops has also already submitted two petitions [PDF] while the consumer group Just Label It is sponsoring its own petition to protest USDA approval, so there’s still time for the public’s voice to be heard.

But the real fight appears to be between commodity farms who want a simple answer to the growing problem of superweeds and fruit and vegetable growers who don’t want to see their crops damaged as a consequence. The latter are often treated by the USDA as step-children while growers of the Big Five commodities—corn, soy, wheat, rice, and cotton—receive the overwhelming majority of federal farm subsidies.

I doubt that USDA approval of Dow’s new seed, if it comes, will be the end of the story. But it should tell us something that even some large conventional farmers are starting to get angry and scared by the direction industrial agriculture has taken.

Below is a video produced by Dow AgroScience advertising Enlist, or 2,4-D. Skip ahead to 2:35 to hear the company’s take on superweeds and to see some compelling images.

Photo: A still from a promotional video for the herbicide 2,4-D, which is being marketed as a solution for “superweeds” (picured), which have grown tolerant to other herbicides.

Originally Published on Grist

Today, February 27, is an Occupy Our Food Supply day of action. The following essay is just one of several related posts that will be appearing online to mark the day.

The biggest corporate takeover on the planet is the hijacking of the food system, the cost of which has had huge and irreversible consequences for the Earth and people everywhere.

From the seed to the farm to the store to your table, corporations are seeking total control over biodiversity, land, and water. They are seeking control over how food is grown, processed, and distributed. And in seeking this total control, they are destroying the Earth’s ecological processes, our farmers, our health, and our freedoms.

It starts with seeds. Monsanto and a few other gene giants are trying to control and own the world’s seeds through genetic engineering and patents. Monsanto wrote the World Trade Organization treaty on Intellectual Property, which forces countries to patent seeds. As a Monsanto representative once said: “In drafting these agreements, we were the patient, diagnostician [and] physician all in one.”

They defined a problem, and for these corporate profiteers the problem was that farmers save seeds, making it difficult for them to continue wringing profits out of those farmers. So they offered a solution, and their solution was that seeds should be redefined as intellectual property, hence seed saving becomes theft and seed sharing is criminalized. I believe that saving seeds and protecting biodiversity is our ecological and ethical duty. That is why I started Navdanya 25 years ago.

Navdanya is a movement to occupy the seed. We have created 66 community seed banks, saved 3000 rice varieties, stopped laws that would prevent us from seed saving, and fought against biopiracy.

Corporations like Monsanto have created a seed emergency. This is the reason I am starting a global citizen’s campaign on seed sovereignty. I hope you will all join. The lawsuit that 84 organizations, including Navdanya, have filed against Monsanto in New York through the Public Patent Foundation is an important step in reclaiming seed sovereignty.

The next step in the corporate control of the food supply chain is on our farms. Contrary to the claims of corporations, the chemical-based “green” revolution and genetic engineering do not produce more food. Navdanya’s report on GMOs, Health per Acre, shows that the GMO emperor has no clothes. Biodiverse organic farming protects nature while increasing nutrition per acre. We have the solutions to hunger, but it’s not profitable for major industrial agriculture companies like Monsanto and Cargill to implement those solutions.

Cargill, the world’s biggest grain giant, wrote the WTO’s agriculture agreement, which has destroyed local production and local markets everywhere, uprooted small farmers, devastated the Amazon, and speculated on food commodities, pushing millions to hunger. A global corporate-controlled food system robs farmers of their incomes by pushing down farm prices, and robs the poor of their right to food by pushing up food prices. If a billion people are hungry today, it is because of greed-driven, capital-intensive, unsustainable, corporate-controlled globalized industrial agriculture. While creating hunger worldwide, agribusiness giants collect our tax money as subsidies in the name of removing hunger.

This system has pushed another 2 billion to food-related diseases like obesity and diabetes. Replacing healthy, local food culture with junk and processed food is achieved through food safety laws, which I call pseudo-hygiene laws. At the global level these include the Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary agreement of the WTO. At the national level they include new corporate-written food safety laws in Europe and India, and the Food Safety Modernization Act in the U.S.

The final link in the corporate hijacking of the food system is retail giants like Wal-Mart. We have been resisting the entry of Wal-Mart in India because Big Retail means Big Ag, and together the corporate giants destroy small shops and small farms that provide livelihoods to millions.

We must Occupy Our Food Supply because corporations are destroying our seed and soil, our water and land, our climate, and biodiversity. Forty percent of the greenhouse gases that are destabilizing the climate right now come from corporate industrial agriculture. Seventy percent of water is wasted for industrial agriculture. Seventy-five percent of biodiversity has been lost due to industrial monocultures.

We have alternatives that protect the Earth, protect our farmers, and protect our health and nutrition. To occupy the food system means simultaneously resisting corporate control and building sustainable and just alternatives, from the seed to the table. One seed at a time, one farm at a time, one meal at a time–we must break out of corporate food dictatorship and create a vibrant and robust food democracy.

Learn more about the Occupy Our Food Supply day of action, sponsored by Rainforest Action Network. Find an event near you or follow the action all day on Twitter.

Originally published on Grist

Photo: Lettuce by Shutterstock

For example, having invented the concept of ‘trait hectares’ to calculate the global uptake of GM that even a child could see doesn’t add up (e.g., if one acre of crop has six stacked GM traits in it, the ISAAA counts it as 6 hectares of GM), this year the ISAAA once again relies on material from the controversial Brookes and Barfoot team behind the pro-GM consultancy PG Economics.

PG Economics, which claims to be ‘objective and focused on using reliable and substantiated facts,’ in fact has significant ties to the biotech industry, calling into question the impartiality of its analysis, which has time and time again been challenged on their manipulation of data.

The illegitimacy of their approach was exposed in 2009 by agronomist Charles Benbrook, whose many roles include executive director of the Board on Agriculture at the US National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, PG Economics enjoys a wide-ranging appeal in pro-GM policy and lobbying circles. As well as being used by the biotech industry to support their marketing strategies, the company supplies consultancy services to the British and the American Soybean Association.

Brookes and Barfoot’s work was even used in 2008 by the European Commission to demonstrate elevation in GM yields without reflecting PG Economic’s own admission: “In other regions, however, profits were only marginal” (ie, the yield was only higher in one province of the three Spanish regions studied, but GM did not actually improve yields anywhere else).

This is significant as it was an early part of the framing of the debate on devolved GM cultivation decisions (or ‘bans,’ at that time referred to as ‘socio-economic considerations’) the EU is still wrestling with as member states look at the evidence of wider negative impacts of GM crops emerging from a host of scientists worldwide.

Some EU members appear to appreciate the relationships–in a 2010 study the GM-sceptic Austrian government explored the socio-economic impacts of GM cultivation and listed Brookes and Barfoot as ‘Industry or somehow affiliated to industry’.

The stakes are high, so information matters. During the global food crises of 2007–08 and 2010–11, agribusiness gained massive profits. Pro-biotech interests—particularly industry giant Monsanto—have since launched a variety of public relations strategies, including advertising campaigns and a series of reports touting the benefits of transgenic agriculture to farmers and the environment.

Our analysis finds that the Monsanto-funded reports use questionable methods and present misleading assessments of the impacts of genetically engineered crops.

From 2009 to 2011, Monsanto sponsored annual reports on the global economic and environmental impacts of GM crop varieties published by PG Economics. While the findings in these reports have been well received by industry and pro-biotech groups, a closer look at the 2011 report titled ‘GM crops: Global Socio-economic and Environmental Impacts, 1996-2009′ reveals faulty analysis that overstates the benefits of genetically engineered crops, while understating their costs.

The use of creative data methods does not change the fact that GM is not needed to feed the world and that more sustainable and equitable alternatives can be just as, if not more, productive. A more reliable assessment of whether transgenic agriculture fits into a more sustainable and equitable future would require a look at the full range of socioeconomic and environmental consequences.

This means using real-world data where available and fully accounting for negative impacts on crop diversity, non-target species, soils, small farms and people’s ability to control their food system. It should also include consideration of how consolidation of market power in the seed, chemical and grain industries affects farmers and consumers around the world.

When this is done, the GM picture is far from rosy, whatever the industry says, or pays others to say, and it’s past time for European policy makers to stop relying on such questionable sources. Rampant weed resistance and growing insect resistance in the U.S. and elsewhere are exposing the serious flaws in the GM experiment.

In the past few weeks alone Monsanto has pulled its GM maize out of France and BASF said it would suspend the development of GM crops in Europe, with a member of the company’s board saying “it does not make business sense” to continue trying to operate in a market that doesn’t want what they have to sell.

The only way the GM industry and their supporters can make GM look good is if they cook the books. The only way they can sell their product is in unlabelled packages in the US and elsewhere so consumers don’t know where it is. This smacks of desperation, not success.

Originally published on EurActiv

Today, some will feel the sting of cupid’s arrow and fill their days with red roses and chocolate (hopefully fair trade) and a romantic dinner at a fancy restaurant. Other people call today Black Tuesday and will boycott all the hype and commercial schmaltz and stay home, maybe alone, eating leftovers. Still others will eschew people and proclaim their love of profit above all else. This is a love story about the latter category. Sure, we may not consider these two dollar-signs-in-their-eyes lovers people, but the Supreme Court does, so they deserve to couple up like the rest of us, right? 

He’s a mad scientist who got rich producing chemical agents for war in his lab and is now trying to pawn off those old toxic chemicals as pesticides and herbicides and squeeze as much money as possible out of raindrops. He calls himself GE Seed King, but we know him as Monsanto.

She ran away from her small hometown in Arkansas to take over every suburb and rural town in America and is now setting her sights on urban centers and every country in the world. To her inner circle, she’s known as Big Box Mama, but to us, she’s Walmart. 

Like other celebrity power couples these two have a gossip page on Facebook tracking their every move and informing anti-fans of their latest exploits. And, like TomKat and Brangelina before them, they even have their own portmanteau: Walsanto.

Food & Water Watch has created this fictional social media romance as part of its wider campaign to pressure Walmart to refuse to sell Monsanto’s GE sweet corn.

The couple met, like so many today, over the internet after they both decided to give Twitter a try. Monsanto took to the web seeking a retail “mate” to sell his latest science experiment, GE sweet corn, and make his next fortune. After being turned down by Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and General Mills, he set his eyes on industrial food darling, Walmart.

Though the relationship got off to a rocky start because of Monsanto’s seedy past, Walmart eventually warmed up to her suitor after she saw the size of his bank account and his potential to make her even richer. Today, the couple plans to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a lab-made GE dinner prepared by Monsanto and maybe a few corny poems and Valentine’s Day cards.

Curious to see how this sordid affair will play out? You’re in luck: Walsanto Watch is your No. 1 source for the play-by-play for the relationship, publishing paparazzi photos of the two together, analyzing their Twitter discourse and letting us poke fun at their ruthlessness.

It seems as though Walmart and Monsanto are on their way to a horror-storybook ending with Monsanto’s untested, unlabeled and potentially unhealthy GE sweet corn on Walmart’s shelves everywhere, which is really bad news for consumers. Fortunately, they haven’t tied the knot yet and there’s still time to break up this diabolical duo. You can help stop this match made in hell by:

• Signing and sharing the petition
• Liking and sharing the Walsanto Watch page on Facebook
• Calling the Walmart customer service line and asking them to reject GE sweet corn
• Signing up to get involved in your community and learn about upcoming store actions
• Tweet about @geseedking and @bigboxmama using the #walsanto hashtag

No matter how you feel about Valentine’s Day, Food & Water Watch hopes you’ll choose love of workers, farmers, the environment and consumer health over Walsanto’s love of profit and sign the petition and follow the misadventures of this titan corporate twosome.

Speaking with Maine farmer Jim Gerritsen recently, just a few days before he was to appear in court, I was struck by how much this likable gentleman–proprietor, with wife Megan, of Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, sounded more like an ambitious and idealistic community organizer, aiming to grow a fair and democratic agricultural system, than a man who’s spent the last few decades building a reputation for productive, delectable spuds. He’s begun to find a receptive audience. Last autumn the Utne Reader–long considered the Reader’s Digest of the alternative press–called him “one of 25 visionaries changing the world.”

A grower of All Blue, Butte, Caribe, Russian Banana and a host of other organic and heirloom seed potatoes, Gerritsen is also president of the Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), lead plaintiff among 83 North American family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agriculture organizations in a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit, Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto, that’s just recently seen its first day in federal court.

This lawsuit is an “attempt to come up with a strategy to protect family farmers in this perverse situation we find ourselves in,” said Gerritsen, “Whereby our crops can become contaminated by Monsanto’s transgenic seed, and beyond losing the value of our organic or non-genetically modified (GMO) crops, we’re placed in the position of having to defend ourselves from a Monsanto-initiated patent infringement lawsuit. We need protection from the courts to prevent that injustice.”

I asked him to elaborate.

“It’s a preemptive lawsuit filed under the Declaratory Judgement Act, which allows people who are fearful of sometime in the future being sued, to petition the court for protection, in this case from their GMO contamination. We want them to keep their pollution on their side of the fence…we shouldn’t have to defend ourselves in court because of their trespass,” he said.

According to the complaint against Monsanto filed by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), a non-profit, public interest legal group representing the plaintiffs in this case, the biotechnology behemoth’s aggressive, litigious behavior in protecting its seed patents over the years has forced the plaintiffs to take legal action.

The suit states that “roughly 500 farmers are investigated [by Monsanto] for patent infringement each year. Between 1997 and April 2010, Monsanto filed 144 lawsuits against farmers in at least 27 different states” for alleged patent infringement and/or the breach of its license to those patents. Additionally, the complaint documents Monsanto’s pattern of “investigation, accusation, and litigation” against other farmers who neither wished to possess, nor be contaminated by Monsanto’s GMO seed.

One case cited in the lawsuit and presented by the plaintiffs as indicative of Monsanto’s hyperactive legal strategy involved Indiana farmers, David and Dawn Runyon.  The Runyons became widely known after being featured in a CBS Evening News report in 2008, and then again in the popular documentary released the summer of 2009, Food Inc. In their case, according to a CBS transcript, “The Runyons charge bio-tech giant Monsanto sent investigators to their home unannounced, demanded years of farming records, and later threatened to sue them for patent infringement.”

The only problem was the Runyons never purchased Monsanto seed, never signed any agreement to grow the company’s GMO soybeans, and never gave permission to anyone from Monsanto to take samples of the Runyons’ soybean crop. Monsanto at one point sent the family a letter claiming to have an agreement with the Indiana Department of Agriculture allowing the corporation to take samples from the Runyon farm, although the agency did not exist at the time the letter was sent. Monsanto now states it has declared the Runyons “ineligible to purchase our technology.”

On January 31, lawyers for both sides of the Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto case presented oral arguments before the court on a pre-trial motion by Monsanto to dismiss the lawsuit. The attorney for Monsanto, Seth Waxman, argued the farmers and other plaintiffs lacked a valid reason to fear being sued, as it was not a “ubiquitous threat,” ignoring the “intimidation effect” of the corporation’s litigiousness, according to the plaintiff’s attorney, Dan Ravicher of PUBPAT.

Farmer and OSGATA chief, Jim Gerritsen, commented after the day’s proceedings that it was that kind of intimidation which organic and non-GMO farmers needed protection from. “We have farmers who have stopped growing organic corn, organic canola, and organic soybeans because they can’t risk being sued by Monsanto. It’s not fair and it’s not right.”

In our conversation earlier, Gerritsen expressed his optimism about the case, citing a number of events worldwide which, he argued, heralded a dramatic shift in public opinion around the issue of GMO foods–a recent unanimous vote in Peru for a ten-year moratorium on GMOs; French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s public commitment to place new restrictions on GMOs in France; the Label GMOs initiative in California, for which supporters will soon begin gathering signatures; and finally the Occupy movement, which he believes has irrevocably altered the whole conversation around food and democracy.

“I think the Occupy movement has been recognized by Americans to be asking the right questions,” he said. “The polls that I’ve read suggest a majority of Americans support raising issues of corporate control over our government and economy being out of control, and that power needs to shift back to the people. I think it’s creating an atmosphere where we’re not satisfied with just maintaining a status quo that is working against the people. There is no human-created institution which can remain standing when the people stand united in opposition to it.”

Judge Naomi Buchwald has promised to rule on the motion to dismiss the lawsuit by March 31.

When I wrote recently about the next generation of genetically engineered seeds, I was in truth referring to the next next generation. The fact is that the next actual generation of seeds is already out of the lab and poised for approval by the USDA.

And I’m not talking about Monsanto’s recently approved “drought-tolerant” seeds, which the USDA itself has observed are no more drought-tolerant than existing conventional hybrids.

No, the “exciting” new seeds are simply resistant to more than one kind of pesticide. Rather than resisting Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup alone, they will now also be resistant to Dow AgroScience’s pesticide 2,4-D.

“A new pesticide,“ you say. “How exciting!” Except 2,4-D, despite its catchy name, has been around since World War II. Not only is it one of the most commonly used pesticides in the world, but it came to further prominence in certain circles when it was incorporated as a main ingredient in Agent Orange.

Indeed, as with research into new antibiotics, research into new—potentially safer—pesticides has come to a virtual standstill. Like the drug pipeline, the pesticide pipeline has run dry. Instead, biotech companies are going back to the older, more toxic chemicals, like 2,4-D, for inspiration.

And while you’d expect opposition to these new products from the likes of Tom Philpott of Mother Jones or Doug Gurian-Sherman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one place you might not expect to see it is the pages of the influential, peer-reviewed journal BioScience.

And yet there it is! Led by David Mortensen, a team of scientists from Penn State, Montana State, and the University of New Hampshire published a paper that describes the effects on agriculture from an over-reliance on glyphosate and an overuse of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds. It also discusses at length the risks of using new seeds that “stack” resistance to various pesticides into one genetically engineered package.

In short, they say that you can’t believe Monsanto and Dow when they hype gyphosate resistance plus 2,4-D resistance as two great tastes that taste great together. The two companies are promising to eliminate the growing superweed menace—the one that has caused farmers to abandon thousands of acres of prime farmland and to return to older, more toxic pesticides to protect their crops.

What these scientists conclude is that with so many weeds resistant to glyphosate already, it won’t take long for them to develop resistance to 2,4-D as well.  According to the study’s authors, almost half of the nearly 40 species of weeds that are already resistant to two pesticides have arisen since 2005 (i.e. since the Roundup Ready era began). In short, the crisis Monsanto and Dow are promising to head off is already here.

There are other problems with 2,4-D, such as a strong link to cancer and a much greater tendency to drift on the wind (and thus contaminate nearby fields and waterways)—problems that the development of the less toxic, less volatile glyphosate was supposed to have “solved.” Yet now, thanks to Big Ag’s over-reliance on these genetically engineered one-hit wonders, which encouraged farmers to use too much glyphosate too often, we’re back to square one—or rather to square toxic.

There is, however, an alternative—and one that doesn’t require a total transition to organic agriculture (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Mortensen and his team describe in detail a practice called Integrated Weed Management (IWM). Like its sibling, Integrated Pest Management (IPM), IWM does involve the use of chemical pesticides. But it’s a judicious use that can act as a last resort rather than a first line of defense. As the paper states:

IWM integrates tactics, such as crop rotation, cover crops, competitive crop cultivars, the judicious use of tillage, and targeted herbicide application, to reduce weed populations and selection pressures that drive the evolution of resistant weeds.

It’s designed for production agriculture and would most likely increase farmer profits, since farmers would get the benefit of reduced seed and pesticide costs and no real loss of productivity. But, as with the climate-friendly agriculture I discussed the other day, you’re unlikely to see IWM embraced by Big Ag any time soon.

The USDA, along with the entire large-scale agriculture economy, is built around the profits of pesticide and biotech companies. You need only watch the USDA approve new genetically engineered products—which the agency admits represents a threat to other forms of agriculture—to see how deep in the tank to these companies our government is.

Tom Philpott observed that with this latest development, agriculture is at “a crossroads.” I disagree. I would say that if the USDA approves this new multiple pesticide-resistant GMO seed as it’s expected to, large-scale agriculture in the country will have reached a true dead end.

Photo: Minnemom

This growing season there’s a new GMO in town: Monsanto’s GE sweet corn. This Roundup Ready product is the first GE corn for direct human consumption, and it has not been tested by the USDA and will not be labeled. If you’re unhappy about this, you’re not alone. The majority of consumers don’t want to eat genetically modified foods, and 95 percent feel strongly that they should be labeled.  Many retailers, including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and General Mills, have already agreed to not use GE Sweet Corn in any of their products—but Walmart, the country’s largest grocer and self-proclaimed sustainability adherent, has yet to make such a promise.

In a campaign reminiscent of the  Starbucks rBGH campaign, (which ultimately culminated not only in a pledge by the java giant not to sell dairy from cows treated with rBGH, but also created a domino effect, causing most large retailers to make the same agreement) , Food and Water Watch has initiated a national campaign to pressure Walmart to do the right thing and to live up to their sustainability claims. Just last week, Walmart launched a brand new website called The Green Room to exhibit their green credentials. Over the past couple of years they’ve run public relations campaigns touting their support of local farming, healthier eating, and providing oases in food deserts.

Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food (taking a whopping 25 percent of grocery sales throughout the US, and much more in some areas) each year, making it the most powerful food retailer in the world. If Walmart agreed to not stock GE sweet corn, it is highly likely that other retailers would follow their lead. It would also relieve farmers of the economic pressure to plant the biotech seeds.

If you’re in the know about GMOs, you know there’s a lot we don’t know—and a lot to be wary of.  We don’t know the long term effects of GMOs on humans and  a new study suggests there is reason to worry. The potential environmental risks are many, including the rise of superweeds and resistant pests, the threat to biodiversity and the inevitability of crop contamination.  There are also the ethical and economic concerns associated with patenting of living organisms and the ownership of our food supply by corporations like Monsanto.

Since last fall, Food and Water Watch and their partners at the Center for Environmental Health, Center for Food Safety, CREDO Action, and Food Democracy Now! have been asking consumers to sign a petition saying that they would refuse to buy GE sweet corn and are asking retailers and food processors not to sell it. As of now, that petition has over a quarter million signatures.  Walmart is powerful, but consumers hold the ultimate power: all great social change starts from the bottom. Join the movement today.

Photo: Jamie Leo

Originally published on Ecocentric

One of the many downsides to genetically engineered food is the fact that modified genes are patented by the companies that isolate them. This is not typically part of the story that gets much attention when you read about all those great (but nonexistent) magic seeds that will grow faster, better, cheaper, etc. and seem to forever remain “just around the corner.”

As any music or movie lover knows from experience, patent and copyright law in this country is a mess. You only need to look at the music industry’s successful campaign to sue random consumers over file-sharing to know that. Fun fact: no fiction copyright granted after 1929 — whether a movie, television show, or book — will ever be allowed to expire because that was the year of Mickey Mouse’s “birth” and Disney has convinced Congress that Mickey should never fall into the public domain. That’s one screwed up way to go about protecting the interests of authors. And forget about the folks over at the U.S. Patent Office — it’s clear that they have no idea what they’re doing anymore.

In my recent Common Ground cover story on GMOs, I referred to the fact that the federal government “insists the food revolution will be genetically modified.” Well, what biotech companies want more than anything is for the food revolution to be patented. Why is that? Because, unlike pharmaceuticals, patented genes will never go “generic” after some number of years. Monsanto and its biotech buddies can keep milking that transgenetic cow for decade after decade.

GMO crops have another interesting quality — you can “use” a patented gene without even knowing it. When you download and share music and movies on peer-to-peer networks or plagiarize blog posts or books, let’s face it — you know what you’re doing. But if you’re a farmer, GMO seeds can literally blow in to your fields on the breeze or just the pollen from GMO crops can blow in (or buzz in via bees) and contaminate your organic or “conventional” fields. And if that happens, Monsanto or Syngenta or Bayer CropLife maintain the right to sue you as if you had illegally bought their seed and knowingly planted it.

In an appropriately Orwellian twist, the companies even call such accidental contamination by their products “patent infringement.” And, in the face of a government more than willing to allow companies to “defend” their “intellectual property” in this way, organic farmers and others have now stepped up and said, in short, “Hell no!”:

The case, Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto, was filed in federal district court in Manhattan and assigned to Judge Naomi Buchwald.  Plaintiffs in the suit represent a broad array of family farmers, small businesses and organizations from within the organic agriculture community who are increasingly threatened by genetically modified seed contamination despite using their best efforts to avoid it.  The plaintiff organizations have over 270,000 members, including thousands of certified organic family farmers.

“This case asks whether Monsanto has the right to sue organic farmers for patent infringement if Monsanto’s transgenic seed should land on their property,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director and Lecturer of Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. “It seems quite perverse that an organic farmer contaminated by transgenic seed could be accused of patent infringement, but Monsanto has made such accusations before and is notorious for having sued hundreds of farmers for patent infringement, so we had to act to protect the interests of our clients.”

If the suit is successful, not only will it limit Monsanto’s ability to sue farmers, the company will have far greater responsibility for how and where its biotech seeds are planted. The regulatory free ride will be over. While that won’t eliminate GMO crops, it will at least give organic farmers a hope of avoiding contamination.

What I find intriguing about this suit is that it comes on the heels of a set of rulings against biotech companies and in favor of organic farmers. As I have speculated before, courts have decided that the interests of organic and other non-GMO farmers are now significant enough to require protection. While the USDA and the White House seem happy to do Monsanto’s bidding (as they did in recent decisions to allow Roundup Ready beets and alfalfa), the federal courts — and even the Supreme Court – do not seem so quick to dismiss the economic harm that might come to unfettered use of GMO seeds. This one, my friends, bears watching.

Originally published on Grist

Remember way back when when several states tried to ban “rbGH-free” claims on dairy? This was a few years ago now. Monsanto, who owned rbGH at the time, helped found a group of rbGH-loving dairy farmers called AFACT. AFACT then pushed to ban any label claims telling consumers which milk came from cows that had not been treated with rbGH. Naturally, that sparked tons of consumer outrage, and ultimately AFACT was unsuccessful in most states where they tried this.

Save for Ohio. Ohio was the one last state where it looked like they might win. Ultimately the fight went to the courts. But yesterday brought BIG news of a court decision in Ohio. The less significant news out of the court is that milk in Ohio can still say “rbGH-free” but it must also contain an FDA disclaimer saying “[t]he FDA has determined that no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-supplemented and non-rbST-supplemented cows.”

Now, here’s the BIG news. The court challenged the FDA’s finding that there is “no measurable compositional difference” between milk from rbGH-treated cows and milk from untreated cows. According to those who have worked on this issue for nearly two decades now (maybe more), the FDA’s claim that there was no compositional difference between milk from rbGH-treated and untreated cows was THE MAJOR roadblock to any good regulation. And the court finally struck it down, citing three reasons why the milk differs:

• Increased levels of the hormone IGF-1;
• A period of milk with lower nutritional quality during each lactation; and
• Increased somatic cell counts (i.e. more pus in the milk).

Below, you will find the exact language of the court’s ruling. The testimony submitted to the FDA’s Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee all the way back in 1993 by Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist at Consumers’ Union can be read here. Amazing how it only took 17 years to get the truth legally recognized.

The ruling said:

The district court held that the composition claims were inherently misleading because ‘they imply a compositional difference between those products that are produced with rb[ST] and those that are not,’ in contravention of the FDA’s finding that there is no measurable compositional difference between the two. This conclusion is belied by the record, however, which shows that, contrary to the district court’s assertion, a compositional difference does exist between milk from untreated cows and conventional milk (“conventional milk,” as used throughout this opinion, refers to milk from cows treated with rbST). As detailed by the amici parties seeking to strike down the Rule, the use of rbST in milk production has been shown to elevate the levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a naturally-occurring hormone that in high levels is linked to several types of cancers, among other things. The amici also point to certain studies indicating that rbST use induces an unnatural period of milk production during a cow’s “negative energy phase.” According to these studies, milk produced during this stage is considered to be low quality due to its increased fat content and its decreased level of proteins. The amici further note that milk from treated cows contains higher somatic cell counts, which makes the milk turn sour more quickly and is another indicator of poor milk quality. This evidence precludes us from agreeing with the district court’s conclusion that there is no compositional difference between the two types of milk. In addition, and more salient to the regulation of composition claims like “rbST free,” the failure to discover rbST in conventional milk is not necessarily because the artificial hormone is absent in such milk, but rather because scientists have been unable to perfect a test to detect it. [emphasis added]

Originally published on La Vida Locavore

Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? This premise is put forward and supported by those who would benefit financially if their “solution” were implemented. Corporations peddle their high technology genetically engineered seed and chemical packages, their genetically altered animals, always with the “promise” of feeding the world.

Politicians and philanthropists, who may mean well, jump on the high technology band wagon. Could the promise of financial support or investment return fuel their apparent compassion?

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) an initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation supposedly works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa. While these sentiments and goals may be philanthropy at its best, some of the coalition partners have a different agenda.

One of the key players in AGRA, Monsanto, hopes to spread its genetically engineered seed throughout Africa by promising better yields, drought resistance, an end to hunger, etc. Could a New Green Revolution succeed where the original Green Revolution had failed? Or was the whole concept of a Green Revolution a pig in a poke to begin with?

Monsanto giving free seed to poor small holder farmers sounds great, or are they just setting the hook? Remember, next year those farmers will have to buy their seed. Interesting to note that the Gates Foundation purchased $23.1 million worth of Monsanto stock in the second quarter of 2010. Do they also see the food crisis in Africa as a potential to turn a nice profit? Every corporation has one overriding interest–self-interest, but surely not charitable foundations?

Food shortages are seldom about a lack of food. There is plenty of food in the world, the shortages occur because of the inability to get food where it is needed and the inability of the hungry to afford it. These two problems are principally caused by, as Francis Moore Lappe’ put it, a lack of justice. There are also ethical considerations, a higher value should be placed on people than on corporate profit, this must be at the forefront, not an afterthought.

In 2008, there were shortages of food, in some places, for some people. There was never a shortage of food in 2008 on a global basis, nor is there currently. True, some countries, in Africa for example, do not have enough food where it is needed, yet people with money have their fill no matter where they live. Poverty and inequality cause hunger.

The current food riots in Mozambique were a result of increased wheat prices on the world market. The UN Food and Agriculture organization, (FAO) estimates the world is on course to the third largest wheat harvest in history, so increasing wheat prices were not caused by actual shortages, but rather by speculation on the price of wheat in the international market.

While millions of people go hungry in India, thousands of kilos of grain rot in storage. Unable to afford the grain, the hungry depend on the government to distribute food. Apparently that’s not going so well.

Not everyone living in a poor country goes hungry, those with money eat. Not everyone living in rich country is well fed, those without money go hungry. We in the US are said to have the safest and most abundant food supply in the world, yet even here, surrounded by an over abundance of food, there are plenty of hungry people and their numbers are growing. Do we too have a food crisis, concurrent with an obesity crisis?

Why is there widespread hunger? Is food a right? Is profit taking through speculation that drives food prices out of the reach of the poor a right? Is pushing high technology agriculture on an entire continent at that could feed itself a (corporate) right?

In developing countries, those with hunger and poor food distribution, the small farmers, most of whom are women, have little say in agricultural policy. The framework of international trade and the rules imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on developing countries, places emphasis on crops for export, not crops for feeding a hungry population.

Despite what we hope are the best intentions of the Gates Foundation, a New Green Revolution based on genetically engineered crops, imported fertilizer and government imposed agricultural policy will not feed the world. Women, not Monsanto, feed most of the worlds population, and the greatest portion of the worlds diet still relies on crops and farming systems developed and cultivated by the indigenous for centuries, systems that still work, systems that offer real promise.

The report of 400 experts from around the world, The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), is ignored by the proponents of a New Green Revolution, precisely because it shows that the best hope for ending hunger lies with local, traditional, farmer controlled agricultural production, not high tech industrial agriculture.

To feed the world, fair methods of land distribution must be considered. A fair and just food system depends on small holder farmers having access to land. The function of a just farming system is to insure that everyone gets to eat, industrial agriculture functions to insure those corporations controlling the system make a profit.

The ultimate cause of hunger is not a lack of Western agricultural technology, rather hunger results when people are not allowed to participate in a food system of their choosing. Civil wars, structural adjustment policies, inadequate distribution systems, international commodity speculation and corporate control of food from seed to table— these are the causes of hunger, the stimulus for food crises.

If the Gates Foundation is serious about ending hunger in Africa, they need to read the IAASTD report, not Monsanto’s quarterly profit report. Then they can decide how their money might best be spent.

Originally published on CommonDreams.org