Occupy Rio+20

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

Governments are gathering in Brazil, twenty years after the historic 1992 Earth Summit where nations around the world pledged to devote themselves to ending hunger and conserving the planet’s resources for future generations.

This week, governments gather once again, and food and agriculture are high on the agenda of “Rio+20.” Global leaders will be discussing which way forward to feed the world amidst growing food, climate and water crises. Monsanto & Co. have geared up with slick websites and sound bytes — to the point where some have dubbed the official meeting “Greenwash +20.” But the good news is that people around the world are mobilizing like never before for a new food system.

What, GE won’t feed the world?! 

The first Rio gathering in 1992 marked an important historical moment when nations came together with inspiring goals and commitments to keep our planet from going off the rails and to save and replenish the ecosystems that are required for life to continue. But 20 years on, the report card on progress is bleak, and tragically, this meeting (like Copenhagen and too many others) promises more hot air and no progress.

Of profound concern is the undue influence exerted by multinational corporations who have entered the “sustainability” and “green” debate with predictable zeal. The recently released report Greenwash +20 documents how multinational corporate interests thwart government action toward real sustainable development. In food and agriculture, the report exposes the Big 6 player Syngenta, in particular, for its role in suppressing science, influencing the public conversation to bolster profits, and shadow-writing public policy.

Despite the best attempts of the Big 6 pesticide/biotech companies to persuade us that their toxic chemicals and expensive patented seeds are needed, here’s the real deal: GE crops haven’t delivered on 20 years of empty promises. No yield gains, no drought-tolerance, no nutritional improvement.

Rather, farmers signing contracts with Big 6 players have lost their land and their right to save and exchange seed, have fallen deeper into debt, seen their communities wither, stores shuttered, schools closed...The greatest benefits from the sale of GE seeds and the pesticides that go with them have consistently accrued to their manufacturers, companies like Monsanto which more than doubled its profits at the height of the global food price crisis of 2008. We know this to be true from the words of farmers — whether in Iowa or India — and from the hard facts presented to us by independent scientists.

People Power

The heartening news is that farmers and scientists around the world know better than to believe the Biotech Brigade. From Berkeley to Brazil, there is incredible momentum gathering like never before to democratize our food system. This momentum is manifested in the thousands of people gathering at the People’s Summit in Rio. Here peasant farmers, community and social movement leaders, policy advocates, researchers and academics are sharing their knowledge and stories of how communities and entire nations are building strong and vibrant local and regional food systems without buying into corporate dependency.

This “unofficial” meeting, already going on, is where the smarts and solutions lie. Two full days will be dedicated to agroecology and the science and organizing required to build an ecologically sane and democratic food and farming system. While official meetings miles away in walled-off rooms promise entrenchment and false hope, the agroecology meeting has sparked the analysis and relationship-building needed to fuel our movement for change.

Here are some exciting products already coming out of Rio:

• Agroecology in the U.S., a new brief from PANNA showcasing the success of ecological farming at home and laying out policy recommendations for the U.S. government (also in Spanish);
• Scaling up Agroecology: Spreading the Hope for Food Sovereignty and Resiliency by the Latin American Scientific Society for Agroecology;
• The Global Common Statement for a Toxics-Free Future, co-produced by PAN International and partners in the International POPs Elimination Network;
• The collectively produced Ag Transitions website that demonstrates the ability of small-scale family farming to meet 21^st century challenges;
• Time To Act Rio+20, a powerful civil society statement endorsed by PAN and the Global Agriculture website, both of which take up the call of the pathbreaking IAASTD report.

The global people’s gathering in Rio shows that there’s more movement than ever for Food Democracy. It’s up to us to create this change. Here are three ways to engage today:

• Sign the statement from Occupy Rio+20.
• Join PAN’s alert list, where you’ll get updates on how to take action for food democracy and a healthy planet. Right now, we’re supporting the brave Mothers of Argentina vs. Monsanto in our online action with the White House.
• Play “Game Change Rio,” a game that raises awareness of the issues we’ll need to address if future generations are to enjoy life on this planet. (Demo video here).

As the leader of PAN’s Food Democracy campaign team, I’m thrilled by the public conversations taking place in Rio and the momentum powering social movements around the world. Join us.

Corporate-Resistant Weed Scientists Needed To Oppose Approval Of Dow's 2,4-D-Resistant Corn

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

I’ve been hearing through the grapevine that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was startled by the public uproar over Dow AgroScience’s application for approval of its controversial new GE corn, designed to be used with the infamous and highly hazardous weedkiller, 2,4-D.

By quietly opening the public comment period on December 21, 2011, the agency had apparently hoped to slide this one by without attracting public attention. Instead, a vocal and growing movement of people from all walks of life has emerged to challenge the Big 6 pesticide/biotech companies’ introduction of this new generation of toxic pesticide-seed combinations.

Well over ¼ million people signed various petitions this spring, urging USDA to reject Dow’s application for approval of its 2,4-D corn. Medical doctors and health professionals oppose the new crop, as do over 150 farm, labor, environmental, business and consumer groups. And over 2,000 farmers and farm businesses have organized a farmers’ coalition to protest 2,4-D corn and other similar products, sending in their own letter to the agency.

In an OpEd published in St. Louis Today, Iowa corn and soy farmer George Naylor and Missouri organic farmer Margot McMillen said:

Our nation's farmland and countryside already are sprayed with too many toxins. If the USDA gives Dow permission to market this high-tech seed, even more hazardous chemicals will cover our countryside, pollute our air and water and destroy neighboring crops. It's time to stop this cycle of production of GE seeds and herbicides before everything and everyone is drenched in toxins.

The alternative to being "drenched in toxins?" A decisive shift towards sustainable, ecological farming. 

Ecological weed management. It can be done....

This week, weed scientists gathered in Washington D.C. for the National Academy of Science’s “National Summit on Strategies to Manage Herbicide-Resistant Weeds.” The major focus of the forum was the development of a “coordinated strategy” to handle the epidemic of superweeds resistant to RoundUp (glyphosate) and other weedkillers that now infest over 14 million acres of American cropland.

Weed ecologists have long been demonstrating the efficacy and profitability of non-chemical or ecological weed management. This cutting edge approach to weed management includes an array of techniques and practices that are grounded in ecological sciences and principles, reduce weed populations and prevent the evolution of herbicide resistance. Established tactics include crop rotation, planting cover crops, selection of competitive crop cultivars, mulching and minimal tillage (i.e. occasional inter-row cultivation over a multi-year rotation), advanced fertilization techniques that favor crop over weed, and conservation of weed seed predators.

Long-term cropping systems research at The Rodale Institute has demonstrated the efficacy and productivity of organic systems that have eliminated chemical herbicide use entirely, while regenerating the ecological health of soil, water, farm and landscape. Iowa State University scientists have demonstrated the ability of integrated weed management (IWM) in corn to reduce herbicide inputs by up to 94%, while obtaining profits comparable to conventional chemical-based systems. 

....but will we?

Unfortunately, many weed scientists — including the Summit’s chair and others — have long and close associations with the Big 6 pesticide companies, which makes it very difficult for them to think independently of their corporate sponsors and/or former employers. It remains to be seen whether the academic community and  regulators who attended the Summit will confine themselves to the same herbicide-resistant crop paradigm that got us into this predicament, or whether they will dare to embark on a path of sustainable, ecological weed management.

In the coming months, USDA will decide whether or not to approve Dow’s 2,4-D corn. Meanwhile, Congress will decide whether or not to fund crucial conservation programs in the Farm Bill. These two decisions will demonstrate whether our elected officials and policymakers will commit to the path of sustainable agriculture that so many people so clearly want, or deepen American agriculture’s crippling chemical dependence.

Organic or Conventional? There Is No Comparison

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

Media are all atwitter about a new Nature study by researchers at McGill University and the University of Minnesota that compares organic and conventional yields from 66 studies and over 300 trials. In extrapolating the study's findings to the charged question of how to feed the world, more than a few got it all wrong.

The core finding of the study is that “yield differences [between organic and conventional] are highly contextual, depending on system and site characteristics.” In other words, sometimes organic does better, sometimes conventional does. In fact, the sheer variety of comparisons led Mother Jones columnist Tom Philpott to observe that the study “like a good buffet… offered something for every taste.”

For example, yields of fruit and oilseed crops showed no significant difference between organic and conventional, while conventional cereal crops and some vegetables produced higher yields than organic counterparts under certain conditions. With irrigation, conventional averaged 35% higher yields than organic (with the authors acknowledging that organic systems were mostly compared to high-input commercial systems), but this difference dropped dramatically under rain-fed conditions (the reality for most small-scale farmers around the world)—confirming other studies that have demonstrated the superior water-holding capacity and water infiltration characteristics of organic systems.

Seufert et al.'s intense scrutiny of a relatively small number of studies (66) is intriguing, but—media hype aside—the study doesn't really tell us which systems are better suited to providing healthy nutritious food for all in the 21st century. And to the authors' credit, they acknowledge that. 

Yields don’t tell us how to feed the world

But let's cut to the chase. The animating question behind these "organic vs. industrial ag" debates is how to feed the world. Never mind that every study worth its salt points to poverty and inequity as root causes of hunger.

We know that agroecological farming can double global food production, and that investing in ecological farming is one of the best ways to improve rural communities’ food and livelihood security in developing countries. We also know that it’s not just how we cultivate our food that matters. The drivers of global hunger have everything to do with global trade, investment and ownership rules. Rewriting these rules, reining in corporate power and restoring democratic control over our food and farming systems are three of the most important ways we can fight hunger. Several of my colleagues have written an excellent piece addressing these points, carried yesterday by Huffington Post.
While any farmer will tell you that getting good yields is always desirable, a narrow fixation on yield measurements tends to blind policymakers to the bigger picture. Seufert et al. get this. They write:

Yields are only part of a range of economic, social and environmental factors that should be considered when gauging the benefits of different farming systems.

So Scientific American’s headline to its coverage of the Nature piece, “Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?” was a disappointing mischaracterization of a paper that led to no such conclusion.

In fact, Seufert et al. make an excellent case for increasing funding for organic farming research, to better understand how these systems already work so well and to identify "improvements in management techniques" that "may be able to close the gap between organic and conventional yields." What always amazes me is how close organic systems are to conventional in yield, in the absence of meaningful federal research, development and extension support for organic. (Philpott reports that less than 1% of USDA research funds go towards organic systems, with the other 99% going towards industrialized agriculture—a tiny improvement on the 0.1% of federal research monies designated for organic previously documented by the Organic Farming Research Foundation.) 

Real-world relevance

I asked University of Michigan Professor Ivette Perfecto (a co-author on the seminal 2007 Badgley et al. paper examining organic farming's contributions to the global food supply) what she thought of the piece in Nature. Her reply:

Although it is useful for understanding what are the factors that may limit productivity of organic and conventional systems, the restricted selection of the studies limits its applicability to the real world.  There are very few studies from developing countries and none that compares organic agriculture with the conventional systems practiced by small-scale farmers.

What our study demonstrated was the potential of organic agriculture in developing countries for achieving yields similar to the so-called "best conventional practices" but without the negative environmental impacts of conventional agriculture.

Having recognized that conventional agriculture is simply not an option for the 21^st century, loaded as it is with intolerable costs to our children’s health, our soil, water, biodiversity and even ecosystem function — shouldn't we be focusing instead on what investments are needed to bring organic systems to scale?

2,4-D Corn: Another Bad Creation

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

Spring has sprung, and farmers across the country are preparing for planting season. One of their biggest headaches will be dealing with the millions of acres of cropland that have been infested with superweeds and new generations of superbugs.

These superpests have evolved as the direct — and inevitable — consequence of Monsanto’s aggressive promotion of its genetically engineered “RoundUp-Ready” and insecticidal seed packages over the past 15 years.

I’d like to be able to say that help is on the horizon, and that USDA is preparing to launch a full-scale effort to enable farmers to transition off the failing pesticide-GE treadmill once and for all — onto cleaner, greener methods of farming more suited to the 21^st century. But alas, the reverse is true.

At this moment, USDA is on the verge of approving Dow Chemical's new 2,4-D resistant corn, the first in a pipeline of “next generation” herbicide-tolerant crops that the Big 6 pesticide/biotech companies — including Dow, Monsanto and BASF — are planning to bring to market over the next couple of years. This is industry’s response: more of the same. Except that the next generation is even worse: crops designed to be used with higher volumes of older and deadlier weedkillers.

Weed scientists are calling this chemical arms race a losing battle with evolution. And farmers too are up in arms; already 2,000 outraged farmers and food companies have joined the burgeoning new Save Our Crops Coalition to protest these unwanted products. 

Growth engine of the pesticide industry

Simply put, 2,4-D resistant corn is a bad idea. It will drive a massive increase in pesticide use, placing the burden of increased costs and health risks on farmers and local communities. The big winners will be the pesticide/biotech companies. They stand to benefit from the sustained increase in herbicide sales that will coincide with the widespread adoption of these new herbicide-tolerant GE crops.

Imagine if we could have stopped Roundup Ready in its tracks 15 years ago. American agriculture now stands at another, equally important crossroads. Do we speed up the GE-powered pesticide treadmill, or do we transition off of it?

Take Action » We have just one more week to tell USDA that we want off the GE-pesticide treadmill. The dangerous and antiquated herbicide 2,4-D shouldn’t be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up its use by introducing 2,4-D resistant corn.

This was originally posted on Rodale Voices

Monsanto's Endless Pipeline Of Bad Ideas

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

As if the disaster of RoundUp resistant superweeds sweeping our farmland weren’t enough, Monsanto is now preparing to launch an even greater disaster: a new soybean engineered to be resistant to the older, more toxic weedkiller, dicamba. The seed — which Monsanto plans to market in 2014 if approved — will also come stacked with the company’s RoundUp Ready gene, and is designed to be used with Monsanto’s proprietary herbicide “premix” of dicamba and glyphosate.

More dicamba-tolerant crops (corn, cotton, canola) are all waiting in the wings. If this new generation of GE crops is approved, then dicamba use will surge, just as it did with RoundUp. And we all know how well that didn't work out. To the giant pesticide company, this chemical arms race is all part of the plan.

If you’re thinking that pouring more chemicals onto already devastated farmland sounds a bit like pouring gasoline on a fire, I’d have to agree with you. So do some hefty farm businesses, as it turns out.

Farm business rejects Monsanto’s answer

 The Big 6 pesticide companies' pipeline of new herbicide-tolerant crops poses a serious risk to farmers’ livelihood and rural economies. Weedkillers like dicamba and 2,4-D drift far and can easily destroy other farmers’ crops of tomatoes, grapes, beans, cotton, non-GE soy — just about any broadleaf plant. That’s why farmers and some large ag companies are getting worried. As Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, the largest canned tomato processor in the United States, testified before Congress in 2010:

I am convinced that in all of my years serving the agriculture industry, the widespread use of dicamba herbicide [poses] the single most serious threat to the future of the specialty crop industry in the Midwest.

Smith warns of the damaging surge in dicamba use that would accompany introduction of dicamba-tolerant GE crops — both over more acreage and throughout the season. He predicts widespread crop damage, harm to non-target plants that would result from spray and volatilization drift, and financial loss — not only to growers but also to processing companies like his that would suffer major supply disruption, even conflicts erupting between neighbors eroding the social fabric of rural community life. His testimony concluded:

The introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans is a classic case of short-sighted enthusiasm over a new technology, blinding us to the reality that is sure to come. Increased dicamba usage, made possible through the introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans, is poor public policy and should not be allowed.

We can choose to get off the pesticide treadmill

We’ve just witnessed an incredible victory with the removal of the infamous cancer-causing pesticide methyl iodide from the entire U.S. marketplace. So we know that we can win. And we know that the threat that pesticides pose to farm sustainability, our water and air quality, our communities’ and our children’s health can be blocked. But we have to be dedicated and smart.

Right now, companies like Monsanto, BASF and Dow are planning to drive up their pesticide sales by introducing a new generation of herbicide-tolerant crops, designed to be used with their proprietary weedkillers. The test case before us —the first of this new generation up for review and currently awaiting USDA approval — is Dow’s 2,4-D GE corn (“a very bad idea” as my colleague Margaret Reeves explains). The most effective thing we can do to protect farmers and consumers from dicamba-tolerant crops is to shut down the pipeline of herbicide-tolerant crops — beginning with 2,4-D-resistant corn.

Take Action » Tell USDA that we want off the GE-pesticide treadmill! This dangerous and antiquated herbicide shouldn’t be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up use. Sign our petition to USDA.

China Puts The Breaks On GE Rice

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

A raging public controversy over genetically engineered (GE) rice in China captured media attention in recent months, and has culminated in a surprising win. A few weeks ago, the country’s State Council released a new Draft Food Law¹ that, if passed, would protect the genetic resources of China’s food crops and restrict the application of GE technology in its main food crops.

This is significant progress in the effort by farmers and campaigners in China and indeed across Asia to protect the genetic integrity, diversity and heritage of their rice.

The Pesticide Eco-Alternatives Centre (PEAC), a PAN partner based in Kunming, welcomed the draft law, and lauded the democratic process symbolized by China opening a public comment period through the end of March. But PEAC would like to see the law go further. In a statement to China’s State Council, PEAC argued that the law should protect biodiversity — not just germplasm — in food crops; disallow transgenic technology in all — not just “main” — food crops; and better reflect farmers and rural communities' priorities and concerns.

PEAC's Deputy Director Sun Jing expressed her hope that the proposed Draft Food Law would ultimately prevent rice from being genetically engineered. “Rice is life, it represents the livelihood of millions of farmers, feeds billions of people, and it is the basis of our food security,” she said. PEAC has been working for years with rural communities to advance ecological agriculture free of synthetic chemicals and GMOs.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace has produced a fascinating narrative on its website of its own seven-year campaign in China to block GE rice. The dramatic story is filled with exposés of corporate scientists influencing policy, government suppression of information, revelations of illegal GE contamination of rice noodles and baby food, consumer outrage, celebrity support (Mao Zedong’s daughter), a “media frenzy” and finally, in September 2011 a victory: the Ministry of Agriculture’s decision to suspend the commercialization of GE rice for the next 5-10 years. Greenpeace China has embraced the new Draft Food Law as a “world-first initiative.” 

Wanted: Scientific Integrity On GMOs

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

As reported in this week's UK Guardian, Nina Federoff spoke about threats to science at a meeting of 8,000 professional scientists. The former Bush Administration official and GMO proponent described her "profound depression" at how difficult it is to “get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms.” I too have agonized over our inability to talk seriously about climate change.

However — and this is no small matter — by conflating fringe climate-deniers with established scientists raising valid concerns about the effects of GMOs, Federoff undermines the scientific integrity that she purports to uphold. The hypocrisy is astonishing.

The reason we cannot get a reality-based conversation started on GMOs is because we have precious little independent science on their effectiveness or safety. We know so little about GMOs' safety or efficacy because global ag biotech firms like Monsanto, Dow and DuPont actively suppress science under the heading of protecting “confidential business information.” Companies routinely deny scientists’ research requests and suppress publication of research by threatening legal action, a practice one scientist describes as “chilling.”

In February 2009, 26 corn-pest scientists anonymously submitted a statement to U.S. EPA decrying industry’s prohibitive restrictions on independent research, especially as concerns ag biotech. They submitted the following statement anonymously for fear of being blacklisted:

Technology/stewardship agreements required for the purchase of genetically modified seed explicitly prohibit research. These agreements inhibit public scientists from pursuing their mandated role on behalf of the public good unless the research is approved by industry. As a result of restricted access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology, its performance, its management implications, IRM, and its interactions with insect biology. Consequently, data flowing to an EPA Scientific Advisory Panel from the public sector is unduly limited.

The same year, the editors of Scientific American warned of the debilitating effects of the ag biotech industry’s attacks on science:

Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers.

When the world’s top scientists have been allowed to examine freely the available evidence, unfettered by corporate restrictions, the results stand in startling contrast to industry claims. Four years ago, the agricultural equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was completed, the World Bank and UN-led International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD). I participated as a lead author in that rigorous 4-year process, in which over 400 scientist and development experts from more than 80 countries conducted the most comprehensive assessment of international agricultural technology to date. The IAASTD’s findings were clear:

1. Genetically engineered crops have failed to deliver on industry promises of increased yields, nutritional value, salt or drought-tolerance.
   
2. The unprecedented pace of corporate concentration in the pesticide and seed industry has enabled the ag biotech industry to exert undue influence over public policy and research institutions, funneling public resources towards products that have benefited their manufacturers without generating benefits for the world’s poor.
   
3. The developing world’s best hopes for feeding itself, especially under conditions of climate change, lie not in GMOs, but rather in approaches such as agroecology—the integration of cutting-edge agroecological sciences with farmer innovation and locally appropriate, productive and profitable, ecological farming practices. The ability of agroecology to double food production within 10 years was recently re-affirmed by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
   

So yes, let’s beat back the “anti-science lobby” and restore scientific integrity to public policy and independence and transparency to our research institutions. The future of our planet depends on it.

All Aboard The Transgenic Titanic

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

On Tuesday, one of the world’s largest pesticide and biotech companies — Monsanto Corporation — held its annual general meeting in St. Louis. While protestors outside Monsanto headquarters highlighted growing public disenchantment with the industry giant and its genetically engineered products, investors in the meeting were voting on a shareholder resolution from PAN and Harrington Investments.

If passed, the resolution would require Monsanto to report on all financial risks and impacts, including contamination of neighboring crops, associated with its GE/pesticide seed package.

Bright spots in 2011 for Monsanto notwithstanding (Uncle Sam gave the company a sweet holiday gift package in December), there was much for shareholders attending the St. Louis meeting to be concerned about: the impending demise of Monsanto's enormously profitable RoundUp-Ready pesticide/GE seed line; growing numbers of irate farmers and mounting negative publicity over the company’s role in creating superweeds and superbugs now afflicting millions of acres of farmland across the country; surging consumer demand for labeling of GE foods (95% want it); and a share value that has ricocheted wildly between $58 and $78 over the past 6 months.

It is only going to get worse.— Lee Van Wychen, director of science policy, Weed Science Society of America, referring to the superweed epidemic.

In presenting PAN's resolution, we argued that shareholders should take seriously the looming consequences of the risky behavior of the biotech titan. Monsanto’s refusal to acknowledge the evolutionary realities of developed resistance to, and genetic contamination from its ubiquitous GE product lines signaled years ago the company’s complete lack of foresight and accountability.

Not surprisingly, the resolution did not pass in Tuesday's meeting. But the call for greater transparency about Monsanto’s liabilities garnered media attention, including this local TV report.

German Biotech Giant Flees Europe For U.S.

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

Last week the giant German pesticide and biotech company (and largest chemical company in the world), BASF, announced its decision to pack up and flee Europe.


Why? For 13 years, ordinary Europeans have stood firm in challenging the right of biotech companies to dump their risky genetically engineered (GE) seeds onto their fields and have steadfastly rejected the intrusion of GE foods onto their plates. They built up an informed and powerful citizens’ movement that has made itself heard, even over the din of the monied GE lobby. For this, hearty congratulations are due to our cousins across the Atlantic!
 
Unfortunately, BASF is headed straight for a research park here in the U.S. — namely the Research Triangle in North Carolina, which has become a hub for the biotech industry. BASF will be joining over 70 agricultural technology companies there, the Winston-Salem Journal reports, including Bayer CropScience and Syngenta.

Not too far off in St. Louis is Monsanto, which BASF is collaborating with on (among other things) a new dicamba-resistant GE crop line. This is yet one more in the pipeline of ecologically disastrous herbicide-resistant GE crops I’ve been writing about lately. 

Americans rejecting GE too

UC Berkeley professor of microbial ecology, Ignacio Chapela, explains what’s behind BASF’s decision to pull out of Europe in Counter Punch:

The future holds very little promise for GMOs altogether, and BASF is only the first [company] to have the capacity to recognize the thirty years of bad investments…The reasons for the failure of BASF’s products in Europe are many and very diverse, but the fundamental truth stands that over the decades no real benefit has offset the proven harm caused by GMOs.

Dow And Monsanto In Deadly Race On The Pesticide Treadmill

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

You’ve all heard the news: farmers across the country are losing their fields to superweeds so formidable and fast-spreading that they break farm machinery and render millions of acres of farmland useless. These superweeds have evolved as a direct consequence of Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready pesticide-seed package. Now superbugs are emerging, resistant to Monsanto’s transgenic insecticidal crops. Ecologists predicted this ecological disaster 15 years ago.

The big question is, can we possibly learn from this ecological and agronomic disaster? The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Monsanto’s rival, Dow Chemical, apparently cannot.

From bad to worse

Instead of abandoning this losing strategy, Dow is trying to get us running faster on the same old broken pesticide treadmill. Dow and USDA are hoping to quietly approve a new genetically engineered corn seed that basically swaps RoundUp (glyphosate) out and an even worse weedkiller (2,4-D) in. Bad idea.

As with Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready lines, the herbicide with which these seeds are engineered to be used (2,4-D) will surge in use. Dow aims to get 2,4-D-resistant corn to market this year, soy next year and cotton in 2015. These three crops dominate U.S. agriculture, blanketing over 100 million acres of mono-cropped countryside and driving the pesticide market. Only this time, the fallout will be even worse. Here’s why:

• 2,4-D is a more toxic herbicide, both to humans and to plants. 2,4-D is a reproductive toxicant (associated with lower sperm counts) and its formulations have been linked to cancer (in particular non-Hodgkins lymphoma), disruption of the immune and endocrine (hormone) systems and birth defects. EPA has also expressed a “concern for developmental neurotoxicity resulting from exposure to 2,4-D.”

• 2,4-D does and will drift off of target crops – both through spray drift and volatilization. The latter enables chemicals to travel with moving air masses for miles. Neither applicator nor innocent bystander can prevent such movement. The spread of 2,4-D across our lands will damage non-target crops and vegetation, devastate adjacent ecosystems and poses a very real threat to rural economies and farmers growing non-2,4-D-resistant crops. Conventional farmers growing their product miles away will suffer severe crop losses, while organic farmers will lose both crops and certification, resulting in business failures, job losses and an economic unraveling of already-stressed rural communities.

• 2,4-D-resistant “superweeds” will arise and spread just as RoundUp-resistant “superweeds” have taken over farms and countryside in the Midwest and Southeast. Where will this leave struggling farmers? What even more deadly pesticide will the biotech companies resort to next?

• Corn is wind-pollinated which means that genetic material from 2,4-D corn will contaminate non-GE corn. You cannot put a GE genie back in the bottle.

Climate Cowards And Heroes

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

I spent the weekend glued to coverage of the high drama unfolding at the climate talks in Durban, South Africa. I watched closely because there is so much on the line affecting our and our children's future. In the final turbulent days, there were critical moments when a binding treaty with relatively ambitious and fair emissions cuts seemed almost possible. And then, well — the U.S. and our cronies played power politics behind closed doors, just as they have before.

I can barely contain my outrage at the U.S. government for doing everything in its power all week to stifle global progress in the battle against climate change. As allies have reported from the ground (here, here and here), continuous obstruction by the U.S. was a central factor undermining other countries' efforts to reach a decisive outcome. As a result, after 17 years of UN climate talks, we are now on course for a 3 (if not 4) degree Celsius increase in global temperatures over pre-industrial levels within the coming years. This is double the 1.5C limit urged by African nations and well beyond the 2C limit widely considered by scientists to be the maximum increase beyond which the effects of climate change will become catastrophic and irreversible.

The dire implications for our global food and farming system alone are direct and far-reaching, as I've explained here and here. Many small island nations will cease to exist, agriculture in Africa will become even more precarious, and here in the U.S. we too will witness more severe heat waves, torrential downpours and crop failures. As Wanjira Maathai has warned, we are in for unimaginable disasters, with massive loss of life — not only from the direct effects of climate change but from the increase in conflicts over water and arable land that will result. 

Debt dodging

The official outcome of the 17^th UN climate conference (“COP-17”) is known as the Durban Platform. While this agreement leaves open the possibility of a legally binding agreement in the future, what was actually specified (after U.S. arm-twisting) is much weaker: “an outcome with legal force” which means next to nothing.

The Platform simply says that over the next four years, governments are to agree on emissions reductions; but just how much and how fast those cuts should be remains up in the air. And the Durban agreement suggests that implementation wouldn't even have to start until 2020. That's much too late.

Also absent from the Platform was any agreement by rich nations to clean up the outsized share of the mess we created in the first place. Industrialized nations (especially the U.S.) are historically responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, despite composing only 20% of the world’s population. Meanwhile, the developing world — most of humanity — is on the front lines of climate change, enduring the harshest storms and most severe droughts. The Kyoto protocol recognizes this fact of “historical responsibility” by talking about “common but differentiated responsibilities.” Also known as "climate debt." In Durban we walked away from that debt in what Climate Justice Now! calls a "crime against humanity."

Durban Climate Talks aka "The Great Escape 3"

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

Not coming to movie theaters near you, but taking place right now in Durban, South Africa is “The Great Escape 3.” This is how Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s former lead climate negotiator, describes the scene at the UN climate talks.


“It’s the same movie — it happened in Copenhagen, in Cancun, and it will happen in Durban. The richest nations are trying to escape their responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now... It’s really a genocide and an ecocide.”

Not surprisingly, the U.S. delegation in Durban has been central to the looming failure of the talks.

For one thing, the U.S. has made clear that it’s unwilling to consider legally binding reductions in emissions until 2020. International reactions were swift:

•  “The present U.S. position of no new agreement until post- 2020 is really blowing negotiations apart,” said Papua New Guinea’s chief climate delegate, Kevin Conrad.

• “We can’t afford to wait that long!” warned Wanjira Maathai, daughter of the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai. “[In five years] we will surpass the 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperature that will bring about catastrophic effects…We will see people dying in numbers not ever seen before… The U.S. must shape up or get out!”

And a 21-year-old American college student, Abigail Borah, attending the conference as a representative of the International Youth Climate Movement, interrupted the U.S. lead negotiator’s presentation to the 190 nations assembled, stating:

•  “I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty.”

Borah received a sustained ovation from delegates before South African authorities removed her from the room. 

Nourishing the Roots Of Food Justice

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

What a week! PAN and over 1,000 food movement activists from around the country have just wrapped up the Community Food Security Coalition’s 15th Annual National Conference, Food Justice: Honoring our Roots, Growing the Movement, which filled five days with stimulating field trips, workshops and discussion in Oakland and around the Bay area. As Jim Embry of Sustainable Communities Network in Kentucky observed, “More than 1,000 kindred folks from USA, 1st Peoples Nations, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Kenya and all in between attended. The conference held near Occupy Oakland was a blessing. The healing (between groups) was so needed and inspiring!”

A smaller number of us capped the week by participating in the 1^st National Assembly of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, a post-conference gathering of over 70 activists from the family farm, worker and food justice communities along with allied organizations working to build a grassroots-led food sovereignty movement in the U.S. 

Farmers & farmworkers speak out

Highlights for me last week included hearing the stories of farmworkers from Florida and family farmers from Iowa, Montana, Wisconsin and Maine, who spoke to students at a community event that PAN co-organized with National Family Farm Coalition, hosted by San Francisco State University professor, Kathy McAfee. The panel, Farmer and Farmworker Voices from Across the Country: Fighting for Justice on the Farm, sparked animated questions from the students, after they heard how farmworkers and farmers are organizing for their rights and for their very survival.
We have a problem. It’s called the extraction of wealth. — Joel Greeno, Wisconsin dairy farmer, speaking to President Obama.

To a spellbound audience, Joel Greeno (dairy farmer and leader of the farmer tractorcade during the Madison protests) described his late summer meeting with President Obama, who walked into a workshop on rural issues, sat down and asked if anyone had anything to say. While everyone else (mostly industry lobbyists) froze in their chairs, Joel didn’t miss a beat. “We have a problem in Wisconsin”, he told the President. “It’s called the extraction of wealth. All you need to do to fix the situation and put people back to work is to pay farmers a living.” When Joel finished speaking, the entire room had gone completely silent. Even Obama — caught like a deer in the headlights —had not a word to say in response.

What's Your Beef (And Why's It Coming From Tanzania)?

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

What does an American businessman, Iowa State University and 162,000 refugees in Tanzania have in common? 

Answer: they are all either directly involved in or soon-to-be impacted by a small group of U.S. investors’ plans to acquire 800,000 acres (1,250 square miles) of land in Tanzania and transform it into large-scale industrial crop, beef and agrofuel production. They plan to use genetically engineered (GE) seed and other inputs supplied by Monsanto, Syngenta and other global agribusinesses.

As you might guess, not everyone is going to benefit from this mega-project! The deal, if it goes through, would force 162,000 former refugees from Burundi off land they have tended for the past 40 years, destroying their livelihoods and the communities they have built to give their children a future. 

Follow the money (sigh, yes — again)

So who wins? The Tanzanian government might make a few dollars off the deal, but it won’t be much, once negotiations over a suite of investor incentives (tax holidays, duty waivers, and relaxed rules for repatriation of dollars out of Tanzania) are concluded. The three biggest winners would be Iowa-based AgriSol Energy, Summit Group (a large-scale farming and livestock operation headquartered in Alden, Iowa) and Pharos Global Agriculture Fund. Iowa State University is also a key supporter of the project.

These three private entities stand to gain the most, not only by ramping up lucrative agrofuel production for export, but even more significantly, by requiring — as a condition of the deal — that the Tanzanian government overturn its current prohibition of genetically engineered crops. They are demanding creation of a regulatory framework that allows importation and cultivation of GE crops in that country.

Rewriting Southern countries’ biosafety legislation in order to start flooding the region with exports of U.S. GE crops has long been a tactic of the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development (USAID). And it’s no coincidence that the Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative targets Tanzania for “agricultural development” based on public-private partnerships and transgenic biotechnology.

The deal requires the Tanzanian government to overturn its current prohibition of GE crops.

And who loses? Obviously, the Burundi people who are getting kicked off the land. But the threats go well beyond the 800,000 acres and 162,000 people in question there. Tanzanian farmers, consumers, their agricultural markets and biodiversity are all at risk.

Until recently, Tanzanians were somewhat protected from the intrusion of transgenic crops by the country’s placement of the precautionary principle at the center of its biosafety legislation. That has shifted, as under intense industry pressure, the government has relaxed its laws and allowed research and field trials of GE corn and cassava, with GE cotton around the corner. The last legal protections against GE crops could fall, if the AgriSol land grab is able to effectively rewrite Tanzania’s biosafety laws. And this is why Tanzanians have formed an alliance to fight back.

Here in the U.S. the Oakland Institute is leading the charge to expose and block the Tanzanian land grab and is calling on concerned individuals to take action and urge the wealthy Iowa investor Bruce Rastetter (who is simultaneously CEO of Pharos Ag and Summit Farms as well as Managing Director of AgriSol Energy) and the Prime Minister of Tanzania to drop the project. Joining the call, the Sierra Club has brought the voices of its one million members to bear, sending its own letter urging Rastetter and the Prime Minister to abandon “this ill-advised project.” It's easy to follow Oakland Institute's lead by sending a letter of your own. 

Global policy stalled

The Tanzanian case is one of many such land grabs — more formally described as large-scale land acquisitions — that have been sweeping across the Global South in recent years. The epidemic reached such disastrous proportions, with such gross violations of human rights, that the United Nations finally turned its attention to the issue and began in 2008 to draft “voluntary guidelines” to protect communities from the harmful effects.

Earlier this month, 800 farmers’ rights, environment and development groups joined victims of land grabs in petitioning the Chair of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Committee on Food Security to swiftly finalize the guidelines. Governments meeting in Rome were to adopt the voluntary guidelines by October 17, but failed to do so.

The U.N. body came close to approving the guidelines, explained U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, but foundered over the specific provisions affecting large-scale investments in farmland. The Committee on Food Security will meet again in early 2012 and de Schutter expects that the guidelines could be ratified later in the year. Civil society groups and farmers’ coalitions like La Via Campesina continue to play a critical role in these negotiations, pressing for strong and enforceable language. 

Stand with Tanzania

While adoption of the voluntary guidelines in 2012 is urgently needed, every additional week of delay puts hundreds of thousands of farmers’ livelihoods at risk.

Take Action » Join Oakland Institute’s campaign to block the Tanzanian land grab. Send a letter to AgriSol’s Bruce Rastetter and the Tanzanian Prime Minister urging them to abandon the land deal.

Occupy The Food System

The GE Emperor Has No Clothes!

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

On October 13, I joined fellow food democracy activists from around California at a press conference on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall. We were there to welcome the release of a new Global Citizens’ Report on transgenic crops, aptly entitled The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes.


As World Food Day approaches (Sunday, October 16), what better way to honor and support small-scale and family farmers around the world than by publicizing the report’s message: genetically engineered crops have utterly failed to deliver, it’s time to cut our losses, save our seeds, defend our rights and Occupy the Food System.

This much is clear: after 25 years of research, 14 years of commercialization and millions of dollars in public funding, genetically engineered (GE) crops have failed to deliver on promises again and again. GE crops neither increase yield nor provide nutritional benefits. No drought or salt-tolerant crops have yet been commercially developed; GE crops won’t feed the world and - unlike agroecological approaches - GE technology can’t help farmers in the U.S. or anywhere adapt to the complex and shifting challenges of global climate, water, energy and biodiversity crises. (For a great primer/infographic on GE, see here.)

Even Howard Buffet (Warren’s son) acknowledged as much at this week’s World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines. Buffet spoke of the need for a biological-based, sustainable soil management plan, and urged Africans not to sacrifice crop biodiversity in order to imitate U.S. monocultural industrial farming methods. While some of his other statements indicate that he has a woefully deficient appreciation of African farmers’ rich knowledge and capacities, his comments created quite a stir at this typically pro-Green Revolution venue.

With mountains of scientific and empirical evidence from the field, it is therefore even more insulting and outrageous that the U.S. State Department continues to applaud the naked GE emperor and push transgenic biotechnology so aggressively throughout the developing world, as revealed in these leaked cables. Offensive, but not so surprising; with former Crop Life pesticide lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, firmly ensconced as Chief Agricultural Negotiator at the U.S. trade office, we can expect more of the same.

Back out on the streets of San Francisco, people are gathering this Saturday for an Occupy San Francisco march and rally. Part of what makes the emerging food movement and the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations so simultaneously main street and radical is that their diagnosis of our shared problem hinges on fairness. It’s not fair that a few mega-corporations are making record profits at the expense of the health and livelihoods of ordinary people here in the U.S. and the world over. This is why farmers from India to Iowa are demanding food democracy, in which ordinary people take charge of establishing the food and agricultural systems we need to build up resilient farms and resilient communities. This is why many of us — from San Francisco to Seattle to New York — will be making the gap between the 1% and the 99% — and the connection between food and democracy — explicit as we continue to Occupy the Food System.

Mexican Maize Ready For Climate Challenge

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

“Sin Maíz, No Hay País!” The chant is ringing out this morning across the fields, villages and towns of Mexico, in recognition of Mexico’s National Day of Corn, September 29. “Without corn, there is no country!” is the literal translation of this ongoing national campaign to celebrate and protect the cultural heritage and significance of corn to the Mexican people.

With the campaign entering its fourth year, Mexicans can also celebrate the good news that the maize that Mexican farmers have been cultivating in traditional farming systems for thousands of years already contains much of the genetic diversity they’ll need to weather the challenges of climate change in the coming century.

A recently published international paper confirms what Mexican farmers have known in their hearts for generations. Researchers examined traditional maize seed systems used by 400 Indigenous and mestizo households from 20 communities in five states of eastern Mexico, at altitudes ranging from 10 to nearly 3,000 meters above sea level. Their conclusion:

Maize landraces in Mexico show remarkable diversity and climatic adaptability, growing in environments ranging from arid to humid and from temperate to very hot. This diversity raises the possibility that Mexico already has maize germplasm suitable for the 'novel' crop environments predicted for 2050.

The measured tone belies the significance of the report. Using their own indigenous and locally adapted seeds (Mexico has 59 landraces and 209 varieties of corn) and ecological methods of farming, Mexican farmers are prepared to adapt to the environmental stresses of climate and water crises looming on the horizon. In other words, despite everything that Monsanto tells us, Mexicans really don’t need GMOs or industrial agricultural packages from the North, thank you very much!
Maize, Mexico's staple food as well as a symbol, has the potential to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects without any need for genetically modified seeds. – Emilio Godoy, IPS News, Sept 8, 2011.

Seeding Justice, Cultivating Democracy

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

Last week, hundreds of people poured into the Women’s Building here in San Francisco to take part in the Justice Begins with Seeds conference, organized by the California Biosafety Alliance and co-sponsored by PANNA and several other partner groups. Abuzz with activities from September 13-17, the conference provided a forum for Californians to engage in movement building that challenges the corporate food system, pushes back against genetically engineered food and seeds, and nourishes the roots of food democracy.

I had the honor of speaking at the opening plenary Friday morning, and of sharing the PAN network’s vision of what it means to reclaim our food system. The auditorium pulsed with the diversity, wisdom, courage and vast experience of our movement: Latino community organizers, urban food justice activists, Mexican farmers and keepers of the ancient, vital heritage of corn seed diversity, youth leaders, lawyers, scientists, poets, writers and artists.

As a global network linking 600 groups from over 90 countries, PAN is best known for our three decades of work challenging the global proliferation of pesticides. At the same time, ever since our founding in 1982, PAN has fought for people’s rights to a safe, fair and sustainable food system. That work has taken many forms over the years: farmer caravans travelling across Asia, denouncing the corporations that manufacture chemical pesticides and GMOs and highlighting farmers’ innovative ecological alternatives; organic cotton farmers in Peru, Benin and Senegal collaborating with European partners in devising clean, fair and green marketing initiatives; and here in the U.S., campaigning to save conservation payments in the Farm Bill as the most concrete step we can take right now to support American farmers who are stewarding the earth and protecting future generations.

As I told conference participants last week, “seeding justice” at PANNA means two things to me: growing agroecology and nourishing the emerging food democracy movement in this country. The many faces of these two things can get us a long way towards food sovereignty. In so many concrete ways, I am energized by our daily work in this realm:

• fighting for fairness for workers and for family farmers (call your Senator to urge support for the fair farm rules! the fight is still on!);
• exposing and challenging Monsanto’s monopoly control over the world’s seed supply;
• campaigning for green payments and policy measures to support farmers transitioning towards agroecological and organic practices; and
• mobilizing communities from California to Colombia to Cameroon, to stand together for food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty.

As Indian scientist-activist Vandana Shiva explained in her rousing keynote address:

We have to make food democracy the core of the defense of our freedom and survival. We will either have food dictatorship for a while and then a collapse of our food systems and our societies, or we will succeed in building robust food democracies, resting on resilient ecosystems and resilient communities.

Monsanto's Superweeds and Superbugs

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, cross-posted from PAN's website

The ecological, economic and agro- nomic disaster accompanying herbicide-tolerant transgenic crops is by now well known: over 10 million acres of superweeds resistant to Monsanto’s weedkiller, Roundup; farm machinery breaking on Roundup-resistant pigweed thick as a baseball bat; Monsanto paying farmers to spray their fields with competitors’ herbicides; a new gener- ation of transgenic crops in the pipeline engineered to withstand older even more dangerous chemicals like 2,4-D.

 Last week brought more bad news for Monsanto: the same phenomenon is also occurring in insect pest populations that are developing resistance to transgenic “Bt corn” in the Midwest. The Wall Street Journal recently reported Iowa State University’s findings that the corn rootworm is for the first time proving resistant to the insecticidal toxin, Bt, in transgenic corn in Iowa. Four days later, Business Week reported Bt corn plants in northwestern Illinois toppling over after root damage caused by the same insect, apparently as impervious as its Iowa cousins to the engineered Bt toxin. Likewise, insect resistance to transgenic Bt crops in India (where dramatic crop failures resulted) and South Africa has been reported.

This is a classic case of the pesticide treadmill. A pesticide application (whether sprayed the old-fashioned way or applied through a crop plant engineered to contain that toxin in its cells) typically kills many–but not all–of the targeted pests. Of those that survive, some will pass on their genetic traits of pesticide resistance to their offspring, gradually leading to a more and more resistant population. Farmers get trapped on this treadmill as they are forced to use more — and increasingly toxic — chemicals to control pest populations that continue to develop resistance to each new type or class of pesticides.

Field Of (Bad) Dreams

Coming Soon To A Baseball Field Near You:  GE Grass

By Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, originally posted at PAN's website, July 13, 2011.

My kids had a great baseball season playing in Little League this Spring. We've now moved on to other summery things like swim lessons in Berkeley's freezing fog. So I was caught off-guard by last week's surprise collision between my work and home worlds, namely the revelation that USDA has just given Scotts Miracle Gro (the lawn chemical company and much decried sponsor of Major League Baseball), the go-ahead for a new and once again totally unnecessary genetically engineered product: Roundup Ready lawn grass. And they may have pulled off a de facto deregulation of all future GE products in the process.

Currently, non-genetically engineered Kentucky bluegrass is widely planted in residential lawns, as well as in baseball, soccer and football fields and golf courses around the country. With the arrival of GE Roundup Ready bluegrass, we can now expect a deluge of the weedkiller, Roundup, almost everywhere we turn. That’s bad news; Monsanto’s top-selling herbicide has already been linked to birth defects along with a host of other health and environmental harms.