TIME SENSITIVE | USDA Coexistence rule threatens Native seed savers and plant breeders
GMO Agricultural
‘Coexistence’ Rule
COEXISTENCE
≠ GMO CONTAMINATION PREVENTION
Comment deadline: March 4,
2014
Action
Needed!
Devon
G. Peña | Shoreline, WA | February 9, 2014
Obama’s
Agriculture Department wants to act on a specific set of implicit anti-science
assumptions that undergird a coexistence policy for GMO and nonGMO farmers. This
involves the genetic science equivalent of climate change denial: It requires we ignore the
threats and damages posed by the indisputable facts of introgression, horizontal gene transfer, resistance of
targeted organisms, and other effects meticulously documented by an emergent
predictive ecology of transgenic crops and their impacts on native land race heirloom varieties and their wild relatives.
The USDA is
asking for public comments on a proposed policy for agricultural “coexistence”.
This can be read as an attempt to impose a policy of détente between GMO and non-GMO farmers and handlers. How will this
relationship of coexistence and cooperation be defined and managed? The deadline for comments was extended
from January until March 4, 2014. I invite all my fellow heirloom plant
breeders and seed savers, both farmers and handlers, to post comments by the
deadline. The links are provided below. I ask that you consider posting
comments in which you reject the policy of coexistence. Among many reasons for
this rejection is the fact the rule will impose an environment that can never
be “GMO-free” even if farmers as a class eventually were united in their
preference for nonGMO practices and methods.
This means that thousands of plant
breeders and seed savers in the U.S., including skilled indigenous farmers who are responsible for the origin, preservation, and
development of our nation’s plant genetic resources and especially the infinite
and still evolving diversity of
heirloom and native crops, will have to sacrifice this heritage for the sake of the antagonistic claims of the profit makers whose product threatens the genomic integrity of the so-called Mesoamerican Vavilov zone. Simply put: As a seed saver and plant breeder I believe the coexistence policy infringes on our ability to manage and protect this bio-cultural heritage and to defend our own property rights against damages associated with the uses of commercial agricultural biotechnology.
The
proposed rule violates the Obama Administration’s self-professed adherence
to the Principles of Environmental Justice outlined in Executive Order 12898. In
the longer term perhaps the rule will not pass judicial muster? The rule can
be seen as a sneaky way on getting Monsanto and other corporations another layer of protection against those who would bring damage claims for genetic pollution. It could
actually mean that farmers will have to forfeit the ability to file future
claims of economic injury and damages against Monsanto and other purveyors of
biotechnology, since coexistence might imply a neutral litigation-free and
imposed arbitration scheme. We have already seen how well that has worked out
for workers and labor unions. Arbitration of this sort always favors management and capital above the claims of workers, farmers, and other marginalized groups.
Coexistence
means that we have to adapt to the likelihood of transgenic contamination of
heirloom and /or organic cultivars through introgression and other disruptions
of our land races’ genomic integrity.
According to
the USDA, coexistence is the principle that the relationships between GMO and
non-GMO farmers can be strengthened. A USDA
Blog entry explains the objectives of the coexistence policy initiative:
U.S.
farmers in the 21st Century engage in many forms of agriculture, including
conventional, organic, identity-preserved, and genetically engineered (GE) crop
production. USDA is unequivocal in
its supports for all these forms of agriculture. We need all of them to meet our country’s collective needs
for food security, energy production, carbon offsets and the economic
sustainability of rural communities.
Our goal is to promote the coexistence of all these approaches through
cooperation and science-based stewardship practices.
Exactly what
the USDA means by “science-based stewardship” remains entirely unclear but many
of us doubt that this will include the agroecological and ethnoscientific
knowledge of indigenous farmers and other so-called protected classes. If it
does not, then we have a serious environmental justice and civil rights problem
unfolding before our eyes.
While it is
true that U.S. farmers follow different models, the USDA has over the past half
century consistently demonstrated a program budgetary and research and development
bias toward ever-larger capitalist growers. Beyond the scandalous decades of
racism and gender discrimination in the credit markets and local FSA
committees, the USDA’s other agencies have also failed to deliver equitable
support and services to nonGMO producers. Pro-GMO investments outstrip those
allocated to nonGMO heirloom farmers across agencies like the AMS, ARS, NRCS,
NIFA, REE, etc.
Instead of pursuing
an agricultural coexistence policy, the Obama Administration needs to assign an
environmental justice inspector general to investigate the USDA for continued
discriminatory practices, especially as this involves inequitable allocation of
assets toward the larger corporate-run industrial GMO monoculture operations
that benefit from the scale of disproportionate investments the USDA makes in
support of these capitalist interests against nonGMO family farms and
smallholder farmers.
I remind my
readers that this has previously been subject to successful lawsuits over civil
rights violations by the USDA against African American, Native American, Latina/o,
and women farmers. (The settlements were outrageously unfair). The coexistence policy
will result in the enlargement of the class of farmers who are experiencing the
disparate impacts of a policy that violates environmental justice principles by
encouraging a new form of institutionalized discrimination toward these
protected groups and their efforts to flourish as organic, identity-preserved
farmers and producers of heirloom varieties through heritage seed saving and
plant breeding. This actually also applies to breeding of farm animals.
Like other
attempts at “enforced cooperation” involving unequal political economic powers, the imposition of a top-down
expert-driven apparatus will force all farmers to get along while continuing to
privilege the corporate GE sector in all areas of the Department’s mission –
research, subsidies, payments, and credit. The policy instead should start with
a moratorium on further commercial-scale planting of transgenic crops – and
especially the first generation glyphosate-resistant and Bt transgenics that
have resulted in a “GE treadmill,” with super weeds and resistant bugs and
worms, and the reality of the generalized collapse of biodiversity in refuge
buffers and corridors.
All the while,
the proposed rule will encourage further simplification and obscuring of the
serious and intractable problems
posed by a specific set of implicit anti-science assumptions that undergird the
coexistence policy. This involves the genetic science equivalent of climate
change denial and requires we somehow accept or ignore the indisputable facts of introgression, horizontal gene
transfer, and resistance of weeds and
insects that have been meticulously documented through the better late than
never attention to an emergent predictive ecology of transgenic crops.
 |
| Credit: disinfo.com |
I know farmers
who want off the GMO treadmill and are having a hard time figuring out how. One
farmer, from North Dakota, told me she hates the emptiness of a GMO monoculture
– the veritable lack of life. She despises the huge scale of mechanization and
the massive fuel costs. Above all, she hates the continuing decline of the towns
and communities around her. “I became a farmer because of my family ties to
this region only to see how this modern industrial form of agriculture is
destroying it.”
Many GMO
farmers do not want to coexist. Instead, they want to find a way out of the dominant
paradigm of biotechnology. They seek alternatives and want to be farmers again,
rather than mere precision contract-guided growers. An increasing number are
sickened by their status as GPS-tethered bioserfs. They are stressed and
sickened by the heavy debt and economic stress of the high annual costs
associated with being a Monsanto contract grower. If the USDSA supported these
farmers, this could significantly enlarge the number of farmers who follow
organic and nonGMO practices, joining the fastest growing segment of the agricultural
producer sector.
And you know
what? The USDA has no idea how to help them. It cannot provide much guidance or
material and technical support for the growing number of farmers who wish to
make a transition from GMO to nonGMO. No one bothered to do collaborative
research with farmers despite the fact that a growing number of us want off the
GMO treadmill. The USDA has been too busy discriminating against the new
minorities because it was too busy retrofitting and servicing all the GMO corporate
factory farms.
The National
Organics Coalition (NOC) believes USDA should be focusing on GMO Contamination Prevention.
As part of their opposition, they have crafted a very useful set of briefing
points to assist you with the development of a public comment on this policy. I
am sharing this information with the hope that my farmer colleagues, fellow
seed savers and plant breeders, who understand that the only way to protect
agricultural biodiversity is through a nonGMO environmental policy. There is to
be no coexistence if Monsanto gets the right to introgress my dancing maíz de concho.
Farmers & Handlers: Share
your experiences and costs with preventing GE contamination, or about being contaminated
Consumers: Tell USDA: Contamination Prevention Now!
WHY
IS THIS ACTION SO IMPORTANT?
Organic and
Non-GMO agriculture has shouldered the burden of GMO contamination for too
long. Tell USDA:
(1)
Implement mandatory contamination prevention measures to avoid the problem and protect the
non-GMO sector.
(2) Ensure
shared responsibility for the unwanted spread of GE products. Farmers
should not shoulder the burden through GE contamination crop insurance. Patent
Holders should be held responsible for the contamination.
HOW
TO COMMENT
Submit
SNAIL MAIL comments to: Docket No. APHIS–2013–0047, Regulatory Analysis, and
Development, PPD, APHIS, Station, 3A–03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale,
MD 20737–1238.
Farmers
& Handlers: If you would like to send an ANONYMOUS COMMENT outlining your
experiences and costs, please go to: http://tinyurl.com/AC21Story
Senate
Passes 2014 Farm Bill
ORGANIC FARM BILL PROGRAMS RESTORED! And then some….
When Congress
enacted a one-year “extension” to the Farm Bill last year, funding for all Farm
Bill programs related to organic agriculture was eliminated. This gap in
funding for key organic research, marketing and certification cost share
programs has placed organic farmers and handlers at a competitive disadvantage,
and halted important public policy-related work in the organic sector.
This Farm Bill restores funding for all the core organic
programs – including National Organic Certification Cost Share for all organic
farmers and handlers.
See
all of NOC's Farm Bill priorities as compared to the Final Farm Bill Conference
Report.
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