Musings: Who is Fooling Who?

It was rather curious to read Fern Rosenstiel's guest commentary —oddly posted under “local news” in The Garden Island's online edition — demanding the chem/seed companies adhere to the county's GMO/pesticide regulatory bill.

She writes:

Your time for open, voluntary disclosure has long passed, it’s time to follow the regulations our island has set in place. It’s time you comply with Ordinance 960.

Surely Fern knows Ordinance 960 — the GMO/pesticide regulatory law — was not scheduled to take effect until Aug. 16. Now that date has been delayed to Oct. 1. The rules have not yet been adopted, and four of the five affected companies have filed suit to block the law's implementation.

The court is set to hold hearings on the case on July 23. Due to "the volume of cross motions that have been filed, all parties have entered into a stipulation and order that delays the effective date of the ordinance," according to a county press release.

In the meantime, voluntary disclosure is all we've got. What's more, Ordinance 960 itself relies on voluntary compliance.

It was also interesting to read Fern's assertion that:

Nearly two years ago, I sat down with [Councilman] Gary Hooser and explained that we needed to know how much of these different pesticides, atrazine specifically, they were spraying, that we needed to know where, so we could really target our studies to better understand what the concern is.

And I wondered, if that was the goal, why didn't Bill 2491/Ordinance 960, which Gary introduced, emphasize pesticide studies or health assessments? Instead, the triggers for an EIS in the original bill were linked solely to GMOs, not actual pesticide use, and no studies were mandated.

Instead, that crucial component is being handled in a decidedly ad hoc manner. The state Department of Health has said it was given no money to conduct any follow ups to the recent statewide study that found trace amounts of pesticides in waterways. Surfrider Foundation is planning to pursue studies with money from unspecified sources, but its objectivity was compromised when it joined the county's legal defense of 960.

So again I find myself questioning the objectives of the 2491/960 movement. Was it to address concerns associated with pesticide use, or eliminate GMOs? I ask, partly to determine its effectiveness — it seems to have failed at both — and because when you look at how the movement has been expressed on the Big Island and Maui, it's all about GMOs — even though the bulk of the atrazine used in the state is applied to the sugar fields on Maui.

Speaking of the Big Island, farmer Richard Ha recently spoke at the Hawaii State Association of Counties 2014 Annual Conference, and discussed why farmers there had filed suit against the anti-GMO bill passed by the Hawaii County Council. I'm sharing an excerpt of his speech because it does a good job of explaining why the anti-GMO movement has met resistance from many who support agriculture in Hawaii:

Why? Clarity: Farmers are law-abiding citizens and we play by the rules. We thought that the Feds and the State had jurisdiction. We want clarity about the rules of the game.

Equal treatment: Only Big Island farmers are prohibited from using biotech solutions that all our competitors can use. How is that equal? It’s discriminatory against local farmers.

When the law was first proposed, they wanted to ban all GMOs. We asked what are papaya farmers supposed to do? They said, we can help them get new jobs, to transition. We were speechless. It was as if they were just another commodity. So farmers and ranchers got together and ran a convoy around the County building in protest. Then they said they would give the Rainbow papaya farmers a break. I was there when the papaya farmers had a vote to accept the grandfather clause for Rainbow papayas. There were a lot of young, second- and third-generation farmers there in the room.

In the end, the papaya farmers said, We are not going to abandon our friends who supported us when we needed help. That is not who we are. Then they voted unanimously to reject the offer. I was there and being a Vietnam vet, where the unspoken rule was we all come back or no one comes back, I could not have been prouder of the papaya farmers. That explains why the Big Island farmers are tight. Old-fashioned values. The rubbah slippah folks absolutely get all of this.

So who are these farmers? I am one. I don't grow GMOs. It isn't about me. I'll make 70 this year and, like almost all the farmers, have never sued anyone. But there comes a time when you have to stand up for what is right.

The group we formed, Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United, grows more than 90 percent of the farm value on the Big Island.

This is about food security. The GMO portion of food security is small. This is not about large corporations. It is about local farmers. It is not about organics; we need everybody. But organics only supply 4 percent of the national food supply and maybe 1 percent of Hawaii’s. Our organic farmers are not threatened by modern farming. Hawaii organic farmers are threatened by mainland, industrial-scale organic farms. That is why there are hardly any locally grown organics in the retail stores. It’s about cost of production. Also, on the mainland winter kills off the bad bugs and weeds and the organic farmers can outrun the bugs through the early part of summer. Hawai‘i farmers don't have winter to help us.

Most importantly, this is about pro-science and anti-science. That is why farmers are stepping up. We know that science is self-correcting. It gives us a solid frame of reference. You don't end up fooling yourself. In all of Hawaii’s history, now is no time to be fooling ourselves.

Which brings me back to Ordinance 960 and all the people who were fooled into thinking they were supporting a bill that would actually “stop poisoning paradise” and address their health concerns, when in fact it does neither.