Monday, May 16, 2016

Musings: Sweet and Sour

Just as HC&S is shutting down its Maui plantation, sugar is becoming more profitable.

Ironically, that profitability is linked to the anti-GMO movement, whose members include some of the very same anti-ag activists who worked so hard to kill HC&S with their unceasing complaints and litigation about cane smoke, water diversions and herbicides.

In the bizarre new world of activist-driven agriculture, the twisted chain of events goes like this:

In their quest to destroy agricultural biotech, anti-GMO activists stimulated irrational health fears, particularly in moms, who began clamoring for GMO-free candy.

Big candy-makers like Hershey's, one of the nation's top sugar-users, listened. According to Deborah Arcoleo, director of product transparency at the Hershey Co.:

In 2015 we started reformulating Hershey’s Kisses, Hershey’s milk chocolate, and Hershey’s milk chocolate with almonds, to move from beet sugar to cane sugar, and that’s complete. Now we’re looking to do that across the rest of our portfolio, to the extent that we can.

As a result, NPR reported, the price for beet sugar — much of it produced by genetically engineered Roundup Ready sugar beets — dropped below the price for cane sugar. Buyers are now paying 10 to 15 percent more for cane sugar, an expense that no doubt will be reflected in the price of candy.

So now sugar beet farmers are faced with a choice: go back to conventional beets, or get a lower price — or perhaps no buyers at all — for their GMO product.

The anti-GMO activists no doubt consider this a success, having employed fear-driven consumer pressure to bring Hershey's — and the beet farmers who supplied it with sugar — to their knees.

But is it really a win? Consider that beet farmers embraced the GMO variety because it helped them reliably produce a crop with fewer herbicides. Duane Grant, a sugar beet grower in Idaho, described cultivation in the pre-Roundup Ready days:

It was a nightmare. We had failures all the time — fields that would become unharvestable because of our failure to control weeds. We had an army of people applying herbicides around the clock or just at night. We did micro-rates, we did maxi-rates, you name it.

We had one sprayer for every 500 acres, so eight sprayers running around.They would work whenever they could. It might be all night long; it might be 24 hours straight because they had a window.

It was a horrible life.


The herbicide regimen used to include 4 to 6 different herbicides applied between 3 to 6 times per year, at 5 to 10 day intervals. Even after this much herbicide spraying, around 40 to 60% of sugarbeet fields had to be hand-weeded because the herbicides rarely provided complete weed control. Compare that to the Roundup Ready (GMO) system, where 2 or 3 applications of glyphosate have replaced the many herbicide sprays that were used previously, while providing better weed control.

By 2009, only two years after widespread adoption of GMO sugar beet, over 50,000 acres of sugar beet fields were converted to some form of reduced or conservation tillage practices in Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming. That number is probably much higher now. Conservation tillage practices improve soil health, reduce soil erosion, and preserve soil moisture. Conservation tillage simply wasn’t possible in sugarbeet before the introduction of Roundup Ready varieties, because intensive tillage was needed to obtain adequate weed control in the crop.

OK, so we're seeing clear environmental and social benefits from GMO sugar beets — gains that will be lost by a return to non-GMO beets.

Meanwhile, the Maui elitists who felt sugar cane production was incompatible with their desired lifestyle are helping to encourage that crop in places like Central America, where the harvesting is done by migrant workers who have a high incidence of chronic kidney disease due, it's thought, to laboring in the hot tropical sun without sufficient rest, shade and water.

This reality is totally lost on anti-GMO activists, who have absolutely no grasp of the consequences of their actions — even as they claim to be motivated by concerns for farm worker health and environmental contamination.

As sugar beet grower Andrew Beyer told NPR:

To me, it’s insane to think that a non-GMO beet is going to be better for the environment, the world, or the consumer.

But Beyer says he’ll do it if he needs to.

Yeah, if the insanity of the anti-GMO movement keeps driving the market, farmers will respond.

But activists should stop pretending that they're doing any of this for benefit of the environment or the farmers. Because clearly, they're not.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

you are such a good cheerleader, Joan!
come on team!

Joan Conrow said...

Yes, go Team Science! Go Team Reality! Go Team Truth!

Anonymous said...

what is the truth? Rise up activist, continue your efforts for the truth! Regarding gmos, i don't think we know the actual truth! There's much more to discover! Use the cautionary principle and choose foods that your grandparents chose to eat like 50 years ago!

Anonymous said...

Or eat todays food and live longer than your grandparents

Anonymous said...

10:17, Here's something to ponder from someone whose grandparents passed on over fifty years ago. They lived long enough to experience modern supermarkets with fruits and vegetables available year-round that they had never known in their youth. They didn't mourn the lost days of "putting up" pickled cabbages and storing potatoes in root cellars. They felt lucky that modern agriculture and refrigerated transport made more foods available and more nutrition possible. Would my grandparents choose to eat, as you propose, like their grandparents did -- say, in Ireland circa 1850? No, those grandparents fled Ireland, its poorhouses, and the Potato Famine. Now, of course, there's a GE potato that's resistant to late-stage potato blight. I call that progress. I have a hunch my great-grandparents would, too. People are funny that way. Given the option of starvation or life, they choose life. And so we have a great many Irish-Americans, though the population of Ireland today is still less than it was in the 1840s. You're right about one thing, though. There's much more to discover! Cheers!

Anonymous said...

@ 10:17. If you're going to "rise up," at least know that's it's the precautionary principle, otherwise you appear to be just another poorly educated anti-GMO activist.

Anonymous said...

U.N. experts find weed killer glyphosate unlikely to cause cancer:

http://in.reuters.com/article/health-who-glyphosate-idINKCN0Y71IK

Anonymous said...

So sad that companies like Hershey are caving to ignorance and fear, not basing their decisions on science. They should take a lesson from the Girl Scouts.

Anonymous said...

@10:17 stop the dangerous romanticization of the past. Our grandparents are what they could afford, there was little choice involved. The food was often monotonous, over or under processed, of dubious provenance, and sometimes downright dangerous. Humans love far longer and healthier lives, in general, than they did 50 years ago. And yes, it's thanks to science.

Robin said...

This is a very sad situation and only points out the utter scientific ignorance of the anti GMO crowd. Sucrose is sucrose whether is comes from cane or beets. It is a pure substance (well, at least 99%). Even more absurd is that non-GMO, "organic" salt (sodium chloride to you antis) is now being sold. Say what?

Anonymous said...

I don't think any of the nut cases understand how little sugar depends on pesticides or fertilizer. Likely the food portion of the fields uses less than any other crop.The pesticides were used for ditches and roads. Sugar is tough.

Anonymous said...

I don't think any of the nut cases understand how little sugar depends on pesticides or fertilizer. Likely the food portion of the fields uses less than any other crop.The pesticides were used for ditches and roads. Sugar is tough.

Anonymous said...

Apologies for the typos. "Ate" and "live" vs "are" and "love"

Anonymous said...

Hey Joan, one thing I think it is important for us to communicate is that there is no such thing as gmo sugar. Sucrose is a naturally occurring chemical compound most often found in the plants we commonly use to produce sugar (beets and cane). Since table sugar is nothing but a chemical compound it does not contain any traces of dna, and therefore, from a scientific perspective, sugar is sugar no matter what source we derive it from. Here is a quick read on it you might want to share with your readers.

https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/12/14/myth-busting-no-thing-gmo-sugar/

Anonymous said...

Anything grown on "for profit" big land is evil. Corn, Sugar. These people are against the big land owners, pure and simple.
But again, put A Fistte or Da Hoos in the back of a pick-up and take a run to any Mauka field, sabedong or kali all day and then they will see what part of taking care of land is. First off, they will say "Oh it is soooo big and hot and dusty. Oooo Gary lookee, a pig. Will he bite us?""
Big land takes an army just to keep the jungle out and the hana wai ditches open.
Farming is NOT just the cute little 5 acre boutique gardens in the NS. BTW these NS "farmers" have no profit incentive, their land is worth millions, just as a "farm dwelling". There is no critical need to turn a profit.
Big land has huge taxes and enormous obligations and loyalty to their employees.
NS employees are usually "day labor" paid in cash or in exchange for a place to pitch a tent.
Love your big land owner. They keep the open fields open. But push too hard and they will build Ag estates.

Anonymous said...

Joan you have sold your soul to the Devil. How much is the GMO lobby paying you? Is it enough to justify the poisoning of west Kauai and its people??

Anonymous said...

Lol. Is that why 13 Filipinos had to die for plantation Luna to stop beating them and to get better conditions and pay? What about the evictions in the 1970 and 80's? What about the separations by race and camp stores that took the pay? What about the fact that many laborers returned to their countries impoverished? Plantation life was great if you were a Luna, White, or owned a store. Conditions improved after Ww2 when things were modernized and schools, supermarkets, beauty salons and movie theaters started to appear to gin up the plantation population for statehood. South America put Hawaii sugar out of business in the sixties and then they began evicting them. Using a few cute Filipino words doesn't make you "in-the-know". Stop romanticizing it.

On the other hand NS organic farms are filthy disease infested open sewer white slave labor camps and should all be shut down immediately by the DOH.

Joan Conrow said...

@7:50 --Ah, the typical misinformed rant of an anti-GMO activist. The GMO lobby isn't paying me anything, and westsiders aren't being poisoned -- at least, not by GM agriculture. Maybe their own ice use, yeah. But not GMOs.

Anonymous said...

One of the extreme circumstances for the future when there is no "middle class". Will the very rich clean the toilets at the airport? Will they be playing music to entertain the tourist? Will they be the official greeters with name cards and Plumeria leis? Who will to their yards? Better yet, who will patch the pot holes and keep the branches from scratching your Mercedes or Hummers? Who will process your legal documents? What, no teachers? Home school? Is this the school that got he PRINCIPAL relocated? Anybody for hard dirty work?

Anonymous said...

Someone once asked me if I knew what GMO meant. I did not know how to answer him. He told me "taste good". I had to laugh.

Anonymous said...

It's true. The NS gentleman (perverts) prey on woofers. They prey on the female woofers and make them stay in the house they live in and be their sex slaves.

This is the dark secret of the NS gentleman (pervert) farms/gardens.

They take advantage of these people who have no place to go or live in Kauai and other islands.

The wealthy treat these people like third world country slaves.

If you don't believe me then just investigate or ask some of the people who have popped a tent in those rich lads lands.

Anonymous said...

I agree an undercover full scale investigation. It is disgusting what is going on. The below third world conditions are appalling. They are now charging hundreds of dollars to rent out green molded disease infested tents to the slaves who revolt and get part time jobs and people crap in open pits and guzzle non-potable water. Shut these down. And I supported 2491 but I will never support this ever.

Anonymous said...

Northshore Faux Gentleman farm/gardens:

I tired to tell you all even the dirty syndicate pigs in KPD Used the female woofers to set people up and frame them.

It's a huge slave trafficking business.

Anonymous said...

Back in our grandparents day people died at age 40 and many died at birth.

Be happy we are living longer and have access to proper health care.

Anti gmo crowd I have noticed are majority spiked white people who moved here and have no respect for the locals who live here.