Tag Archives: Biotech

Government, Science, Sustainability

We Are Unwilling To Be Led To The Slaughter

2 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

I was part of a four-person panel at the recent GMO Summit. I was spokesperson for the farmer group that organized a convoy around the County building a short time ago. The others were

  • Kamana Beamer, who gave the cultural perspective, which is the long term view of things
  • Hector Valenzuela, who presented a negative view of biotechnology
  • Dr. Dennis Gonsalves, who gave a pro-GMO point-of-view.

Three of the speakers, then, all coming from different perspectives, were pro-GMO. I will ask the speakers if they are willing to give a synopsis of their presentation, and if so, I will post them here.

As farmers, our primary concern is that banning the use of GMOs only on Hawai‘i Island, while allowing them to be used on the other Hawaiian islands, will slowly but surely drive us out of business. We are unwilling to be led to the slaughter.

Here is what I presented at the GMO Summit:

Aloha. I am Richard Ha. Although we have a farm, I am here today as a representative of Hawaii Farmers and Ranchers United. This is a spontaneous farmer group that recently organized a convoy of more than 50 cattle, papaya and other farm trucks, as well as nearly 200 farmers, around the County building. It consists of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association, the Big Island Banana Growers Association, the Big Island Cattlemen’s Council, the Hawaii Floriculture and Nursery Association and various Farm Bureau chapters.

In all my time in farming, I have never seen farmers so united and concerned about one issue. Why are they so concerned? Because they feel their survival is at stake.

Farmers are price takers, not price makers, and when the cost of energy quadrupled in the last 10 years, we farmers could not increase our prices to cover the increase in cost. We know how vulnerable we are to rising oil prices. The anti-GMO bill takes away future cost-saving tools for farming.

Here’s a reality check on growing food.

Hawai‘i is located in the humid subtropics and it is a weed, bug and plant-disease paradise. We have no winter here to help us kill off bugs.

Farmers are not pesticide-crazed sprayers of toxic chemicals. They use cost-effective solutions to the pest problems of their particular crops. They use what’s least toxic, because they don’t want to harm themselves. They don’t overspray, because that wastes money. Farmers have common sense.

When we send farmers into battle against the pests, don’t shoot arrows at their backs. When we send them into battle against pests that use cannons, don’t send them out with swords and clubs.

If we do not want the large biotech companies to grow corn for seed, then write a bill that prohibits that. If we do not want GMO foods at all, then start with corn flakes and soda and ban those.

Consider these facts:

  • Hawai‘i imports more than 85 percent of its food. That’s almost all of our food.
  • Hawaii uses oil to generate more than 70 percent of its electricity. The U.S. mainland, which is both our supplier and our competitor, uses oil for only 2 percent of its electricity – so its costs are not skyrocketing from rising oil prices as much as ours are.
  • The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and will probably go higher.
  • As oil prices rise, Hawai‘i becomes less and less food secure.

These are the realities that Big Island farmers face every day. We must be one of the least food secure places in the world.

“Food security” means being able to get adequate and sufficient food, regardless of where it comes from. These days, it comes from all over the world. We are able to buy food from all over because money comes into our economy from the outside, with military spending and tourism being primary contributors. That provides us with money to pay for general services to our society and to buy our food.

Food security involves farmers farming. If the farmer makes money, the farmers will farm. And if the farmers make money, then their products will be competitive with imported foods. And that will mean lower cost foods for all.

Try to encourage those things that gives our farmers a competitive advantage. Leverage our sun that shines all year long. Don’t ban GMO corn that can give our cattle ranchers a fighting chance.

Maybe we can grow the grain that will encourage poultry farms and fish, too.

If we had poultry and cattle manure, our organic farmers would have a nitrogen source that could help them produce food for a profit.

Let’s all sit down and talk. Farmers are not the enemy.

In the 1800s, our Hawaiian population went from an estimated 700,000 to 50,000. We almost went extinct.

I’m sure they would have used new technology vaccines if they had been available.

Farmers have looked at all sides of the argument and have come down on the side of peer-reviewed science.

I would like to make one farmer observation about pesticides. The
dose makes the poison. Margaret Wille said she wants to ban the use of Roundup. Senator Ruderman introduced a bill to ban Roundup last session.

Let’s say there is a four-foot patch of weeds that one wants to control using Roundup. The amount of spray needed, which is already diluted 50-1 with water, is less than the thickness of a piece of typing paper. By contrast, rainfall in one year at Pepe‘ekeo
would result in a column of water 10 feet high over that spot. As I said, the dose makes the poison.

Previous to Roundup, farmers here used Paraquat, which is a skull-and-crossbones grass poison.

We don’t want to go back to that. We need a little bit of common sense here.

Here are three areas of concern to farmers:

  1. Farmers on the other islands would be able to use new biotech seeds, while Big Island farmers would not. I just saw where a British researcher said he developed a technique that would give every plant the ability to fix nitrogen from air. But if other
    islands could use it and we could not, this would eventually put Big Island farmers out of business. The Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (TSWV)  threatens the State’s tomato industry, and there is a biotech solution that is ready to be implemented. Again, if other islands can use it while while Big Islanders cannot, this will eventually drive Big Island tomato farmers out of business.
  2. Under Brenda Ford’s bill, papaya and GMO corn farmers and ranchers have 30 months to get out of those crops or they risk 30 days in jail. Making criminals of farmers is just beyond belief.
  3. It isn’t the strongest or smartest that survive, but the ones that can adapt to change. This saying is attributed to Charles Darwin.

Although the bills by Ford and Wille might seem new and different and brave, below the surface they both prevent adapting to change. And that is one of the main reasons why farmers are against both attempts to prevent the planting of bioengineered
plants.

Farmers and ranchers have an abundance of common sense. My dad was a farmer. He only went to the sixth grade, but when I was 10 years old, he told me: “Find two solutions for every problem and then find one more just in case.”

He said, There are thousand reasons why no can. I looking for the one reason why CAN adapt to change.

Aquaponics, Family of Farms, Food Security, Hydroelectric, Lowering Electric Rates, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy Sources, Sustainability, Water

State of the Farm Report

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Richard Ha writes:

Yesterday at the farm I had a meeting with all our workers. It was an update on where we have been and where we are going.

Where we’ve been

The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and those who could pass on the cost did. Those who could not pass on the cost ended up paying more. Farmers are price takers, not price makers, so farmers’ costs increased more than their prices.

Anticipating higher electricity prices, we lobbied for and passed a law that the Department of Agriculture create a new farm loan program that farmers could use for renewable energy purposes. Then we started to design a hydroelectricity program to stabilize our electricity costs.

Where we are today

The hydroelectricity project is within weeks of completion. With the combination of a farm loan and a grant from the Department of Energy, we will stabilize our electricity price at 40 percent less than we pay today.

The pipe that transports the water appears to me like it will last for more than 100 years. After the loan is paid off, our electricity will be practically free for more than 60 years.

Where we are going

We are taking advantage of our resources – free water and stable electricity costs – by working with area farmers to help each other grow more food.

What kind of food? Responding to consumer demand, we want to
produce food with a wide variety of nutritional content, including protein, via aquaculture.

In order to be sustainable, the feed-based protein must be vegetation-based. And since the building block of protein is nitrogen, we are looking for an adequate nitrogen source. Unused, wasted electricity can be used to make ammonia, which is a nitrogen fertilizer and, like a battery, can be used to store energy.

What does the future
look like?

Other than stable electricity, which would help us, our serious
concern is the anti-GMO Bill 79. It seeks to ban any new biotech solutions to farmers’ problems on the Big Island. The result is that the rest of the counties and the nation would be able to use new tools for more successful farming, and the Big Island would not.

What would happen is that Big Island farmers would become
less competitive, which would put even more pressure on those already at the bottom of the pay scale. It would result in higher food costs, making consumers less able to support local farmers.

The folks pushing for the anti-GMO bill have not talked to farmers, and they have no clue that this bill would make Hawai‘i less food
secure. The bottom line is that food security involves farmers farming. If the farmers make money, the farmers will farm. If not, they will quit.

Aquaponics, Food Security, Government

Anti-GMO Bill 79, Farmers & Science

2 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

Hawai‘i County Councilmember Margaret Wille is planning to
resubmit an anti-GMO bill – because, she says, her fellow council members generally recognize there is a need to restrict any further introduction of GMOs here on the Big Island.

And yet, after talking to the other council members, farmers don’t think Councilmember Wille is correct about that.

Note, too, that she has not bothered to meet with the farmer
groups affected – those who produce most of the food grown here on the island – and we can only assume she does not want their input.

In an earlier note, Wille indicated that if GMO crops were allowed, that would be the end of organic, natural farming and permaculture farming.

Actually, the reason organic farming does not produce more food is actually because its cost of production is very high. This would not change with Councilmember Wille’s bill.

The result of her bill passing would actually be more expensive food for the Big Island’s people.

One of the basic reasons Bill 79 is not fair to conventional farming is because farmers on other islands would be allowed to use new biotech seeds for nutrition improvement, disease prevention, heat tolerance and other labor and cost saving methods, while Big Island farmers would not be able to do so.

Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus is an example of a very serious tomato
disease. If farmers on other islands are allowed biotech solutions to such diseases, while Big Island farmers are not, that could be the difference between Big Island tomato farmers surviving or not.

It could also be the difference between whether conventional farmers continue farming, or do not. Yet Councilperson Wille has chosen to not even meet with farmers.

In this morning’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Maria Gallo
wrote an excellent commentary on genetically modified foods. She is Dean of the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources and Director of Research and the Tropical Extension Service at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa. She writes from a knowledgeable, scientific background.

Not all genetically modified foods the same and a blanket ban on them would be misguided

By Maria Gallo

For years, I taught a course on genetically modified organisms.

First, we covered the biology behind GMOs so that students had the science background. Then we described agricultural systems so that they understood the challenges facing food production.

Next, we reviewed the applications of GMOs so that they knew the products being used along with their benefits and risks. And last, we discussed the controversy surrounding GMOs.

The objective was to develop students’ critical thinking skills so that they could make informed decisions…. Read the rest (subscription required)

Gallo points out that the GM technique itself is not harmful, and that, in fact, new GM traits aim to do things like reduce how much water crops use, through drought tolerance; to reduce saturated fats and allergens in foods, and to increase disease-fighting nutrients in food. She warns that a blanket ban on GMOs in Hawai‘i, when we are already in a position of so little food self-sufficiency, would be short sighted.

In yesterday’s Hawai‘i Tribune-Herald, Michael Shintaku had a letter to the editor along these same lines. He points out that “Supporters of this bill were surprised that so many farmers rose in opposition,” and says, “Please talk to a farmer before supporting these bills.” He makes some excellent points. From his letter:

“Bill 79 and efforts like it are terrible mistakes. It is fear-based legislation that comes from the misunderstanding that biotechnology is too dangerous to use…. Biotechnology is young, and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.”

“Bill 79 would condemn all biotechnological solutions based on irrational fear….There is no credible argument on this point in the scientific community. This issue is pretty much settled.”

He asks that we “Please allow Big Island farmers, who are among our best friends and neighbors, to use the best technology available.”

Food Security, Peak Oil, Sustainability

Growing Food: A Reality Check

1 Comment

Richard Ha writes: 

Hawai‘i is located in the humid subtropics and it is a weed, bug and plant-disease paradise. We have no winter here to help us kill off
bugs.

Farmers are not pesticide-crazed sprayers of toxic chemicals. They use cost-effective solutions to the pest problems of their particular crops. They use what’s least toxic, because they don’t want to harm themselves. They don’t overspray, because that wastes money. Farmers have common sense.

When we send farmers into battle against the pests, don’t shoot arrows at their backs. When we send them into battle against pests that use cannons, don’t send them out with swords and clubs.

If we do not want the large biotech companies to grow corn for seed, then write a bill that prohibits that. If we do not want GMO foods at all, then start with corn flakes and soda and ban those.

Consider these facts:

• Hawai‘i imports more than 85 percent of its food. That’s almost all of our food.

• Hawaii uses oil to generate more than 70 percent of its electricity. The U.S. mainland, which is both our supplier and our competitor, uses oil for only 2 percent of its electricity – so its costs are not skyrocketing from rising oil prices as much as ours are.

• The price of oil has quadrupled in the last 10 years, and will probably go higher.

• As oil prices rise, Hawai‘i becomes less and less food secure.

These are the realities that Big Island farmers face every day. We must be one of the least food secure places in the world.

From my blog post Definitions: Food Security vs. Food Self-Sufficiency:

“Food security” means being able to get adequate and sufficient food, regardless of where it comes from. These days, it comes from all over the world. We are able to buy food from all over because money comes into our economy from the outside, with military spending and tourism being primary contributors. That provides us with money to pay for general services to our society and to buy our food.

Food security involves farmers farming. If the farmer makes money, the farmers will farm. And if the farmers make money, then their products will be competitive with imported foods. And that will mean lower cost foods for all.

Try to encourage those things that gives our farmers a competitive advantage. Leverage our sun that shines all year long. Don’t ban GMO corn that can give our cattle ranchers a fighting chance.

Maybe we can grow the grain that will encourage poultry farms and fish, too.

If we had poultry and cattle manure, our organic farmers would have a nitrogen source that could help them produce food for a profit.

Let’s all sit down and talk. Farmers are not the enemy.

Biofuel, Food Security

Monsanto Not Coming to Big Island

2 Comments

Richard Ha writes:

Monsanto is coming, Monsanto is coming. Hide the women and children!

Not.

Did you see the letter to the editor from the Monsanto spokesman, Alan Takemoto, in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald last month? He testified to the fact that the reason Monsanto is not on the Big Island is that this island does not have the combination of factors they need, like deep soil, plenty of sunshine, irrigation and flat lands. It’s a practical thing. He wrote that they do not own land or even lease land here.

The Aina Koa Pono biofuel project proves this point. The Ka‘u bio fuel project, which plans to grow crops to make biofuel, needs a huge subsidy or it won’t work. They are even trying to hide the fact that we the people will pay $200/barrel for the biofuel.

So why, again, are we banning all future biotech crops? There was a front page article in the Hawaii Tribune-Herald a few days ago saying that Hawai‘i seniors have the best prospects for quality of life and length of life in the entire nation. And the American Medical Association, at its 2012 annual meeting, said there is no substantial difference between crops that are conventionally bred and those developed from biotechnology. I trust the doctors.

The real problem is this: In a world of finite resources, how are we going to provide our people with affordable food? For this, we need, simply, farmers farming. All kinds of farmers need to contribute. And farmers need to make money so they will keep farming.

Let’s regroup, form a task force of knowledgeable stakeholders, and work toward this goal.

We need to work together in the spirit of aloha.