People in California Already Have the Power
to Decide the Quality of their Food, Air and Water

The number of people now belonging to Organic Consumers Assocations in California exceeds 90,000, a membership nearly three times larger than that of one of California's most influential lobbyists, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.

There are more than 2000 Certified Organic Farmers in California. There are 524 officially recognized Farmers' Markets in the State.

Across the United States the amount of acreage that's devoted to organic food has grown from 935,450 in 1992 to 4,003,973 in 2005 During the same span organic livestock has increased almost 2000%--from 11,647 to 229,788. Organic poultry has increased more than 22,000%--from 61,363 to 14,193,270!

In California the consumption of organic food has increased hugely, too. Between 2000 and 2005 the total sales of organic bee, dairy, livestock, poultry products in the State grew more than 600%--from $12,121,323 to $82,767,951

The people of California and the U. S. clearly recognize that organic food is the way to go for a sustainable future.

All that's lacking for our choices to have broad effect are comparable increases in our economic and political organization and influence.

The 21st Century Is an Age of Crises
That Requires Cooperative Partnerships

Every day, the combination of a severely changing climate and a deepening shortage of resources causes crises in California, crises that can only be answered by local, cooperative control of matters basic to 21st-century life.

2008's headlines tell a story of weather extremes across the U. S. Floods drown crops in the Midwest. Droughts parch the Southwest. Tornadoes multiply in number year by year. On June 25, 2008, wildfires in California were the unprecedented total of 1001.

At the same time, one gallon of Regular gas costs over $4.50 and is predicted to cost over $7 by 2010. Prices of food rise correspondently. Wages and salaries for California's middle-class, however, are falling further against inflation, and the U. S. dollar has never been valued less outside this nation.

We need basic solutions. We need local control of our economies and environment.

We need food that's grown close to its markets. We need to minimize costs for oil and gas, fertilizers and pesticides. We need work that involves production of goods rather than speculation on debts. We need to be sure of the contents in sprays (see 'The LBAM Example') and to rid our air of its poisonous haze. We need to know for sure, through local examination and regulation, that what we eat and drink is safe and nutritious (see 'Global GMO Food').

The surest way to meet these needs and accomplish these goals is to further organize ourselves (as the many 'Organic Victories' here show).

Local Control of Pesticides: The LBAM Example

March-August 2007: A Sudden 'Emergency'

MARCH 2007: Supposed first finding of a Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) in California, as confirmed by the California Department of Agriculture (CDFA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The LBAM is a leaf-roller that is about 1/4-inch wide. It's virtually indistinguishable from more than 50 other moths. According to Dr. James Carey, an entomologist at the University of Calfornia, the LBAM has likely lived and spread in California for more than 40 years without damaging crops.

MAY 2, 2007: The USDA declares an LBAM-related quarantine, choking off growers' ability to earn unless they accept USDA/CDFA-ordered pesticides.

JULY 24, 2007: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants an 'emergency exemption' that allows immediate aerial spraying of CheckMate-brand pesticides for 'eradication' of the LBAM without an Environmental Impact Report or other, normal precautions.

Check-Mate products' labels warn of their toxic dangers. Spraying of the CheckMate pesticides dispenses plastic microcapsules that then emit their ingredients in time-release fashion.

Check-Mate is made by the Suterra Corporaton, owned by Stewart Resnick, a major donor to Republican and Democrat candidates ($143K to Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor of California in 2006). Resnick's Roll International Corporation also 'owns Paramount Farms, the world's largest grower of almonds and pistachios, and Paramount Citrus, one of the largest citrus producers in the United States', according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

September-November 2007: Attacks from the Air

Days or nights of spraying urban areas of California's Central Coast by airplanes of Dynamic Aviation, a U. S. Defense Dept. contractor that's based in Virginia, follow.

In early September Monterey, Carmel and Pacific Grove are sprayed with CheckMate OLR-F. In late October spraying of Monterey County with CheckMate LBAM-F begins after a lawsuit by Central Coast citizens is overriden by the USDA/CDFA.

In early November Santa Cruz and nearby communities are sprayed with CheckMate LBAM-F.

Hotel workers compare the overhead dosings (from 300 to 500 feet above ground) to aerial bombing. 643 individual reports of illness from the spray are registered in the two Counties, most of the illnesses respiratory. Hundreds of dead birds wash up on beaches. Surfers report ear and sinus infections and the worst water ever offshore.

The CDFA admits that no provable inhibition of LBAM mating has come from the spraying.

January-June 2008:
Reason and Resistance Win a Partial Victory

JANUARY 24, 2007: The CDFA announces $74.9 million more from the USDA for 'eradication' of the LBAM. It plans aerial spraying of at least six more Counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo) as well as more spraying of Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, beginning in June 2008 and proceeding once-per-month for nine months a year through 2010.

FEBRUARY-JUNE 2008: Activists in targeted communities organize to oppose LBAM spraying. Town Hall meetings and radio talk-shows quiz California Secretary of Agriculture A. G. Kawamura. Attorneys, physicians and realtors note the losses and liabilities that will come from LBAM spraying. County and Municipal governments pass Resolutions that oppose the aerial spray. On April 22 Arnold Schwarzenegger receives thousands of anti-spray phone-calls and e-mails. On April 24 and May 12, Superior Court Judges in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties (Paul Burdick and Robert O'Farrell respectively) decide against further LBAM spraying until Environmental Impact Reports and other precautions are completed. Activists increase their efforts and numbers. Thousands march in Marin County and San Francisco. By June of 2008 a total of 27 County and Municipals governments officially oppose aerial LBAM spraying.

JUNE 19, 2008: CDFA spokesperson Steve Lyle announces that the Department is suspending plans for aerial anti-LBAM spraying of urban areas.

The USDA/CDFA, however, still plan massive use of twist-ties on public and private lands; ground spraying by pump-trucks; and the aerial distribution of as many as 20,000,000 sterile moths per day, a program that's to begin in 2009.

And yet neither Department can point to any LBAM crop-damage to justify their 'emergency'.

CDFA spokesperson Jay Van Rein tells the Santa Cruz Sentinel: "The evidence is pretty clear at this point that we've contained the infestation with activities already in place. The infestation now is essentially where it was when we found it in March of 2007."

The Future

Activists remain committed to review and approval at a County and Municipal level of any use of pesticides. They look to Mendocino County's 2004 ban of GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) food-production within that County as an example. They realize that local control of our food-supply is literally vital.

You can learn more about organizations that opposed aerial LBAM spraying through these sites: LBAMspray.com, stopthespray.org, cassonline.org, stopthespraymarin.org, pesticidewatch.org.

Food as Fuel: Local Organic or Global GMO?

Global Monopolies Reach across All Fields

Big Oil is as Big Ag as is Big Chem as is Big Media: the concentration of power among global producers and distributors of pesticides, fertilizers, and food rivals that of oil-and-gas and mass-media corporations over the past 25 years. A handful of multinational corporations (MNCs) hold dominant power.

According to Malaysian journalist Anil Netto, 'Syngenta, Bayer, Monsanto, BASF, Dow and Dupont together control 85%' of the annual pesticide market valued at $30 billion US dollars.'

Netto's piece from December 2007, 'MNCs Gaining Total Control over Farming', also states: 'Three companies--Cargill, Archer Daniels, Bunge--control nearly 90 per cent of global grain trade while Dupont and Monsanto dominate the global seed market. Eleven firms account for about half the world sales of seeds, of which about a quarter are genetically engineered seeds.'

Such dominant power can make tyrannical decisions. In 2003 ABC News reported that 92% of the more than 1000 people in its national poll wanted identifying labels on food that was grown with GMOs. All nations of the European Union require such labeling. None of such labeling has so far come from producers and sellers who use GMOs in the U.S.

Such interlocking power also allows contamination that profits the contaminator. Between 1996 and 2006 the amount of acres planted with GMO-infused crops grew 60-fold worldwide, to 1. 4 billion acres. This increase made 'biotech crops... the fastest adopted crop technology in recent history', wrote the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications. The United States accounts for more than 65% of the world's GMO croplands. According to the Non-GMO Project, 'It is currently estimated that in the U. S., 61% of corn, 89% of soybeans, 83% of cotton and 75% of canola grown are genetically modified.'

The "drift" of seeds and pesticides for GMO crops affects neighboring and distant areas. Also, the simple presence of GMO crops invades the DNA of subsequent seeds that are supposed to be 'traditional' and not 'biotech'. The Union of Concerned Scientists analyzed two laboratories' results from testing in 2004: 'The most conservative expression of the combined results is that transgenically derived DNA was detected in 50% of the corn, 50% of the soybean, and 83% of the canola varieties tested.'

In short, the 'traditional' became artificial by association, and then went into people's guts.

Double-Good for Monsanto, Not So Good for Us

Like CheckMate's sprays for the LBAM, Big Ag's GMO crops are proving to be not so good in their delivery of performance.

The Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth brought out a study in February 2008 that's titled 'Who Benefits from GM Crops?: The Rise in Pesticide Use.'

This study points out: 'Roundup Ready soybeams, the world's most widely planted GM crop, have 6% lower yield than conventional soy, according to University of Nebraska researchers.' These soybeans are, however, specifically 'Ready' for pesticides made by Monsanto. The study notes: 'Four of every five acres of GM crops worldwide are Monsanto's Roundup Ready varieties, designed specifically for use with glyphosphate, the weed-killing chemical that Monsanto sells under the name of Roundup.'

The multiplying use of Roundup's glyphosphate, a use corresponding with that 60-fold increase in GMO croplands, has produced new mutations: weeds resistant to Roundup and dosed now with increasing amounts of another toxic chemical, 2.4-D, which was a part of the Vietnam War's deforming, deranging and killing defoliant, Agent Orange.

In 2007 Monsanto's profits from the Roundup pesticide alone were about $1 billion, the New York Times reported. Cargill's 2007 profits were up 36% to $2,340,000 and Archer Daniel Midland's 2007 profits were up 67% to $2,200,000 billion.

And Worst for a Global Food Supply.

The triple whammy that Big Ag and Big Chem hold over the world's public in the 21st century (controlling seeds, crops and pesticides) especially slams growers and consumers of organic food.

While the U.S. people steadily increase their choice of organic food, the number of wholesale distributors of such food has fallen from 28 in 1982 to 3 in 2005. Dozens of organic producers have been bought by major food-processing corporations (see Professor Phillip Howard's graphic above). And the "drift" goes on.

In 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote: 'Transgenic contamination of traditional seed varieties poses a special threat to the future of organic agriculture, an increasing important sector of U. S. agricultureÉ. Organic farmers strive to produce crops that are free of transgenically derived DNA. If, through no fault of their own, they are unable to supply such products, they face eroding markets. The ease with which the traditional seed supply can be contaminated with transgenically derived DNA unfairly frustrates organic farmers seeking to deliver high-quality products.'

And yet- as our closing shows- a countervailing force of success-stories among growers and consumers of organic food is also rising: networks that are like oases and lifelines. By combining our powers we can win a sustainable future.

Organic Victories

1997-2006 'In just one decade, from 1997 to 2006, sales of organic food have grown by nearly 80 percent to $17.7 billion' in the U.S.
Raleigh News and Observer (North Carolina)

1998-2007 The Organic Valley group of cooperative organic farmers, begun by seven Wisconsin farms in 1988, grows its sales from $15 million in 1998 to $432.5 million in 2007--and grows to more than 1200 farms across the U.S.

2000-2001 The Sacramento Natural Foods Cooperative, begun in 1972, adopts through input from more than 2000 owner-members and ultimate consensus a strategic plan 'for the future of the business they own together.' The Sac. Coop now has more than 9000 members and a 'community-run' farmer's market in low-income Del Paseo Heights.

2003 'In a nationwide 2003 survey, 69% of the consumers responded that they were more likely to purchase food produced by a farmer-owned cooperative, and 64% agreed that food produced by a farmer-owned coooperative was of better quality that food produced by other types of companies.'
Shermain Hardesty,
Univ. of California at Davis

2004 Mendocino County in northern California passes Measure H, becoming the first county in the United States to render it "unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation to propagate, cultivate, raise, or grow genetically modified organisms." Trinity, Marin, and Santa Cruz Counties follow with similar anti-GMO measures in California.

2004-2005 Bio-diesel use across the U.S. increases from 250 to 750 million gallons.

2005-2006 Local and national resistance defeats a California legislative measure (Senate Bill 1056) that would have removed Counties' ability to prohibit GMO crops. "The further you get away from the local level, the more trouble it will cause," says Karen Keene, an advocate for the League of Calfornia Cities.

2006 The Black-owned Federation of Southern Cooperatives records 73,516 loans for $211.4 million by its credit-unions over 40 years.

2007 The Organic Consumers Association and allies win an abandonment by Monsanto of of its GE RoundUp Ready wheat and an abandonment by Starbuck's of any milk adulterated by recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone.

2007 Co-op America's '1% in Community Campaign' moves 'nearly $1 billion into low-income communities - creating jobs, affordable housing and locally owned businesses.'

2007-2008 'April 2007-2008 dry grocery dollar sales growth in organics was 10 times greater than non-organics, by a 28.8% to 2.8% comparison.' Flex News, July 14, 2008

2008 Farmers dispossessed of their 14 acres in South Central Los Angeles begin planting and harvesting nearby Bakersfield, CA.

2008 The Davis Co-op (8000 members in a city of 65,000) maintains sponsorship of an instructional Farmers Market on the UC-Davis campus.

Resources: Organizations

Consumers

Organic Consumers Association (U.S.), 6771 S. Silver Hill Dr., Finland, Minnesota 55603   organicconsumers.org   218-226-4164

International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) Bonn, Germany   www.ifoam.org   49-228-92650-10.

Co-op America 1612 K Street NW, Suite 600, Washington DC 20006   www.coopamerica.org   800-584-7336

Non-GMO Project 2599 Huntington Dr., Upland, CA 91786   www.nongmoproject.org   909-626-0809

Farmers and Grocers

Organic Trade Association POB 547, Greenfield, MA 01302 www.howtogoorganic.com   413-774-7511

National Cooperative Grocers Association 389 E. College St., Iowa City, IA 52240   www.ncga.coop   319-466-9029

California Certified Organic Farmers 2155 Delaware Avenue, Suite 150, Santa Cruz, CA 95060   www.ccof.org   831-423-2263

South Central Farmers 1702 E. 41st St., Los Angeles 90058 www.southcentralfarmers.com   800-249-5240

Federation of Southern Cooperatives 2769 Church St., East Point, GA 30344   www.federation.coop   404-765-0991

Alternatives to Pesticides

Pesticide Action Network North America 49 Powell St., Ste. 500, San Francsico, CA 94102   www.panna.org   415-981-1771

Pesticide Watch 1107 9th St., Ste. 601, Sacramento, CA 95814   pesticidewatch.org   916-551-1883

California Alliance to Stop the Spray and many allied organizations and websites (LBAMSpray.com, stopthespray.org, 1hope.org, stopthespraymarin.org, playnotspray.org, cassonline.org, ...) Be sure to watch the excellent videos, including "It'll Stay" and "Into the Sky") 200 Washington St., Ste 170, Santa Cruz, CA 95060   831-464-1777

Sponsored by Organic Valley,
text and design by Don Paul