{"id":123852,"date":"2014-06-12T12:34:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T12:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=123852"},"modified":"2014-06-12T12:34:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T12:34:38","slug":"pesticide-gmo-companies-spend-big-hawaii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/pesticide-gmo-companies-spend-big-hawaii\/","title":{"rendered":"Pesticide and GMO Companies Spend Big in Hawai’i"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hawai’i has become “ground zero” in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping\u00a0<\/span>$146.3 million<\/a>\u00a0a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai’i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms\u00a0<\/span>Syngenta<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Monsanto<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>DuPont Pioneer<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>Dow Chemical<\/a>,\u00a0<\/span>BASF<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>Bayer CropScience<\/a>\u00a0have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into the state’s relatively small political arena.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chemical Conglomerates Retaliate Against Local Democratic Control<\/h2>\n

These\u00a0“Big 6” pesticide and GMO firms<\/a>\u00a0are active on the islands in a big way, making use of the three to four annual growing seasons to develop new GMO seeds more quickly. The development of new GMOs by these pesticide and seed conglomerates goes hand-in-hand with heavy pesticide use in some of the islands’ experimental crop fields, new data show.<\/p>\n

Kaua’i County — consisting primarily of the island of Kaua’i, known as Hawai’i’s “Garden Isle” and home to Waimea Canyon State Park — passed alaw<\/a>\u00a0in November 2013 that\u00a0requires disclosure<\/a>\u00a0of pesticide use and GMO crops sewn by growers and created buffer zones around schools, parks, medical facilities, and private residences. The law is set to go into effect in August 2014.<\/p>\n

Hawai’i County\u00a0banned GMOs<\/a>\u00a0altogether in November 2013, and a Maui County initiative to ban GMOs recentlyobtained enough citizen signatures<\/a>\u00a0to be placed on the November 2014 ballot.<\/p>\n

Since experiencing these setbacks, the big agricultural firms have retaliated in a big way.<\/p>\n

Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer, Agrigenetics (doing business as Dow AgroSciences), and BASF have\u00a0sued Kaua’i<\/a>\u00a0to block its law.<\/p>\n

Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer, and several associated trade groups spent over $50,000 lobbying the state legislature from January through April 2014, as legislators considered bills to override the county laws, according to data from the Hawaii State Ethics Commission (as reported through June 6, 2014) analyzed by the Center for Media and Democracy\/Progressive Inc. (CMD).<\/p>\n

Of these, the Hawai’i Crop Improvement Association (whose\u00a0members include<\/a>\u00a0Dow AgroScience, Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Syngenta, and BASF) had the highest expenditures at $10,800; the powerful national trade association the\u00a0American Chemistry Council<\/a>\u00a0(whose\u00a0members include<\/a>\u00a0BASF, Bayer, Dow, and DuPont) and Syngenta each spent $10,000; and Monsanto spent $8,982.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hawai’i has become “ground zero” in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping\u00a0$146.3 million\u00a0a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai’i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms\u00a0Syngenta,\u00a0Monsanto,\u00a0DuPont Pioneer,\u00a0Dow Chemical,\u00a0BASF, and\u00a0Bayer CropScience\u00a0have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,955],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-123852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}