Additional testimony in Support of Bill 79 to ban new GMO food crops in Hawaii County
Testimony in support of Bill 79 to ban new GMO food crops in Hawaii County
July 2, 2013
Henry Kissinger said, “Control oil and you control nations. Control food and you control the people.”
Bill 79 is about who is going to control food crops in Hawaii County: our local people or transnational corporations.
In the last 100 years, especially in the last 50 years with the rise of the corporate control of our food system, we have seen the following: loss of seed diversity, soil being destroyed, the poisoning of our soil, water and natural resources, the decrease in the nutritional value of food, real farmers and farm workers working longer hours and making less. The only thing that has gone up is the profits of transnational corporations.
In Hawaii, from 100 years of sugar we have seen the unintended consequences of some of our best top soil ending up in the ocean from erosion and run off, contamination of our soil with arsenic and other toxins, and pesticides in our drinking water.
If our earth survives the effects of human made climate change and global warming, the future of farming will not be oil/chemical, monocrop, industrial based, and profit driven agribusiness. The future of farming will be small-scale organic, a return to nature with complete respect for natural processes and the environment. It will be about respect for the farmer, air, land, and water, and safe and nutritious food. It will be about reverence for, and interdependence with, all other species.
Native people the world over talk about the trees being the bones, the soil being the flesh and the rivers and streams the blood of the planet. When we destroy them, we destroy ourselves. We need to listen more to the wisdom of native people.
Genetic Engineering (GE) and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are not part of the natural process. The unintended consequences of GMOs like the consequences of global warming, may be irreparable. Given such possibilities it is time to practice the precautionary principle. It is the pono thing to do for people, plants, and animals, for the land, for the water, the air, for the earth itself.
The big question is one of political will to turn away from the corporate model where everything is viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold for a profit, and begin to restore what we have lost. Passing bill 79 is a step in the right direction.
Jim Albertini
