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Home My WebLink AboutCOM 0271.399 2012-2014 J Yoshimoto COUNTY CLERK" COL �T From: Kea Kea <kristikea @yahoo.com> 2 43 Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 12:29 PM 13 JUL � ' To: jyoshimoto @co.hawaii.hi.us;vpoindexter @co.hawaii.hi.us; "donishi @co.hawaii.hi.us"; "gilagan @co.hawaii.hi.us"; "zkern @co.hawaii.hi.us"; "bford @co.hawaii.hi.us"; "dkanuha @co.hawaii.hi.us"; "keoff @co.hawaii.hi.us"; "mwille @co.hawaii.hi.us" Subject: Fw: Testimony in Support of Bill 79 Aloha Council Members, I tried to send this in earlier, but the testimony link was not working. Mahalo for your time. Kea Kapahua Forwarded Message From: Kea Kea <kristikea @yahoo.com> To: "counciltestimony @co.hawaii.hi.us" <counciltestimony @co.hawaii.hi.us> Sent: Monday, July 1, 2013 11:53 AM Subject: Testimony in Support of Bill 79 Aloha Council Members, I support Bill 79 and I ask you to support Bill 79 as well. I would like to suggest we look at the long term future of Hawaii Island for its residents, farmers and the environment, and to catch the forward thinking vision that we have on this island to be an amazing example to the world to create a self sustaining and economically profitable food and seed haven here in Hawai'i. With education about genetically modified organisms on the rise, about the dangers both environmentally and the potential health risks, we don't want to introduce new GMO crops here. If anything, we want to catch the wave of the future which is not found in industrial genetically engineered farming, but is found in sustainable farming practices and specialty niches. There has been enough growth of transgenic crops on Kauai, Molokai, Maui and Oahu that we need to have a place safe from the biotech monopoly and their open field genetic experimentation and seed growing. Being the island that promotes the non- GMO way of life is a great marketing advantage to boost our tourist industry. The more that people find out that areas in Hawaii are cesspools of undisclosed chemicals and testing grounds for these despised corporate chemical giants posing as friends of farmers, more jobs in the tourist industry will decline, and tourists will spend their vacation dollars elsewhere having a huge negative impact on our economy. We need to have bigger vision. Awareness about GMOs has grown tremendously around the world. Comm. No • 1 Ref. To: dr I Ref. Dote On May 25th 2013 there was a worldwide protest against Monsanto. Over 2 million people turned out for this march in 436 cities and in 52 countries. There is great opposition to genetically modified organisms worldwide and this resistance is growing rapidly as individual states within the US are pushing for labeling laws, 60 countries have labeling laws in place and 27 countries have outright bans on growing genetically engineered crops. Also note that Mendocino, Trinity and Marin counties in CA and San Juan county in WA have banned the growing of GMO crops. This year Monsanto backed out of Europe and prior to that Bayer CropScience, BASF, and Syngenta had already removed their GMO crop businesses from Germany and many other Member States because of resistance to their products. Instead, as statistics show, more people are choosing organic foods more than ever before. Currently the organic market is increasing in value. It's value has tripled since the year 2000. Results from the latest consumer survey in 2013 conducted for the Organic Trade Association (OTA) reveal that U.S. families are becoming increasingly aware of the presence of unlabeled genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in foods in the marketplace, so consumers are turning to organic foods. There is a growing mistrust amongst consumers about safety of eating foods with genetically modified organisms. "According to Market Line, a business information company, the organic food industry will grow by 50% over the next five years in the United States alone. In 2013, it is expected the organic food and beverage market will grow by 8% while the market for conventional food is expected to grow at a meager 2% this year." Even Target will have removed all genetically modified organisms out of their Simply Balanced line of food products by 2014 because of the popularity of organic foods that customers are choosing. Organic agriculture is economically important; it is one of the fastest growing sectors of U.S. agriculture, with sustained growth of approximately 20% per year for the last 15 years (Oberholtzer, et al. 2005). Sales were estimated at $1 billion in 1990 and reached $10 billion in 2003. This is important information for Hawai'i Island. We can look ahead to what the people and the markets are demanding, or stay in an passé enslaved industrial form of monoculture of genetically engineered farming that is unsustainable and unprofitable for everyone. For Hawai'i Island to be profitable in this sector of non-gmo crops and catching the wave of sustainability and economic profitability, we need to look at the incompatibility of genetically modified crops with other crops. Co-existence between genetically modified crops and organic or conventional crops is not possible. Eventually organic and conventional crops will become contaminated by the genetically modified crops. There have been multiple documented examples of unintentional contamination 2 such as two varieties of genetically modified canola found growing in the wild in North Dakota. One being resistant to Monsanto's Round-up herbicide and the other being resistant to Bayer Crop Sciences Liberty herbicide. And a new strain has developed that is now resistant to both herbicides showing the crops had inter bred. There has been genetic contamination of rice crops grown in the United States that shut down exports of rice to Japan and Europe costing farmers millions of dollars in losses. Most recently a strain of Monsanto's genetically modified round-up ready wheat was found in an Oregon wheat field shutting down the export of wheat to the two largest buyers of US wheat, Japan and South Korea valued from $300 million to $500 million dollars. This is just the tip of the iceberg. As we can see and as has been demonstrated in the USDA Office of Inspector General audit of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) that according to the audit "We concluded that APHIS' current regulations, policies, and procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology". In other words, there are not the proper safeguards, regulations or enforcement in place to protect farmers, the public and the environment from genetic pollution. According to a recent United Nations study and report "small-scale farmers can double food production within 10 years by using ecological methods". Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and author of the report says, "Today's scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production." According to Dr. Hans Herren, Ph.D. who is an internationally recognized scientist specializing in sustainable agriculture and supported by the World Bank and the United Nations, says this about genetic engineering, "This is a technology that addresses symptoms rather than cause, so it's of little use in sustainable systems. Also, GM crops create dependencies that are not in the interest of the farmers or consumers in the medium and long term", and "GMOs are a reductionist approach used in a complex system; no wonder they already fail just as the pesticides failed. Furthermore, GMOs promote the wrong type of production system : few different crops in the rotation and monocrop practices that go against the wisdom of sustainable agriculture which uses a large number of different crops to increase diversity and so resilience." Prohibiting the introduction of new GMO's would be a great win for our environment, our farmers, our residents, our visitors to the island, and our economy. Marketing for the tourist industry as a gmo free zone is huge for the amount of awareness and education about GMO's that people are receiving and that are affecting their choices these days. Hawai'i Island can promote and increase other segments of tourism in 3 addition to traditional models, including eco farm tours or internships. Our island could be a destination for seed breeders to come to from around the world to save seed and breed seeds free from GMO contamination. We cannot do this if our land is overrun with GMO contamination and higher and higher levels of pesticide use. We would be serving local organic produce to visitors, keeping our island sustainable and growable with healthy uncontaminated soils. As Hawai'i imports 85%-90% of its food, it seems logical and wise that we would invest in and promote sustainability and provision for our own people here. Also farmers are getting premium prices for their niche products. For example, Kona Coffee is a specialty niche that receives a premium for its coffee, Kumu Farms on Molokai does specialty organic papaya exports and other organic exports and can't supply the demand for organic papaya. KTA's mountain apple brand grass fed beef is grass fed all the way from start to finish and is not finished off with corn. I have confidence in that product now, so I voted with my dollars and bought more. The opportunities are great for us here, people's creativity is amazing when we put our ideas together and kokua. We need to make a shift from the old model of industrial farming which includes GMO farming and look at what is currently profitable and sustainable for people, farmers and the environment. Let's make a different choice and protect our resources from the biotech corporations who wish to exploit them. I am including informational links below. Mahalo, Kea Kapahua Lecturer, Performing Arts Dept. UH Hilo 808-896-5622 1) Monsanto in Hawaii http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/07/04/monsanto-paradise-how-stop- big-ag-from-destroying-hawaii/ 2) UN Report on Agroecology http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1174- report-agroecology-and-the-right-to-food 3)Conventional or biotech? 4 http://www.dailytech.com/US+Farmers+Realize+Disadvantages+of+Gen etically+Engineered+Seed/article19802.htm 4) Nass USDA Statistics on Papaya (compare the #'s between 1979 and 2011-Is that considered successful?) http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/Hawaii/Publications/Fruits _a nd_N uts/a n n pa pFF.pdf 5) The organic market is profitable for Hawai'i's future http://www.fas.usda.gov/info/agexporter/2000/june/organic.htm 5