The eco-radical brother of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice has just ruled against the U.S. Department of Agriculture—for not adequately protecting organic farmers against genetically-modified alfalfa.
Alfalfa is wonderful forage for cattle; it also protects soil against erosion, and creates its own nitrogen fertilizer. It’s the fourth most widely-grown crop in the U.S. But an alfalfa field can get weed-infested to the point that it supports little milk or beef production. Such low yields are a serious eco-problem.
Humanity is already cropping and pasturing half the available land on the planet. We’ll need twice as much farm output by 2040 to feed 8 billion mostly affluent people—and their pets. Lots more milk and meat is being demanded every year, all over the world. None of the cats or dogs will agree to be vegetarian. We need to double crop yields again.
Enter biotech Roundup-ready alfalfa from Monsanto that can be sprayed with an eco-friendly weed-killer to keep down the weeds and keep the forage yields high. Enter also Judge Charles Breyer, brother of Bill Clinton’s Supreme Court appointee, Steven Breyer. Brother Breyer has ruled the U.S. Department of Agriculture must do a full economic impact study on the herbicide-tolerant alfalfa—because its pollen might blow over into the field of an organic neighbor and hurt him financially.
But the organic farmer doesn’t suffer any penalty if his alfalfa gets biotech pollen blown onto it. The organic standards are based entirely on process—what the organic farmer does or doesn’t do—not the crop content. The organic farmer doesn’t suffer any economic penalty for “genetic invasionâ€unless he personally contracts to provide a product that’s biotech-free. But that’s his choice and his responsibility. He can use setbacks from his neighbors’ fields in that case.
In fact, organic standards don’t care what’s in your carrot snack as long as the organic farmer didn’t deliberately put it there. Testing has found traces of synthetic pesticides in one fourth of the certified organic fruits or veggies, but they remain “organic†despite the residues.
Remember, organic food is never routinely checked for anything: not pesticide residues, bacteria, fungal toxins, nutrient levels or mad-turnip disease. But suddenly because of organic-led fear over biotech crops and cheap biotech lab tests that can find insanely small amounts of DNA—think one second out of 32 million years. Organic farmers are feigning “harm†in an anti-technology gambit that is part of the ongoing war between conventional high yield farming and primitive low yield farming.
Judge Breyer evidently thinks there’s some larger public purpose to organic farming. Organic food doesn’t offer more nutrition. It certainly isn’t safer; that deadly contaminated spinach last summer was grown organically. Most damning, the big eco-problem is that organic farming needs twice as much land to grow our food. An organic world would starve half the people on the planet, or force us to plow all the forests for cropland.
If Judge Charles Breyer’s decision guides our agricultural research, we’ll be stuck judicially where the world was stuck technologically in 1960, expecting millions to starve in Asia each time the crops failed. Fortunately Norman Borlaug and his tribe of plant breeders brought technology to the rescue by promptly tripling the yields on most of the world’s good cropland, with semi-dwarf rice and wheat varieties, improved crop protection chemicals—and the nitrogen fertilizer the Greens love to hate. Borlaug got the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, and stands today as the most honored man in America.
The world needs this miracle to happen again, it does not need road blocks that have no economic or health benefit basis. It does not need Judge Breyer’s weedy decision.