Mendocino Magic

Two things have become clear since the victory of Mendocino County’s anti-GMO ballot initiative in the March elections: One, that Measure H founders caught only the first wave of what looks to be a tsunami of US efforts to declare particular localities GMO-free, and two, that the wave represents grassroots politics at its most energetic. Although industry interests outspent those who favored a ban on GMO organisms by a factor of six to one, H passed with a hefty 57 percent of the vote, giving new hope to groups deflated by the November 2002 defeat of an Oregon law that would have required genetically engineered food to be labeled.
Els Cooperrider, one of the authors of H, expects that opponents will try to challenge the initiative in court. On the day following the election, a disappointed spokesperson for CropLife America, a lobbying group for fertilizer and pesticide makers, said that it’s “not acceptable” to the biotech industry for counties—or for that matter, countries and states—to create GMO-free zones. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. Following H’s success, workers began gathering petitions or planning campaigns in thirteen other California counties, with next-door Humboldt County furthest ahead in its petition drive to put a similar initiative on the November ballot.
Meanwhile, across the country, Vermont state senators voted unanimously on March 12 to hold biotech companies liable if GM crops contaminate other crops. The bill, called the Farmer Protection Act, now goes to the House. Hawai’i coffee growers are considering a ban, and a number of Midwestern states have tried to pass legislation that would restrict corporate agriculture in favor of family farms.
Monsanto seems to be feeling the heat—or the wheat. At a wheat industry meeting, the company announced that it may release its GM wheat only in the US, rather than in the US and Canada as long planned. According to Reuters writer Carey Gillam, Monsanto officials said the company was facing such stiff opposition in Canada to its GM wheat that it might have to go with “alternative strategies” in its introduction. US wheat industry spokespeople reacted with concern, saying that Canadian farmers would gain a marketing edge, as buyers could avoid GM wheat simply by purchasing from Canada.
Mendocino’s Cooperrider described the battle to pass H as “truly grassroots, and that’s how we were able to stave off $710,000 from the industry, approximately $55 per voter.” Still, sour-grapers are claiming that H is symbolic, since it doesn’t apply to state, federal, or Native lands. “Of course it doesn’t apply to Native lands,” Cooperrider says, “but its application to other areas has not been determined.” And as for Native lands, Cooperrider says Mendocino’s largest tribe, the Hopland Band of Pomo Indians, passed a similar ban on GMOs in January, and other groups are also considering bans.