WASHINGTON,
Sept. 14, 2016 - A committee examining how growers who use different farming
systems can coexist expects to have a final report to Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack by the end of October.
But at its
final meeting last week, Vilsack suggested that the committee has already
performed an “invaluable service” by showing how conversations across the farm
landscape should be conducted.
“Your
capacity to respect one another, to talk to one another, to share with one
another, I think has also reflected itself in Congress eventually getting some
consensus on a labeling bill which we are now in the process of working
through,” he told the members of the Advisory
Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21). “I think you all provided the model for people
getting in a room, sitting down and beginning the hard conversation and
discussion that probably should have taken place a long time ago.”
Vilsack
reactivated the committee last December, three years after it had released a
report recommending that USDA quantify the economic impact of “unintended
(genetically engineered) presence” on farmers who do not use GE methods. That
report also recommended that USDA provide incentives for neighboring farmers to
develop coexistence plans, but USDA attorneys concluded the department did not
have the authority to do that.
A National
Agricultural Statistics Service survey of organic producers released earlier
this year found that organic farms incurred about $6 million in losses from
2011-2014 due to the presence of GMOs.
In many
instances, Vilsack said, the committee’s previous recommendations had resulted
in action. For example, he noted that USDA had removed a 5 percent surcharge
for organic farmers to receive crop insurance, had established a “whole-farm”
risk management tool, and had worked with the Organic Seed Alliance to help set
up an organic seed finder database.
At its final
meeting, the committee discussed a draft of its final report, which consists of two stand-alone
documents: “A Model for Convening Local Coexistence Discussions” and “Factors
for Farmers to Consider When You or Your Neighbor are Growing an
Identity-Preserved (IP) Crop.”
IP crops can
include certified organic crops or those intended for non-GMO or non-GE
markets; seed intended for planting; certain GE/GMO crops (such as those with
new functional traits), or crops produced using specific varieties and
providing specific characteristics under contract (such as blue corn segregated
specifically to produce blue corn chips).
In the draft report, the committee said USDA “should explore
obtaining additional authority to provide incentives to encourage farmers to
develop joint coexistence plans.” Other recommendations included making the
reports widely available to farmers and non-governmental organizations such as
the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture.
As the committee tried to finalize its report at the final
meeting, one issue that received a lot of discussion time was seed purity. The
draft report noted the division of opinion on the committee. “Some AC21 members
believe that seed companies should routinely provide information about the GE
content in non-GMO/non-GE seed, or that contracts for IP production should, as
a general matter, include provisions relating to the supply of tested seed for
those producers,” the draft says.
However, “other AC21 members note that not all non-GMO/non-GE seed
is intended to be used to service GE-sensitive markets, and requiring that
companies provide such information on all such seed would be unnecessary for
many in the marketplace, would drive up costs for all producers, and would
potentially expose seed companies to increased liabilities.”
Committee member Laura Batcha, CEO of the Organic Trade
Association, said one of the recommendations of the report should address seed
purity, given the amount of attention paid to it by the committee.
And committee member Chuck Benbrook of Benbrook Consulting in
Oregon offered language that would urge USDA to work with the seed industry to
develop guidelines “regarding the necessary level of seed purity for farmers
planting into specific non-GE markets for which thresholds have been set for GE
content.”
Benbrook’s recommended language received pushback from committee
member and Oregon Farm Bureau President Barry Bushue.
“I’m not
comfortable because it seems to me that then USDA is establishing the
marketplace,” he said. “I certainly don’t want USDA setting standards to tell
me what my contractual arrangements ought to be with individual buyers.”
“That’s not
what I’m saying at all,” Benbrook said. “It’s not setting the standard. It’s
giving you information about the seed that you’re thinking about buying and
whether, at the end of the production cycle, you’re likely to meet your
contractual obligation. It’s to help farmers navigate the marketplace as it
changes.”
Missy Hughes, corporate counsel and director of government affairs
for the CROPP Cooperative/Organic Valley Family of Farms in Wisconsin, backed
Benbrook, saying that the USDA research would enable it to advise farmers about
what level of GE presence would be acceptable in seed in order for them to meet
a standard in the crop.
Angela Olsen,
senior adviser and associate general counsel at DuPont Co. and Pioneer Hi-Bred,
said it sounded to her as if Benbrook were asking USDA to set requirements for
seed, and “I don’t think there should be additional requirements.”
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