GMO Seeds Grow into Big Fight on Kauai

The Hawaiian island of Kauai is known as the garden isle, luring hundreds of thousands of tourists to its lush northern shores. But fewer make it down to the drier southwest side, home to many native Hawaiians, who've lived here for generations”...

October 20, 2013 | Source: PBS | by

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MEGAN THOMPSON: The Hawaiian island of Kauai is known as the garden isle, luring hundreds of thousands of tourists to its lush northern shores. But fewer make it down to the drier southwest side, home to many native Hawaiians, who’ve lived here for generations…and where farming has always been a way of life.

Today these fields are home to large biotech companies developing Hawaii’s biggest agricultural product: seeds.  Genetically modified seeds, mostly corn, to be shipped back and grown on the mainland.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Those fields behind me belong to Pioneer, one of the big seed companies here in Kauai.  The prevailing winds here blow out of the northeast.  And the residents here say that when those winds blow, they bring dust and pesticides from these fields down into their neighborhoods and homes.

And some believe that’s making their children sick.

RANDI-LI DICKINSON: In 2007 I gave birth to my son.  And within a day we realized he was seizing.  And we found that his brain had hemorrhaged and he lost the whole, entire right frontal lobe.