Pesticide and GMO Companies Spend Big in Hawaii

Hawai'i has become "ground zero" in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides.

June 11, 2014 | Source: PR Watch | by Rebekah Wilce

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Genetic Engineering page, Millions Against Monsanto page and our Hawaii News page .

Hawai’i has become “ground zero” in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping $146.3 million a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai’i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms Syngenta, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow Chemical, BASF, and Bayer CropScience have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into the state’s relatively small political arena.

Chemical Conglomerates Retaliate Against Local Democratic Control

These “Big 6” pesticide and GMO firms are active on the islands in a big way, making use of the three to four annual growing seasons to develop new GMO seeds more quickly. The development of new GMOs by these pesticide and seed conglomerates goes hand-in-hand with heavy pesticide use in some of the islands’ experimental crop fields, new data show.

Kaua’i County — consisting primarily of the island of Kaua’i, known as Hawai’i’s “Garden Isle” and home to Waimea Canyon State Park — passed a law in November 2013 that requires disclosure of pesticide use and GMO crops sewn by growers and created buffer zones around schools, parks, medical facilities, and private residences. The law is set to go into effect in August 2014.

Hawai’i County banned GMOs altogether in November 2013, and a Maui County initiative to ban GMOs recently obtained enough citizen signatures to be placed on the November 2014 ballot.

Since experiencing these setbacks, the big agricultural firms have retaliated in a big way.

Syngenta, DuPont Pioneer, Agrigenetics (doing business as Dow AgroSciences), and BASF have sued Kaua’i to block its law.