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The Other Side of Field Liberation Day

While searching for other blogs and news sources posting about the recent Field Liberation Day protest in Belgium, I came across this post on Biofortified, a blog that promotes genetic engineering and GM crops.  There were so many strange things said by them, I thought as a public service I would both point out the opinions from ‘the other side’, and also set a few things straight.

For the sake of clarity, I’m only including a few quotes of the original post and comments, and I would encourage anyone reading this to have a look at the original post linked to above, and convince yourself I’m not taking anything unfairly out of context.  Maybe you’ll get an insight into how ‘the other side’ thinks??  I dunno…

 

French anti-science vandals invade a Belgium farm and destroy crops

Phytophthora infestans causes ‘late blight’ in potatoes. In regions of potato cultivation with a temperate climate, like Belgium, this is the single most dangerous disease. The disease costs farmers in Belgium about 55 million euros annually, and controlling it causes significant environmental pressure. However, in the last few years a number of resistant varieties based on conventional plant breeding techniques were introduced to the market, and work is being done on developing genetically modified Phytophthora-resistant lines.

These GM plant are environmentally much more friendly than some existing  methods of treating fungus attack on plants  such as the commonly used toxic copper sulphate.

But the GM potatoes will not be used if the anti-GM fanatics have their way.
A research field trial of these blight-resistant potatoes has just been destroyed in Belgium.
Some anti-technology activists came by bus from France to destroy the fields.

Okay, where to start.  First of all the participants were primarily Belgian.

In Belgium three languages are commonly spoken French, Flemish/Dutch and English.  The first two are languages of the neighboring countries France and The Netherlands, as well as native languages of the Belgian people.  English is a sort of neutral language, as well as being the language most people from other countries speak.  When promoting the event, it’s logical the promotion would be in these three languages.  They were trying to promote the event both in Belgium and abroad.

The vast majority of participants, many of them known by me personally, were from Belgium.  The main organizer was a Flemish/Dutch speaking Belgian.  I know this from listening to the accents and languages spoken in the videos I posted, by reading news reports and blog post on the Internet, and from private email correspondence.  Trust me, it would have been big news if large numbers of people had come in from France for an event like this, and no mention of it has been made anywhere except on Biofortified.

The link provided on Biofortified points to a website in France promoting the event in French.  There’s no indication anywhere unusually large numbers of people came from France as a result of this promotion.

As far as being anti-science vandals, what about the scientists in the action?  For example Barbara van Dyck, who lost her job at the Catholic University of Leuven for participating.  Perhaps if you support her termination from the university, you should send an email stating she was ‘anti-science’ as a reason and see if it helps?  I wonder if the truth was more the demonstrators were not so much anti-science, but rather anti this author’s version of science.  I think in fact most participants consider themselves very strong proponents of science.  My position is certainly pro-science.

While it’s very true Phytophthora costs Belgian farmers lots of money, the problem is really a lack of promotion of the already available Phytophthora resistant varieties, and lack of investment in developing new traditionally bred resistant lines.  Consumers do not want GM potatoes, and there is no legitimate reason to develop them except to force consumers to accept something they don’t want.  There is also strong pressure from the agri-chemical industry to continue promoting non-resistant varieties, until such time as GM varieties are available to take their place, because there are lots of profits in selling the chemicals used to combat Phytophthora.

The reality is in a few years the chemicals used to combat Phytophthora will be phased out in Europe, because they are too damaging to the environment.  This measure has already been passed by the European Parliament. The large agricultural interests hope at that time the only viable varieties available will be GM resistant varieties. There is no truth to the idea that the GM potatoes are ‘better for the environment’, they are simply being developed for commercial reasons.

The use of copper sulphate really has very little to do with this discussion or with Phytophthora on potatoes.  It’s true copper sprays can be used to combat Phytophthora, and it’s true this is used in Europe.  Copper sprays happen to be illegal in The Netherlands, one of the largest potato growing regions.  Copper sprays are also of limited use with potatoes.  Copper is mostly used on grape vines in places like Italy and France, or on tomatoes.

The reason copper sprays are of limited use with potatoes, is they are relatively expensive compared to the crop produced as well as Phytophthora is not an immediately fatal disease, or as the author on Biofortified says ‘dangerous’ disease, in organic agriculture.  There are a variety of techniques that can be used to manage Phytophthora without chemicals, like removing infected haulms.  These methods are not practical in large scale mono-cultures, but neither is wide scale spraying of copper based chemicals.  I wonder if the author on Biofortified has ever grown potatoes?

  • Talking to activists about the science didn’t work.

Jo Bury, the director of the VIB science research institute that planted the potatoes, said around 100 scientists had tried to talk the actists out of vandalism.

“We are deeply shocked about the violent actions by the activists of the Field Liberation Movement. The field trial with blight resistant potatoes was almost entirely destroyed. Our hearts are with the scientists whose hard work was destroyed today.”

“Althought his is a dark day for science as a whole, we want to thank all 350 scientists and farmers who came out and supported Save Our Science. It was a strong message to the world that we believe that science has an important role to play in the development of environmental friendly agriculture” Geert Angenon, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Geert De Jaeger, UGent, Rony Swennen, K.U.Leuven, Jeroen Crappé.

Okay, no clue.  No mention of a counter-demonstration anywhere in anything I’ve read.  This is the first I’ve heard of it.  There’s little doubt in my mind that the scientists involved in the trials were probably present, and maybe some others.  I think this would be pretty normal.  But a larger number of ‘pro-science’ scientists than Field Liberation people?  That’s a little funny, and certainly no more than a pipe-dream.

As far as the 100 scientists trying to talk the demonstrators out of it, what does that mean exactly?  As I read what this author wrote, it seems to suggest 350 scientists showed up but only 100 tried to talk the Field Liberation people out of it.  What about the other 250?

Did the attempt to talk the Field Liberation people out of it occur in advance?  Was there anything published in writing on their position?  Certainly if their arguments were the same as this author, they would have fallen on deaf ears.

The reality is many people behind the Field Liberation Movement are themselves scientists, farmers and otherwise very intelligent people and current in their fields.  I’m certain they would welcome sensible public debate on the issues, and are well prepared to hold their own.

7 comments to French anti-science vandals invade a Belgium farm and destroy crops

GregH:

It’s funny how people are always railing against GMOs claiming their reasoning herbicides this and Bt that and Monsanto the other thing, while saying they’re not against the science, they just want more research. I assume there will be a huge outcry among the anti-GMO people for destroying the research (which appears to be government funded non-corporate) they claim they want done on the traits they don’t claim to find fault with….right after they get around to objecting the destruction of those French government run virus resistant GM grape rootstocks a while back.

daedalus2u:

The standard objections of anti-GMO activists don’t apply in this case. Potato is not native to Europe, there are no near-relative weedy species that it can cross pollinate with. Commercial potato isn’t propagated by seed, it is propagated clonally by bits of root. The traits can’t spread by pollen to other fields or contaminate other potato crops.

GregH:

These are the same people who trashed GM grape rootstocks. Yeah, rootstocks, so not even the flower or fruit were genetically engineered. I think it’s safe to say the standard objections are really just lame excuses for common thugs to break something. Must make them feel real big. They’re probably laughing it up and patting themselves on the back for the great blow they think they struck to Monsanto (the fact that this was not Monsanto’s research is likely lost on them).

Ben B:

Concerning this “research”, one row of potatoes was from BASF.
The “traditional’ arguments against GM are still functioning in this case : those potatoes are “pesticide patented clones”.
The industrialized “pesticide” system is responsible of an enormous part of today’s environmental disaster (more than half of GHG emissions due to our food and agri system, according to Olivier De Schutter, UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food + Soil erosion, oil-dependent unsustainable system), and those plants keep on pushing in this direction.
Patenting the living brings to corporate takeover on seeds, the most important thing on the food chain (more infos http://www.grain.org/docs/trips.pdf). Our economic system hates what’s free, like nature’s work on plants. If privatizing life is a synonymous of “progress”, then we’re going forward at high speed.
Clones in the fields means biodiversity loss, more diseases, threats on health.
The “usual” arguments of pro-GM people imply to continue in the system responsible for today’s economic (farmers situation in developed countries), social (one billion persons starving) and environmental (agri and food system responsible for more than 50% of GHG emissions) disasters, claiming that it will bring solutions. We may have a small problem of coherency…
Whereas solutions exist. Sustainable small scale family farming can feed the world – even with 10 billion persons. Actually, it already does… The main problem is repartition of food produced (70% of world agricultural land directly or indirectly for feeding cattle), eating habits (too much meat in developed countries), and production system.

Karl Haro von Mogel:

Oh no – one row of potatoes was from BASF? Then they must all be ripped out! Seriously, that is a bad reason. If BASF has a blight-resistant potato then it is entirely appropriate to evaluate it alongside other varieties.
The rest of your comment demonstrates that you don’t know how potatoes are grown – potato varieties are all clones of one good plant, produced through tubers. Even your favorite old varieties grown on organic farms are clones.

daedalus2u:

Where to start, so much misinformation. The genes for resistance came from wild relatives of potato. These genes have been introduced via cross-breeding in other strains of potato.

The idea behind using these natural resistance genes is so that the use of synthetic fungicides is reduced or even eliminated. Isn’t the reduction of use of synthetic pesticides a good thing?

You can’t just stop using fungicides on potatoes if they are not resistant because the entire crop can be destroyed. This fungus is what caused the Irish potato famine which killed over a million people from starvation because it destroyed the potato crop.

Commercially grown potatoes are always clonal.

Growth of potato strains other than these clonal potatoes will not be affected. They may even benefit because these potatoes are resistant to the fungus, if they are planted they will not increase the growth, spread and persistence of the fungus which could affect non-resistant potatoes.

OrchidGrowinMan:

daedalus2u,

I agree: misinformation, catastrophization, emotional language and outright lies are all too common. People LIKE to be excited, but don’t like to grind through research. They LIKE to play the White Knight, but may need to invent a dragon to do so. It’s more exciting and feels more Noble to fight a Vast International Conspiracy than to address sewage treatment and drinking water contamination.

I think a lot of the problem is related to the game of “Telephone”: Person 1 hears that there may be a possibility of a slight risk of a minor side-effect, and passes that information on. Person 342 hears that there is a virtual certainty of a global catastrophe, and communicates this to Person 1, and the cycle continues.

Credulity, poor understanding of statistics, science, and risk-assessment and the excitement of being a member of a Just Cause combine to generate a population resistant to reassessing their positions and who are sometimes effectively manipulated, and not in a good way.

I think the comments mostly speak for themselves.  I agree, misinformation.   I have sympathy for BenB.  How can you soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by turkeys?  I’ll correct a few errors.

First of all the genes used in these GM potatoes are from very poisonous wild relatives genetically incompatible with ordinary potatoes.  They can’t cross breed as far as I know and certainly there was no attempt to get them into ordinary potatoes with traditional breeding.  Isn’t this of concern to some people reading this?  Genes from poisonous wild relatives, inserted into something intended for food, without any credible public or peer reviewed safety testing?

And it pains me to have to say this, but yes potatoes are propagated by tuber or meristem cloning, but you don’t have to grow them in monocultures!  Like any other crop you can work with a number of different varieties and inter-crop them with other plants.  The GM potatoes are being developed for use in monocultures, and it’s the intention we become dependent on a small number of patented genes to protect one of the worlds most important crops from a repeat of the Irish Potato Famine.

Does it help us all to know how the other side thinks?

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Field Liberation Day in Belgium Declared a Success

On their Dutch and French language blog, organizers of the Field Liberation Day action in Wetteren, Belgium declared their success. They also published a multi-lingual dossier on the GM potatoes here, English is mixed in with other languages.

On the 29th of May about 500 people gathered at the trial fields. A broad mix of people including professionals, scientists, farmers, young and old.

Standing between them and the potatoes were about 60 police officers dressed in full riot gear prepared for battle, a 2 meter high fence, razor wire and electronic sensors.

As the demonstration progressed about half the participants, 250 or so, penetrated the barrier and entered the trial fields. There were about 30 arrests, and prosecutions are expected to follow.

While the fields sustained about 20% damage on the day of the action, some participants returned in the days following to continue damaging the fields.

Civil action is expected against the demonstrators, as the multinationals behind the trials claim financial damages.

The demonstrators are now looking to build a support network; including moral, legal, logistical, financial and other help. If anyone reading this would like to participate, let me know and I’ll make sure you’re in contact with the right people. I think you can also probably contact them via their blog I linked to above.

Bees

One of the things uncovered by demonstrators were beehives kept 30 meters from the potato trial fields. A glimpse of this is shown in the last few seconds of the second video.

University Researcher Fired

A few days following the action in Wetteren, academic researcher Barbara Van Dyck was fired by the Catholic University of Leuven . She wasn’t fired because she trespassed, damaged anything or broke any laws. She was fired because she was present during the demonstration, outside of working hours on a Sunday, and voiced her public support. She was fired for performing what in many places in the world are constitutional rights.

Just in case any of us thought universities were places of free thought and expression, now we all know we were wrong.

Regardless of your personal views on the Field Liberation Day, please consider signing the petition to ask for her reinstatement and sending an email to the University. Details can be found here.

Free Expression

So much of what happened on May 29th comes down to freedom of expression and proportionality of actions.

Sixty police in riot gear? If I ever had problems with vandalism in my garden, even if I knew who it was and had dates and times in advance, I would never get the attention of the police here. It doesn’t matter if I had a breeding project, or if I had years of time an effort invested into what I was doing. It’s also not just me as an individual, but we have the same problem at my community garden complex where we have 50+ gardens, problems with vandalism, and the police won’t do anything about it.

If I were to grow something provocative, for example marijuana (which is permitted here in small amounts), and my garden was overrun with 19-year old stoner-vandals, I might even get into trouble with the police for creating problems.

What’s more provocative than a field of GM potatoes? The people behind the planting of the field are as much or more to blame for it’s destruction than the demonstrators themselves.

There isn’t any court in the Netherlands that would award me more than market value if a field of potatoes in my garden were destroyed by vandals and I sued for damages. It doesn’t matter how much work I put into growing and possibly breeding them. Face it, even if you could find someone who wanted to buy and eat them, the potatoes aren’t worth more than 50 cents a pound. What’s this talk of civil action…arrests and prosecution…over potatoes?!

This is very much the same logic of Monsanto suing farmers like Percy Schmeiser when their crops become contaminated with GMOs, and it’s abuse of the justice system and civil courts.

Anyone reading this who has ever had a garden or farm knows that, however distasteful it may be, destroying someone else’s plants and the work behind them is mindless and no problem at all. Build a wall and block the light. Enter at night and pull the plants up. Throw salt on them. Spray them with herbicide. Pollute the genetics of wild crop relatives with GMOs, so organic seed saving is more difficult or impossible. This can easily be done by 3-4 people in the darkness of night, and hundreds of people aren’t necessary.

As growers of plants we are totally at the mercy of nature, natural disasters, climate change, genetically modified crops and even vandals. We all need to take all of these things into account when we grow things, and roll with the punches as they come.

The people being punished for participating in or supporting Field Liberation Day, are not being punished for the destruction of $100 worth of potatoes, they’re being punished for bringing 500 people together to express ideas and opinions and filming 60 riot police beating unarmed demonstrators. They’re being punished for making us all think about what a monstrosity research into GM crops has become, together with all the politics and unfair laws behind it.

Supposedly it all comes down to us consumers. What I hear is if we don’t accept GM foods, they won’t be sold. Has anyone else heard that too? I don’t think the big agro-chemical companies have heard this yet.

Does it really come down to destroying one another’s work before the message is heard?

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Vandana Shiva in the Netherlands

This past Monday and Tuesday nights Vandana spoke at two places in the Netherlands, first in Zeist (near Utrecht) and then here in Amsterdam.  Wow, what an amazing woman.  She’s a brilliant person, and very well spoken.  It was really a pleasure to hear her speak.  There are a number of videos on the Internet of her speaking, and if you’ve never heard her, I suggest having a look at some of these.

Top on her agenda at both venues was to discuss farmer suicides in the Indian Punjab region, the ongoing tragedy that’s one of the most serious in modern history.  This combined with the fact that of the roughly 1 billion people in the world today who are hungry, half or 500 million work in the food production and preparation industries.  There is really something messed up in the priorities of today’s world if the people who give us our food are so poor.

Vandana is very good with facts and statistics, and I took several pages of notes.  She discussed things like GMOs, patents, world trade issues and human rights.  Most people who are regular readers of this blog will have heard a lot of these things before either here or elsewhere, so I won’t cover them now.  I’ll probably mention some in future posts, and indeed some are so important they deserve an entire post to themselves.

She took a few shots at the Netherlands too.  For example making fun of the new government’s decision to eliminate the Environmental Ministry, or the fact that the amount of land equivalent to roughly 3 times the size of the Netherlands is used outside the country to grow the soy and grains necessary to feed the animals here.  She mentioned the Dutch were involved in intercepting ships at sea transporting generic (so-called ‘counterfeit’) medicines from India to other countries.

Zeist

The symposium in Zeist was really very interesting, not just because of Vandana herself, but by who attended and how it was organized.

When Tom Wagner visited last year I briefly entertained the possibility of trying to organize something for him here, but the community of people who might be interested in attending something like that is so disorganized and everyone has their own opinions and alliances.  I quickly decided getting a group of people together here would be impossible.  I’ve approached some of these people in the past for various reasons, and it nearly always happens that we quickly decide we don’t have anything in common and go our own ways.  Part of the problem too is many people in the Netherlands don’t like having anything to do with people from other countries, which of course to most of us is a strange concept.  It’s a fact for example that I have almost no regular readers of this blog in the Netherlands.  On any given month I might only have 5 or 10 local readers, but 10,000+ from other countries.

What was interesting was no one name seemed to be associated with organizing the visit by Vandana Shiva or the symposium, rather it was a consortium of mostly large businesses and organizations.  No expense was spared, and quite a lot of money was spent on it all.  As well as paying for Vandana Shiva’s visit, they served us dinner cooked from organic and locally sourced ingredients, local organic fruit juices, organic wines.  The costs we all paid to attend did not cover all their expenses, that’s for sure.

A very broad range of people attended, including at least one identifiable representative of a Monsanto owned seed company.  There was at least one academic from the University of Wageningen.  The symposium itself was hosted after hours in a bank lobby, and there were a number of venture capitalists and investment companies present.  There were farmers and plant breeders.  There was one very passionate grower of organic flower bulbs.  There was a member of the EU Parliament.  It was a bit of a funny situation because when we registered, we had to state our affiliations, and they printed this on our name tags.  Some people were walking around with the title ‘consumer’ or ‘gardener’.

Everyone was there to talk very seriously about the future of agriculture in the Netherlands and the world.  There were some very heated debates!

Towards the end the question was posed to the panel and the audience, if you had 10 million euros to fix agriculture, how would you spend it, and it’s clear a number of people were looking to that question for real ideas to be implemented.  There weren’t really a lot of clear answers to that question however.

The following evening in Amsterdam Vandana had a very good answer when she was asked where she would like to see more money spent.  She suggested school gardens and community gardens.  She offered the challenge that in the next decade we should not let a single small farmer fail, and money should be spent to that end.

Amsterdam

Vandana’s talk in Amsterdam was of course also fantastic, but the venue was a little lacking.  First Vandana gave her talk, then someone from the University of Wageningen gave a presentation that essentially promoted modern agriculture.  Afterwards, there was supposed to be a debate between the two.

Vandana’s talk was in English, and the other person spoke in Dutch.  The debate was supposed to be in English.  There was really a lot of language conflict.  At one point there was a brief discussion in Dutch, Vandana asked for a translation, and she was told it was too typically Dutch and she wouldn’t understand.  I think that was very rude, and it left Vandana in a position where she may have felt people were telling secrets around her.

What this all meant was too much of my evening was taken up by a presentation promoting the Green Revolution, and the debate that followed was too unfocused.  I think Vandana ended up being slightly insulted.

The talk was held in a place called De Rode Hoed or ‘The Red Hat’.  Vandana picked up on the name and mentioned it was also the name for open source software.