Sticking it to the "Mon" ... Santo, that is

Corn Dusk, originally uploaded by Dodo-Bird.

You can have your fantasy football teams, but I'd rather spend a lazy Sunday laying the groundwork for a fantasy class-action suit that's been knocking around in my head. This fantasy suit of mine pits innocent and hardworking farmers against the greedy, multi-national agricultural companies that sue farmers who save and replant their own seed into permanent submission, and instead force them to purchase their patented, genetically modified products. The source of my defense actually comes from a small section of environmental law meant to pertain to real estate: the innocent landowner defense of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (better known as CERCLA).

CERCLA is a massive piece of legislation; I took a semester-long class that focused only on the innocent landowner (and contiguous property owner) defense within CERCLA, and we only just scratched the surface. The focus of the class was on conducting site assessments for potential purchasers of industrial real estate, but with my brain working the way that it does, the potential implications outlined in this defense gave me another idea.

Let me preface my fantasy class action by saying that I am not a lawyer. I'm not shouty or argumentative, I can't talk in circles, and I detest legalese, which means that I will probably never be a lawyer, because I would be lousy at it. Nor am I a farmer, I just sympathize with those land stewards who are trying to stay afloat in the seriously messed up, over-subsidized and overpriced crop monoculture that is big agriculture in this country. I first became aware of the shady, underhanded dealings of these multi-national corporations-- who have crossed a moral and ethical line by genetically modifying crops and obtaining patents not only for the seeds but for the crops they produce-- through documentaries and books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food, Inc. and The Future of Food.

Each of these resources acts as an exposé into the seedy dealings of these seed businesses, who make the purchasers of their seeds sign over their souls, while going after the farmers who don't want to do business with them and suing them for saving their own seed. Of the farmers who chose to fight Monsanto in court, the few who didn't immediately submit to the settlements (on the condition of silence) and start purchasing Monsanto's "cutting-edge biotechnology" wound up losing millions before eventually losing their lawsuits. These companies are simply too rich and too powerful for individual farmers to take on... hence the need for a class action!

A number of farmers spoke out against Monsanto's practice of sending out "investigators" to bully and intimidate farmers whose properties were adjacent to their customers' farms into buying their products as well, an action Monsanto at once denies then claims is at their customer's insistence. Although these persecuted farmers came from all over the continent, their stories were all pretty much the same. Monsanto tested their seed, supposedly found their patented technology, and took these farmers to court. Monsanto has a number of articles denying these claims on its website, and boasting that the validity of their patents on living organisms was reviewed and upheld as recently as 2007 (patents come up for review every 20 years or so-- this is not good news!) They also cite specific cases against the farmers who were brave enough to speak up, listing all the reasons why the farmer-- and not their corporation-- is in the wrong.

So who are we to believe? A greedy, international corporation that is raking in record profits and steering this country into another dust bowl era, or a nation of beleaguered farmers who just don't have the resources to fight the good fight? I can't say for sure... but in case you couldn't tell, my allegiance is with the farmers.

I will concede that there are a couple of factors that complicate my argument. First, we have to establish that Monsanto's patented, genetically modified seed is a contaminant and-- more specifically for the CERCLA defense-- a hazardous substance. Non-GMO farmers certainly consider even trace amounts of Monsanto's patented technology that appear in their carefully saved, cleaned, and stored seed to be a contaminant, because it's not wanted! In this legislation, a hazardous substance is defined as, "...such elements, compounds, mixtures, solutions, and substances which-- when released into the environment-- may present substantial danger to public health and welfare or the environment." While Monsanto's seed in and of itself isn't a hazardous substance, the effects of eliminating biodiversity and monopolizing the agricultural industry is an environmental hazard, and the ridiculous surplus of corn and other grains grown in this country each year does pose a danger to public health and welfare in that food scientists keep finding new and sugary ways to get us unsuspecting consumers to eat (and drink!) more and more of this stuff. Furthermore, I don't think it would be too hard to make a connection to the obesity epidemic and the increased consumption of corn-based foods; in fact, some of the resources listed above already have! And second, we'd have to find a way to hold our own against the scores of shouty, argumentative, legalese-loving lawyers employed by Monsanto, whose sole job would be finding ways to prove us wrong.

In the case of chemical contamination, liability can be difficult to prove, especially if the original contamination source is not located on the property in question. This makes it hard for current owners/operators and prospective buyers of the land in question to qualify for the innocent or contiguous landowner defense, and even when they do, there is still no guarantee that they will be exempt from liability. As for my argument against this biological contamination, however, Monsanto's coveted patents would make it incredibly easy to trace, identify, and prosecute(!) the responsible parties. The CERCLA legislation is one of the few environmental policies that actually has any teeth and-- like most tax laws-- is designed in a way that makes any potentially responsible parties "guilty, until proven innocent". And the best part about CERCLA is that it's retroactive; even if these corporations can get away with these shenanigans now, if Congress comes to their senses at some point in the future and repeals the right to patent seeds, these corporations will be liable for contamination that occurred before and after these changes are made!

Without getting too much into the due diligence of the matter-- which really only pertains to potential buyers-- for the sake of my argument, I'm going to say that the farmers owned their properties before the contamination source appeared. Assuming due diligence has been proven, the imaginary farmers I'm representing would have to meet certain conditions to qualify for the innocent landowner defense, such as:

• The contaminants migrated onto their land from other properties despite due care. The most likely cause of seed contamination is by cross-pollination of the innocent farmers' crops with genetically modified crops from neighboring farms. There is a clause in the innocent landowner defense (I don't remember which one, and will only look it up if somebody really wants to know... I'm not a lawyer, remember?) stating that landowners cannot be held responsible for contamination that occurred as a result of an act of nature.
• They have no knowledge of/no reason to suspect contamination. Unfortunately, this would eliminate any farmer who plants even a portion of their fields with patented seed; basically, once you sign Monsanto's "seed steward" agreement, they pretty much own you whether the seed in question is theirs or not. Also, if the purchaser "contributes" to the contamination, the I.L.D. cannot be applied. But innocent farmers cannot be held responsible for unknowingly "violating" an agreement that their neighbors made with a seed company!
• They acquired either the land (or, in this case, the contaminated seed) through inheritance or bequest. One of the cases Monsanto describes on their website involves contaminated seed given to a farmer by a relative. Even without my fantasy defense, Monsanto was unable to prosecute the innocent farmer to the extent that they would have liked.

Even if my class-action farmers were able to qualify for the innocent landowner defense, they would still probably have to make a "contribution" to the EPA toward the remedial actions necessary to remove the contaminant from their seeds. Under CERCLA, the current owner/operator of the land in question is automatically considered a potentially responsible party. In the case of "strict" liability, the farmer would likely be stuck with the cleanup costs. So we'd be pushing for "joint and several" liability, where the EPA examines all PRPs and goes after the one(s) with the deepest pockets. In this case, there's no doubt that would be Monsanto. The small settlement the farmers would have to make is known as a de minimis settlement, and it would also protect them from later being sued by Monsanto (should it be determined that they were indeed the contributors of this contamination) to recoup some of the costs of remediation.

A remedial action is defined as a "...remedy that is protective of human health and the environment and maintains protection over time". This is a long-term process, because Monsanto (for the sake of my argument) would have to find the best and most cost-effective solution. CERCLA liability is generally limited to the remediation costs plus up to $50 million to cover natural resource damage (read: contamination of the innocent farmers' crops). However, I would go on to argue that the release of their patented, biological contamination was done willfully. Surely they know that, before they started concocting corn in a test tube, plant pollination occurred naturally. The fact that they're hunting down farmers who aren't buying their seed is evidence enough that they were relying on some level of cross pollination (contamination) to occur.

If we could prove that, then there would be no limit to the amount of money Monsanto would have to fork over to clean up the mess they've created. This would likely involve quantifying what amount of "trace" contaminant is acceptable (and amending their precious patents... or better yet, doing away with them altogether!); this amount would have to be considerably higher than they'd like, to account for the promiscuity of pollinating plants. If they don't like that idea, then they would need to put their mad scientists to work developing a genetic hybrid that a) doesn't pollinate with other varieties of seed or b) is asexual and unable to pollinate at all. They clearly enjoy playing God, and make their customers buy brand new seed each year as it is, so it shouldn't make any difference whether or not their test-tube crops can reproduce! That's the only way they could ensure that their precious biotechnology wouldn't wind up in unsuspecting hands, thus allowing the farmers who choose to sow their crops in the age-old way (that nature intended) to do so, without fear of prosecution.

And that is how I would help David fight Goliath. Clearly, if this were ever to become an actual defense, I would need to get a law degree, read the entire CERCLA Act, flesh out my arguments, and brace for a long and ugly battle. So what do you think? Should I keep my day job or start fielding calls to be some environmental lawyer's next Erin Brokovitch? Is my idea crazy, or crazy enough to work? Who's with me? Let's "stick it to the Mon(santo)" and help farmers everywhere take back their fields!

Seeding the Clouds

When we woke up to a veritable snow storm on our last day in Beijing, having enjoyed pleasant 70-degree weather just the day before, I was baffled. I later learned that the clouds had been "seeded" earlier in the week, which supposedly induces rainfall. I didn't know what that meant. In fact, I hadn't even heard of this practice until it backfired on the first of this month, spoiling our last day of vacation, and causing an international stir by creating one of the earliest Beijing snowfalls on record. But it turns out that cloud seeding is nothing new, and when it comes to the controversial practice (to say the least!) of messing with the weather patterns, China is leading the way.

In one 2006 report, the Chinese government spends about $50 million (USD) a year in their attempts to control the weather. (Current estimates are as high as $90 million!) It is estimated that China sends cloud-seeding aircraft on roughly 700 missions per year, loaded with a comparable number of rockets and artillery shells that are filled with chemicals such as silver iodide and mixed with dry ice. These rockets are then shot into the atmosphere in hopes that the chemical particulates released will aid in the formation of water vapor, which will then fall to the Earth as rain.

Although China has had a moderate amount of success with this practice, bringing much needed rain to drought-stricken areas and helping to extinguish raging forest fires in remote regions of the country, the path that they are heading down is a slippery slope indeed. Rumor has it that they made attempts to ensure sunny, favorable weather for the Summer Olympics, which were held in Beijing just last summer, by using this practice to coax rainfall out of any potentially moisture-rich clouds headed toward Beijing, inducing the rain to fall prematurely so as not to ruin their moments in the spotlight. I couldn't find any proof of whether this worked, though, or if it's even true. The skies were sunny, sure, but Beijing has been suffering from a nearly decade-long drought, so the scientists' claims may be more arrogant than they are accurate.

So arrogant, in fact, that they've done it again; created an unseasonal snowstorm that has, according to an article published today, already killed 40. In China's defense, they're not the only ones trying to outsmart Mother Nature; weather modification experiments have been going on in Europe, Asia, and even the U.S. for more than 50 years. Proponents of this practice argue that the main chemical components of the rockets-- silver iodide (which is found in iodized table salt) and carbon dioxide (found in the atmosphere)-- are harmless. Everything has a toxicity level, though-- even water! And who's to say what the long-term effects may be from prolonged exposure to these chemical rains?

The Chinese, however, are unapologetic in their cloud-seeding efforts. It seems to me that they plan to advance their civilization as rapidly as possible, and will only deal with the consequences when they (inevitably) arise. I'm all for scientific breakthroughs and development, but there's a fine line between weather modification and playing God; if it's not done responsibly, they'll have to answer to Mother Nature in the end, and she's quite a force to be reckoned with.

Obese Packaging

I came to the startling realization the other day that the shape of our bodies and the shape of our packaging has undergone an alarmingly parallel transformation over the past 50 years or so ...

Using soda as an example, let's first consider the 8-ounce bottle of Coke. This is one serving size of carbonated goodness, served up ice-cold in a glass bottle that -- once empty -- was returned to the bottler, who would carefully wash, sanitize, and refill the container. People took good care of these bottles (the fact that there was a small monetary incentive to do so certainly didn't hurt!) and, on average, bottlers were able to reuse the glass packages 25-30 times before the paint would start to fade and they were forced to take the bottles out of circulation. People also took better care of themselves back then; they kept portion sizes in check and put forth a little extra effort to keep themselves in circulation (so to speak).

By comparison, the 20-ounce bottle of Dr. Pepper on the left crams two and a half servings into it's shapeless plastic packaging, and -- despite the serving size on the label -- we generally pour all of that sweet, sugary liquid down our gullets in a single sitting, transferring the contents of the bulging container into our bulging bellies. Then we carelessly discard the single-use containers, thinking little of the cost, energy, and oil it takes to create a new container for yet another super-sized serving of soda. If we're lucky, the plastic bottles will be recycled, but this doesn't often happen.

Think about it -- the small, svelte, and shapely bottle of Coke could swap clothes with Barbie ... the big, bulging bottle of Dr. Pepper would be resigned to covering up in a flowing, shapeless mumu. Guess the phrase "you are what you eat" should extend to beverages, too!

Silent Spring: A Summary

Like any good tree hugger, I decided over the summer that I needed to read Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's "explosive bestseller" about the devastating effects of the chemical pesticide programs used during the 1950s and 1960s. I hear it referenced so often that I assume it's mandatory reading for entomologists, biologists, ecologists, and environmentalists alike. So I picked up a musty, crumbling paperback copy in a used book store one day and dove right in. I motored through the first couple of brief chapters pretty quickly, intrigued by Carson's answer to her own rhetorical question:

"How could intelligent beings seek to control a few unwanted species by a method that contaminated the entire environment and brought the threat of disease and even death to their own kind? Yet this is precisely what we have done. We have done it, moreover, for reasons that collapse the moment we examine them." (p. 20)

After that, however, things began to get very technical, very quickly. The book is structured as a commentary on a number of case studies done during the height of the indiscriminate chemical spraying era, from the late 1940s up to the early 1960s (when the book was published). Even though the jargon is kept to a minimum and most of the data is presented in layman's terms, it is a tedious and laborious read and I couldn't mentally process more than ten pages at a time. I aimed to get through one chapter per sitting, but with so much data crammed onto each water stained page, not even the chapters' blatantly incendiary titles (such as "Elixirs of Death", "Needless Havoc", and "No Birds Sing") could help me to maintain my focus.

As I slogged through the meaty middle chapters, I began to get an eerie feeling; it was both a sense of foreboding and deja vu. In case study after innumerable case study, while the locations, pests, and sometimes even the chemicals changed, the inevitably disastrous result was almost always the same.

When DDD was sprayed at Clear Lake in California to kill the gnats, the swan grebes died. When the hop growers of Washington and Idaho sprayed heptachlor to kill the strawberry root weevil, their crops died and the land remained unusable for years. When the U.S. Department of Agriculture sprayed dieldrin over Iroquois County, Illinois, to "eradicate" the Japanese beetle, the song birds of the region were wiped out within a matter of days. When DDT was sprayed in East Lansing to kill the gypsy moth and prevent Dutch Elm disease, the robins died. The list goes on and on, but the message is clear: saturating the country with chemical pesticides is bad... very bad. Got it.

Scientists came to discover that these poisons were stored in higher and higher concentrations as it worked its way up through the animals in the food chain. The initial spraying might not have killed a bug, for example, but it probably sickened an earthworm or a fish that ate several bugs, and in turn almost instantly killed a bird that ate several earthworms or fish. The birds that didn't die instantly were either rendered infertile or endured a long, drawn-out illness before the twitching and agonizingly painful convulsions set in that, after much suffering, ultimately killed them. And-- perhaps worst of all-- the programs didn't even work long-term.

What these short-sighted chemists and government officials failed to realize was that it's nearly impossible to eradicate a single species of pesky insect; those that survived not only reproduced at a much faster rate than their natural predators, but they became resistant to the pesticides more quickly as well, rendering subsequent sprayings ineffective. Without a healthy bird population to keep these insect populations in check, the pests' numbers can exceed pre-spraying levels in a matter of years (and sometimes months!) As Carson explains:

By their very nature chemical controls are self-defeating, for they have been devised and applied without taking into account the complex biological systems against which they have been blindly hurled ... (p. 218)

She continues:

"The really effective control of insects is that applied by nature, not by man. Populations are kept in check by something the ecologists call the resistance of the environment: The amount of food available, conditions of weather and climate, the presence of competing or predatory species, are all critically important ... [The second neglected fact it] the truly explosive power of a species to reproduce once the resistance of the environment has been weakened ... (p. 218)

Thankfully, the sprayings eventually stopped, but not before our soil and groundwater was heavily contaminated. I know many of these same pesticides are still in use today, albeit in much smaller concentrations. Still, the best way to fight a force of nature is still with nature itself. For in her final paragraph, Carson issues a harsh admonishment, warning that:

"The 'control of nature' is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man ... It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modern and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the [E]arth."

Shortening the Supply Chain

Do you know where your dinner came from? Today, I do. I made a delicious pasta dish using homemade ravioli from the Madison farmers' market. It's fresh, I recognize every ingredient on the label, and-- best of all-- it's relatively local. The pesto sauce was made from the basil on my back deck, and the cherry tomato garnish was also harvested from a plant out back. I would have taken a picture of the meal itself (which was served with a side of locally grown greens) but it was in my belly before the thought ever occurred to me.

I wish I could eat meals such as this every day; it's fresh, it's flavorful, and (from a broad environmental standpoint, if not a personal one) it's frugal. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to prepare healthy meals from unprocessed (or minimally processed) foods. If you shop at a grocery store, this task becomes next to impossible. The foods on the inner shelves-- the juice boxes, cake mixes, and snacks-- have been almost entirely created in a laboratory somewhere; the meats come from animals that were drugged, sickened, and tortured during their short and miserable lives; the eggs are six to nine months old by the time they reach us while the other dairy products have had the nutrients pasteurized right out of them; and even the produce has been genetically modified, saturated with a myriad of pesticides, or both! And to top it all off, the vast majority of these items have been trucked in from some distance away; the average fruit or vegetable travels about 1,500 miles to get to our plate.

I will admit that there are some things I like about the current food chain; I can get fresh produce (like citrus, avocados, and other tropical fruits) that we just can't grow here-- they would never survive Chicago's temperamental climate. But why ship tomatoes from Mexico when there is an abundance of them grown right here in the Midwest? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Also, some of the products manufactured by this country's food scientists (microwave dinners, instant oatmeal, packaged cookies, condensed soups and the like)-- even though they are nutritionally worthless-- can be convenient in a pinch. The problem is that most Americans eat this garbage on a daily basis; and some rely on these items for each and every meal!

The third factor is the cost; government subsidies and the overwhelming imbalance between supply and demand have driven prices down to the point where industrial farmers will never be able to turn a profit. To pay a fair price for meats (for example) that were responsibly and naturally raised is a sticker shock for some, while completely cost prohibitive for others. I saw on a news broadcast the other night that, despite recent price hikes on grocery essentials, Americans on average are only spending 5% of their income on food, compared with the 10% our grandparents doled out just 50 years ago! I'd be willing to bet that they ate a lot better, too.

While I would love to go off the grid entirely, to plant a huge garden, make everything from scratch, and only buy my food from local farmers, that simply isn't realistic for me at the moment. So I splurge on real food whenever and wherever I can, and when I do make a meal using entirely fresh ingredients, I savor the fruits of my labor.

Daisies!

Nothing special or profound to report here; I just wanted to share my small contribution to the greening of the urban jungle that is Chicago. I love, love, LOVE Gerbera daisies, and these sunny little beauties are one of my favorite features in my current apartment. A vibrant splash of color on an otherwise dull, gray, and impervious surface, they provide a nice contrast to my primarily green container garden, and happily soak up the sun's blazing rays that drench my deck with its western exposure.

Fall is coming, and these flowers won't last but another month (or two); this is just a feeble attempt to preserve a moment in time, to savor the beauty and save the image. When I look back on these pictures in a few months' time, during the dull and dreary doldrums of a Midwestern winter, maybe they will make me smile, and remind me that the sunny days of spring aren't as far off as they will undoubtedly seem.

Primo Parking

I was cruising around a parking lot at a mini mall in a swanky southwest suburb, looking for a place to park. There were no regular spots to be found so, out of desperation, I pulled into a spot up front . It was not a handicap spot (I would NEVER do that), but it still had a sign. When I drove by before, I assumed it was a designated spot for expectant mothers or something like that. Well, if anyone was watching, I could stick out my gut, hold the small of my back, and waddle into the store. I was only going to be a minute, and I had to get to work!

As it turns out, it wasn't pregnant lady parking at all; better yet, I had every right to park there! The spot was reserved for fuel-efficient vehicles, and my 2006 Sentra certainly fit the bill. It's no Prius, but it averages 33 miles a gallon, which more than makes up for its poor acceleration abilities. In fact, that sign made my whole day. Kudos to the environmentally conscious parking lot engineers of Kane and DuPage counties! The actual design of the lot is a mess, which makes no sense to me, but at least they got one thing right. Hopefully they're blazing a trail that future parking lot construction and design teams will want to follow. They've got my repeat business, and it's all because of that sign!