Huge
organic farm under threat: County will invade and spray Roundup if not
stopped
What??
A county government is going to destroy a massive organic farm?
By
Jon Rappoport
"I
have a great idea. We're the Sherman County government. We have power. Let's
claim Azure Farms can't control their weeds. Let's come in and invade them with
Roundup and other toxic chemicals. Let's destroy their organic farm. We know the
spraying won't wipe out the weeds---it'll make the situation worse. But who
cares? Let's open up ourselves to massive lawsuits. I'm sure Monsanto will give
us some legal help. We can set a fantastic precedent. No organic farm is safe.
No organic farmer has the right to protect his land from the government. Isn't
that a terrific idea?"
So
far, I have seen no coverage of this issue in Oregon newspapers. Why not? Also,
I find nothing on the Sherman County, Oregon, government website about a massive
spraying program.
A
local government is going to decimate a huge organic farm with herbicide?
Azure
Farms, a 2000-acre organic farm in Oregon, states it is under threat from the
local Sherman County government. Why? Because Sherman County officials are
re-interpreting a law concerning the "control of noxious weeds," so it means
"eradication."
These
weeds can be controlled on an organic farm, but the only way they can be
eliminated (according to conventional "science") is by spraying. And that means
Roundup and other toxic chemicals. That would decimate the organic nature of the
farm. That would decertify it as an organic farm.
Further,
according to Azure, Sherman County plans to put a lien on the farm, forcing it
to pay for the spraying.
The
deadline for expressing opposition is May 22. A better deadline is May 17.
Here
is the complete press release from Azure Farms and the ways to register your
concern:
Azure
Farms is a working, certified organic farm located in Moro, central Oregon, in
Sherman County. It has been certified organic for about 18 years. The farm
produces almost all the organic wheat, field peas, barley, Einkorn, and beef for
Azure Standard.
Sherman
County is changing the interpretation of its statutory code from controlling
noxious weeds to eradicating noxious weeds. These weeds include Morning Glory,
Canada Thistle, and Whitetop, all of which have been on the farm for many years,
but that only toxic chemicals will eradicate.
Organic
farming methods - at least as far as we know today - can only control noxious
weeds-it is very difficult to eradicate them.
Sherman
County may be issuing a Court Order on May 22, 2017 to quarantine Azure Farms
and possibly to spray the whole farm with poisonous herbicides, contaminating
them with Milestone, Escort and Roundup herbicides.
This
will destroy all the efforts Azure Farms has made for years to produce the very
cleanest and healthiest food humanly possible. About 2,000 organic acres would
be impacted; that is about 1.5 times the size of the city center of Philadelphia
that is about to be sprayed with noxious, toxic, polluting
herbicides.
The
county would then put a lien on the farm to pay for the expense of the labor and
chemicals used.
Contact
Sherman County Court before May 17 when the next court discussion will be
held.
Contact
info:
Show
Sherman County that people care about their food NOT containing toxic
chemicals.
Overwhelm
the Sherman County representatives with your voices!
---end
of Azure Farms statement---
Darren
Smith, Weekend Contributor to jonathanturley.org, has been covering this story. He reached
out and obtained a devastating letter from agricultural scientist, Charles
Benbrook. Benbrook has his critics within the conventional pesticide and GMO
research community. Here is Smith's piece and Dr. Benbrook's letter:
Yesterday
I fielded an article concerning a rather distressing mandate by an Oregon county
weed control agency seeking to force the application of hazardous herbicides
onto a 2,000 acre organic farm owned by Azure Farms. Sherman County Oregon
maintains this scorched earth policy is necessary to abate, or more specifically
"eradicate", weeds listed by state statute as noxious.
Now,
the scientific community is responding to this overreaching government action by
acting in the interests of health and responsible environmental stewardship
through advocacy in the hopes that officials in Sherman County will reconsider
their mandate.
Dr.
Charles Benbrook is a highly credentialed research professor and expert serving
on several boards of directors for agribusiness and natural resources
organizations. Having read news of Sherman County's actions, he penned an
authoritative response I believe will make informative reading for those
concerned by present and future implications in the forced use of herbicides
under the rubric of noxious weed eradication, and the damage to organic farming
generally arising from such mandates.
Charles
Benbrook has a PhD in agricultural economics from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and an undergraduate degree from Harvard University. He
currently is a Visiting Professor at Newcastle University in the UK...
He
was a Research Professor at Washington State University from 2012-2015, and
served as the Chief Scientist of The Organic Center from 2006-2012. He was the
Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture in the National Academy of
Sciences from 1984-1990. He was the staff director of the Subcommittee on
Department [USDA] Operations, Research, and Foreign Agriculture of the House
Committee on Agriculture (1981-1983). He worked as an agricultural and natural
resources policy expert in the Council for Environmental Quality in the last 1.5
years of the Carter Administration. He began Benbrook Consulting Services (BCS)
in 1990, and continues to carry out projects with a wide range of clients via
BCS
He
coauthors an informative website Hygeia-Analytics.com.
I
reached out to Dr. Benbrook and received permission to reprint his letter in the
hope that with more attention, including that from the scientific community, we
can arrive at a reasonable solution to the county's concerns. Here is Dr.
Benbrook's letter:...
Tom
McCoy
Joe Dabulskis
Sherman
County Commissioners
Lauren
Hernandez
Administrative Assistant Sherman County, Oregon
Rod
Asher
Sherman Country Weed District Supervisor Moro, Oregon
Alexis
Taylor
Director Oregon Department of Agriculture
Dear
Ms. Hernandez el al:
I
live in Wallowa County. I learned today of the recent, dramatic change in the
Sherman County noxious weed control program and the plan to forcibly spray a
2,000-acre organic farm in the county.
Over
a long career, I have studied herbicide use and efficacy, public and private
weed control efforts, the linkages between herbicide use and the emergence and
spread of resistant weeds, and the public health and environmental impacts of
herbicide use and other weed management strategies.
I
served for six years, along with fellow Oregonian Barry Bushue, past-president
of the Oregon Farm Bureau, on the USDA's AC 21 Agricultural Biotechnology
Advisory Committee. Issues arising from herbicide use were a frequent topic of
discussion during our Committee's deliberations.
I
have published multiple scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals on
glyphosate, its human health risks, and the impact of genetically engineered
crops on overall herbicide use and the spread of resistant weeds. In a separate
email, I will forward you copies of my published research relevant to the use of
herbicides, and glyphosate in particular.
The
notion that Sherman County can eradicate noxious weeds by blanket herbicide
spraying is deeply misguided. I cannot imagine a single, reputable university
weed scientist in the State supporting the idea that an herbicide-based noxious
weed eradication program would work (i.e., eradicate the target weeds) in
Oregon, or any other state. To hear another opinion from one of the State's most
widely known and respected weed scientists, I urge the County to consult with Dr. Carol Mallory-Smith, Oregon State
University.
I
also doubt any corporate official working for Monsanto, the manufacturer of
glyphosate (Roundup), would agree or endorse the notion that any
long-established weed in Sherman County, noxious or otherwise, could be
eradicated via blanket spraying with Roundup, or for that matter any combination
of herbicides.
Before
proceeding with any county-mandated herbicide use justified by the goal of
eradication, I urge the County to seek concurrence from the herbicide
manufacturer that they believe use of their product will likely eradicate your
named, target, noxious weeds.
Given
that almost no one with experience in weed management believes that any
long-established weed, noxious or otherwise, can be eradicated with herbicides,
one wonders why the County has adopted such a draconian change in its noxious
weed control program. I can think of two plausible motivations - a desire by
companies and individuals involved in noxious weed control activities, via
selling or applying herbicides, to increase business volume and profits; or, an
effort to reduce or eliminate acreage in the Country that is certified
organic.
Weeds
are classified as noxious when they prone to spread, are difficult to control,
and pose a public health or economic threat to citizens, public lands, and/or
farming and ranching operations. Ironically, by far the fastest growing and
mostly economically damaging noxious weeds in the U.S. are both noxious and
spreading because they have developed resistance to commonly applied herbicides,
and especially glyphosate.
There
is near-universal agreement in the weed science community nationwide, and surely
as well in the PNW, that over-reliance on glyphosate (Roundup) over the last two
decades has created multiple, new noxious weeds posing serious economic,
environmental, and public health threats.
In
fact, over 120 million acres of cultivated cropland in the U.S. is now infested
with one or more glyphosate-resistant weed (for details, see http://cehn-healthykids.
The
majority of glyphosate-resistant weeds are in the Southeast and Midwest, where
routine, year-after-year planting of Roundup Ready crops has led to heavy and
continuous selection pressure on weed populations, pressure that over
three-to-six years typically leads to the evolution of genetically resistant
weed phenotypes, that can then take off, spreading across tens of millions of
acres in just a few years.
Ask
any farmer in Georgia, or Iowa, or Arkansas whether they would call "noxious"
the glyphosate-resistant kochia, Palmer amaranth, Johnson grass, marestail, or
any of a dozen other glyphosate-resistant weeds in their fields.
It
is virtually certain that an herbicide-based attempt to eradicate noxious weeds
in Sherman County would fail. It would also be extremely costly, and would pose
hard-to-predict collateral damage on non-target plants from drift, and on human
health and the environment. But even worse, it would also, almost certainly,
accelerate the emergence and spread of a host of weeds resistant to the
herbicides used in the program.
This
would, in turn, leave the county, and the county's farmers with not just their
existing suite of noxious weeds to deal with, but a new generation of them
resistant to glyphosate, or whatever other herbicides are widely used.
Sherman
County's proposal, while perhaps well meaning, will simply push the herbicide
use-resistant weed treadmill into high gear. Just as farmers in other parts of
the county have learned over the last 20 years, excessive reliance on
glyphosate, or herbicides over-all, accomplishes only one thing reliably - it
accelerates the emergence and spread of resistant weeds, requiring applications
of more, and often more toxic herbicides, and so on before some one, or
something breaks this vicious cycle.
I
urge you to take into account two other consequences if the County pursues this
deeply flawed strategy. Certified organic food products grown and processed in
Oregon, and distributed by Oregon-based companies like Azure and the Organically
Grown Company, are highly regarded throughout the U.S. for exceptional quality,
consistency, and value.
Plus,
export demand is growing rapidly across several Pacific Rim nations for
high-value, certified organic foods and wine from Oregon. Triggering a
high-profile fight over government-mandated herbicide spraying on certified
organic fields in Sherman County will come as a shock to many people, who are
under the impression that all Oregonians, farmers and consumers alike, are
committed to a vibrant, growing, and profitable organic food industry.
Does
Sherman County really want to erode this halo benefiting the marketing of not
just organic products, but all food and beverages from Oregon?
Second,
if Sherman County is serious about weed eradication, it will have to mandate
widespread spraying countywide, and not just on organic farms, and not just for
one year. The public reaction will be swift, strong, and build in ferocity. It
will likely lead to civil actions of the sort that can trigger substantial,
unforeseen costs and consequences. I am surely not the only citizen of the State
that recalls the tragic events last year in Malheur County.
Plus,
I guarantee you that the County, the herbicide applicators, and the
manufacturers of the herbicides applied, under force of law on organic or other
farms, will face a torrent of litigation seeking compensatory damages for loss
of reputation, health risks, and the loss of premium markets and prices.
I
have followed litigation of this sort for decades, and have served as an expert
witness in several herbicide-related cases. While it is obviously premature to
start contemplating the precise legal theories and statutes that will form the
crux of future litigation, the County should develop a realistic estimate of the
legal costs likely to arise in the wake of this strategy, if acted upon, so that
the County Commissioners can alert the public upfront regarding how they will
raise the funds needed to deal with the costs of near-inevitable
litigation.
---end
of Dr. Benbrook's letter---
Yesterday,
Sunday, I emailed the Sherman County government asking them whether they really
intend to pursue this lunatic program. If and when I receive an answer, I'll
post it.
I
also emailed Azure Farms, asking why they believe there is no coverage of this
issue in Oregon newspapers. If I get an answer, I'll post that, too.
Ordinarily,
local papers will print a stories about contentious issues, however one-sided
they may be. In this case, I find nothing.
Is
it possible the threat of herbicide spraying has been overstated? Why would
Azure issue a release claiming the spraying is imminent if it weren't true? Why
would Azure risk getting into a wrangle with the County government if the threat
weren't real? Why isn't there any mention of the spraying program on the Sherman
County website? Does the County actually think they can keep their intentions
under wraps?
"I
have a great idea. Let's claim Azure Farms can't control their weeds. Let's come
in and invade them with Roundup and other toxic chemicals. Let's destroy their
organic farm. We know the spraying won't wipe out the weeds---it'll make the
situation worse. But who cares? Let's open up ourselves to massive lawsuits. I'm
sure Monsanto will give us some legal help. We can set a fantastic precedent. No
organic farm is safe. No organic farmer has the right to protect his land from
the government. Isn't that a terrific idea?"
|
(To
read about Jon's mega-collection, Exit
From The Matrix, click here.)
|
They are going to spray because we dont own the land, remember..and the govt. is going after all the food anyway. If and when there is a global economic collaspe,wouldnt it make sense that after money has no value, food always will. It could be the ultimate "commodity" worth more than gold. Same with water..!! One more way to squeeze every last cent from anyone still possessing gold and silver. An expert on "the Rothchilds" and other "elitist" banking players was on KFI "Coast to Coast" last night and said Trump has only till the end of the year to solve this monitary crisis or there will be a total breakdown of the civilized world as we know it and Trump knows it. Supposedly, Putin has been fighting these same people since he became president of Russia, because the Clintons and Bushes put people in place there to so Putin hands are basically tied to, and has been waiting for someone like Trump for a long time. They need each other in order to have the power to confront these globalist. The globalist are using the richest and most powerful country in the world...The UNITED STATES and their loyal agencies like the CIA, FBI, AND HOMELAND SECURITY, to infect every other country into compliance with ours. If Trump and Putin can get there militaries to agree to be allies instead of adversaries they just might be strong enough to break this grip of control of "the money changers" once and for all. But they will need to come up with a valid form of currentcy before they can rid this scourage from the earth. Its very complicated and stratigic. The timing has to be perfect.
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