Editor’s note: This commentary is by James H. Maroney Jr., who has a master’s degree in Environmental Law & Policy from Vermont Law School and is a former farmer.
The incredible success of the GMO labeling bill was in actuality not about the “right to know” what is in our food. It was an astoundingly clear vote against conventional agriculture, for which GMO seeds have become a lightning rod.
It was a vote against the introduction by farmers into the food chain of an ever-widening range of exotic technologies including the broad use of toxic chemicals, fertilizers and herbicides. It was a vote by an overwhelming number of Vermonters, estimated at 90 percent of respondents, for clean, unadulterated food. That vote should resonate with you and with all those in the Shumlin administration who are grappling with how to meet our federally mandated water quality standards while, at the same time, trying to preserve the conventional paradigm.
As you know, conventional agriculture was introduced after World War II to boost yields and lower the cost of food by exchanging cheap, toxic chemicals for the traditional practices of achieving soil fertility through crop rotation, achieving weed control by mechanical means and hired labor. We all know that the protocol works: food production has increased three-fold and per unit farm costs have fallen by a proportional amount. But the protocol depends upon using the very same chemicals that are polluting the lake, mainly nitrogen, in the form of petroleum-based fertilizer and phosphorus, in the form of imported feed supplements.
Converting to organic achieves many important goals simultaneously: it helps dairy farmers significantly lower their footprint, it gives them a product that is actually in short supply instead of in surplus, it brings Vermont into compliance with the Clean Water Act, it boosts the value of the Vermont brand, of Vermont grown food and of Vermont farmland, which protects farmland against development.
Vermont has known for at least 50 years that these agents pollute the lake. Yet, over the same period of time, the state has allocated hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to “clean up” the lake without ever once addressing the destructive premise upon which use of these toxic chemicals is predicated. State efforts to clean up Lake Champlain have failed precisely because the state does not question the protocol and also because it allocates $60 million-$80 million a year of taxpayer dollars to “save” the industry that applies these chemicals; the Legislature is feeding with one hand the cause of the problem it believes itself to be legislating with the other to stanch.
The governor has stated that Vermont will achieve clean water but that he will not support allocating any more money for a plan that will not achieve it. I agree with him completely. Now the 2014 session is over and the governor and the Legislature have declined to fund the Draft Phase One Plan (DPOP). And they are correct to decline: the DPOP is not designed to achieve water quality standards. It is designed to spend more of the taxpayers’ dollars to maintain the appearance of striving for water quality standards while first protecting conventional agriculture. And, since conventional agriculture is the proximate, i.e., preventable, cause of lake pollution, it cannot succeed.
Why not take a hint from what 90 percent of Vermonters are telling you about GMOs? The vote was a clear mandate to you that Vermonters do not want GMOs or toxic chemicals in the food supply. Coincidentally, the EPA insists that we clean up the lake, which means that Vermont must arrest the inflow of nitrogen and phosphorus into the lake. Incontestably, the major source of these chemicals is conventional agriculture, which in Vermont, means conventional dairy. We cannot get there by reasserting the same voluntary remedies that have been in effect for near 20 years and which are empirically ineffective; the inflow must be reduced by 36 percent. We do not have to allocate hundreds of millions to stop this flow; we need only to prevent their use. But since conventional dairy farmers are now dependent upon them, and we want to preserve farming, I suggest that you give the farmers a timetable for converting stage by stage to organic. Those who for whatever reason do not want to, or cannot, convert, give these farmers 25 years to realize their legitimate, investment-backed expectations.
The Legislature will be reluctant to allocate money, but converting to organic achieves many important goals simultaneously: it helps dairy farmers significantly lower their footprint, it gives them a product that is actually in short supply instead of in surplus, it brings Vermont into compliance with the Clean Water Act, it boosts the value of the Vermont brand, of Vermont grown food and of Vermont farmland, which protects farmland against development. It gives tourists a reason to come to Vermont and it satisfies 90 percent of Vermonters, who do not want exotic technologies adulterating their food and water supply. And don’t take my word for it: put out a Doodle poll and ask Vermonters if this is what they want from you. I dare you.
