Lit­tle did Willie Nel­son know when he recorded “Crazy” years ago just how crazy it would be­come for our cher­ished fam­ily farm­ers in Amer­ica.   Nel­son, Pres­i­dent of Farm Aid, has re­cently called for the na­tional Oc­cupy move­ment to de­clare an “Oc­cupy  the Food Sys­tem” ac­tion.

Nel­son states, “Cor­po­rate con­trol of our food sys­tem has led to the loss of mil­lions of fam­ily farm­ers, de­struc­tion of our soil…”

Hun­dreds of cit­i­zens, (even in­clud­ing NYC chefs in their white chef hats) joined Oc­cupy the Food Sys­tem groups, ie Food Democ­racy Now, gath­ered out­side the Fed­eral Courts in Man­hat­tan on  Jan­u­ary 31st, to sup­port or­ganic fam­ily farm­ers in their land­mark law­suit against Big Agribusi­ness giant Mon­santo. (Or­ganic Seed Grow­ers & Trade As­so­ci­a­tion v. Mon­santo)        Oral ar­gu­ments were heard that day con­cern­ing the law­suit by 83 plain­tiffs rep­re­sent­ing over 300,000 or­ganic farm­ers, or­ganic seed grow­ers, and or­ganic seed busi­nesses.

The law­suit ad­dresses the bizarre and shock­ing issue of Mon­santo ha­rass­ing and threat­en­ing or­ganic farm­ers with law­suits of “patent in­fringe­ment” if any or­ganic farmer ends up with any trace amount of GM seeds on their or­ganic farm­land.

Judge Naomi Buck­wald heard the oral ar­gu­ments on Mon­santo’s Mo­tion to Dis­miss, and the legal team from Pub­lic Patent Foun­da­tion rep­re­sented the rights of Amer­i­can or­ganic farm­ers against Mon­santo, maker of GM seeds, [and ad­di­tion­ally, Agent Or­ange, dioxin, etc.]

After hear­ing the ar­gu­ments, Judge Buck­wald stated that on March 31st she will hand down her de­ci­sion on whether the law­suit will move for­ward to trial.

Not only does this law­suit de­bate the issue of Mon­santo po­ten­tially ru­in­ing the or­ganic farm­ers’ pure seeds and crops with the in­tro­duc­tion of Mon­santo’s ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied (GM) seeds any­where near the or­ganic farms, but ad­di­tion­ally any nearby GM fields can with­stand Mon­santo’s Roundup her­bi­cides, thus pos­si­bly fur­ther con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the or­ganic farms nearby if Roundup is used.

Of course, the or­ganic farm­ers don’t want any­thing to do with that ole con­t­a­m­i­nated GM seed in the first place. In fact, that is why they are cer­ti­fied or­ganic farm­ers.  Hello?  But now they have to worry about get­ting sued by the very mon­ster they abhor,  and even have to spend extra money and land (for buffers which only some­times deter the con­t­a­m­i­nated seed from being swept by the wind into their crop land).   At this point, they are even hav­ing to re­sort to not grow­ing at all the fol­low­ing or­ganic plants: soy­beans, corn, cot­ton, sugar beets, and canola, …just to pro­tect them­selves from hav­ing any (un­wanted) plant that Mon­santo could pos­si­bly sue them over.

”Crazy, crazy for feel­ing so…..”

The farm­ers are suf­fer­ing the threat of pos­si­ble loss of Right Liveli­hood.  They are cre­at­ing good jobs for Amer­i­cans, and sup­ply­ing our purest foods.  These or­ganic farm­ers are bring­ing Amer­i­cans healthy food so we can be a healthy Na­tion, in­stead of the un­der­nour­ished and obese kids and adults that Pres­i­dent Obama wor­ries so much about us be­com­ing.

So what was Pres­i­dent Obama doing when he ap­pointed Michael Tay­lor, a for­mer VP of Mon­santo, as Sr. Ad­vi­sor to the Com­mis­sioner at the FDA?  The FDA is re­spon­si­ble for “label re­quire­ments” and re­cently ruled under Michael Tay­lor’s time as  FDA Food Czar that GMO prod­ucts did not need to be la­beled as such, even though na­tional con­sumer groups loudly pro­fessed the pub­lic’s right to know what is ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied in the food sys­tem.  Sadly to re­mem­ber: Pres­i­dent Obama promised in cam­paign speeches that he would “let folks know what foods are ge­net­i­cally mod­i­fied.”  These are the con­flict of in­ter­ests that lead to the 99% move­ment stand­ing up for the fam­ily farm­ers.

Just look at the con­fus­ing head­lines lately that re­vealed that mid-west­ern farms of GM corn will be sprayed with 2,4-D tox­ins found in the deadly Agent Or­ange.  Just refer to the pre­vi­ous law­suits taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court by U.S. Vet­er­ans who tried to argue the dan­gers of Mon­santo’s Agent Or­ange, and high rates of can­cers in our sol­diers who had to suf­fer the side ef­fects from their wartime ex­po­sures in Viet­nam.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

THE TWENTY-SIXTH LEGISLATURE

REGULAR SESSION OF 2012

NOTICE OF HEARING

AG E N D A

So far, none of these bills have been scheduled for a hearing. It’s going to take massive public pressure to get a vote on these bills! Please call and email the state capitol today!

If you’s like to send emails about these bills to your own reps, please click these links:

HB 2031: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/bills/?bill=60941646
HB 2034: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/bills/?bill=60941726
HB 2101: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/bills/?bill=60937576
HB 2746: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/bills/?bill=60941366
SB 2190: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/bills/?bill=60941606
SB 2279: http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/bills/?bill=60941791

Mother and daughter team Lani Medina Weigert and Pomai Weigert of Ali’i Kula Lavender honored their recently departed friend and business partner, Ali’i Chang. The two continue to breathe new life into the Maui landmark, ensuring agri-tourism as a business for future generations.

Read more at Maui Weekly

Utopia has extended to Ma’a a matching grant for my involvement in presenting at Tedx. If the spirit moves you please extend something to utilize this gracious offer below from Utopia.

We need to reach at least $1000 in order to get the matching offer so please every bit helps.

Also the meeting notice for Maui Farmers Union for tomorrow night is below. See you there! Vincent

This is the notice from Utopia:
Thank you for being a part of our TEDxMaui/Utopia Foundation gift guide!

As I am sure you are all aware, TEDxMaui took place yesterday and it was a smashing success. Our gift guide was also launched yesterday, highlighting your nonprofit and the speaker who nominated your organization.

We would love to have you blog/post/facebook about this wonderful opportunity for your nonprofit! You may direct donors to http://www.utopiafound.org/tedx to find out more on how they can maximize their donation dollars.

(Reminder about the gift guide)
I would like to clarify what the Utopia Foundation is proposing for TEDxMaui and their gift giving guide. Each speaker from the TEDxMaui event http://www.tedxmaui.com was able to nominate a nonprofit to Utopia Foundation.

Utopia Foundation will then highlight these nonprofits within their website starting January 22, 2012 (the date of TEDxMaui) for 30 days. During these thirty days, if your nonprofit brings in a total of $1,000 or more the Utopia Foundation will match that with an additional $1,000 (not exceeding $1,000).

All donations must come through the Utopia Foundation in order to qualify for the gift matching project.

For example, if your nonprofit brings in a total of $800, at the end of the thirty days you will receive a check from Utopia Foundation for $800. If your nonprofit brings in a total of $1,200 then after the thirty days your nonprofit will receive a check from Utopia Foundation for $2,200.

I hope this helps to clarify any questions

I look forward to hearing from all of you soon, please let me know if you have any questions.