9/24/2017 Update from Oregonians for Safe Farms and Families:

"We received notice on Sept. 20, 2017, the Oregon Judicial Court of Appeals has affirmed without opinion (AWOP) the White vs Josephine County with interveners Oregonians for Safe Farms and Families and Siskiyou Seeds. That's the bad news. The good news is that we still have that WIN on the books. Our work is clearly defined now to focus on the legislature. We need elected officials who are listening to the will of the people and we need to hold them accountable to that!

Thank you once again to all who have helped in this fight: Center for Sustainability Law attorneys Melissa Wischerath and Stephanie Dolan, intervener representatives Don Tipping and Mary Middleton"

The Oregon Court of Appeals this week upheld a lower court ruling that overturned a 2014 voter-approved initiative banning genetically engineered crops in Josephine County.

Without comment, the appellate court affirmed a decision by Circuit Court Judge Pat Wolke, who previously ruled that a 2013 state law forbidding local action against GMOs, short for genetically modified organisms, took precedence over the county's subsequent ban.

Wolke's ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by farmers Robert and Shelley White of Cave Junction, who once grew GMO sugar beets for the Swiss corporation Syngenta.

John DiLorenzo Jr., a Portland attorney who represented the Whites, said the appellate decision effectively rendered the county's ordinance unenforceable. In fact, the county never tried to enforce it and did not defend it in court.
"Lots of jurisdictions have unforceable codes on the books," he said. "This is now one of them."

Mary Middleton, leader of a group called Oregonians for Safe Farms and Families that defended the ban in court, conceded defeat.
"I don't believe there's another next step in Oregon," she said. "There's not another court to go higher with this. We've come to the end of the road, in terms of litigation."

Even so, she vowed to continue to seek change at the legislative level, saying lawmakers are ignoring the will of the people.
"We are not giving up, we are not giving in, we are going to continue to work on behalf of our farmers who have asked for protection in this beautiful seed-growing region," she said.

Josephine County's initiative, known as Measure 17-58, easily passed 58 to 42 percent in May 2014, a surprising margin given the county's conservative bent.

GMO crops make up the vast majority of corn, cotton, soybeans, canola and sugar beets grown in the United States, and smaller percentages of alfalfa, papaya and squash.

Backers argued GMO crops, which included plots of sugar beet starts, can contaminate non-GMO crops through cross-pollination. The campaign was also formed on a belief of increased pesticide use with GMOs.

Opponents of a ban called it bad public policy and a victory of ideology over science and common sense.
Fearing a toehold anywhere in Oregon, a consortium of bio-chemical companies led by Syngenta and Monsanto spent $800,000 in an attempt to defeat it.

The county's ban was challenged by the Whites the day it took effect in 2015. They said the ban conflicted with a 2013 state law that forbid local bans on GMOs.

Jackson County was the only county exempted from the state law, because it already had a ballot measure in the works.

Middleton's group and fellow intervenors Siskiyou Seeds, a Williams-area seed farm, countered that the state's attempt to block local bans was illegally backdated and that Josephine County's initiative process therefore was valid. They also argued the Whites were mere hobby farmers in a "manufactured lawsuit."

But Wolke disagreed, brushing aside complaints about the standing of the Whites and siding with DiLorenzo, the Whites' attorney, who argued that state law was intended to make GMO policy uniform in all 36 Oregon counties instead of letting each county make its own rules in a piecemeal fashion.

The lone exception was Jackson County, which started its initiative before the state law was approved and therefore was exempted.

Voters there approved a ban on GMOs during the same election as the ban in Josephine County.

The litigation that followed was less likely to succeed and has since been settled to allow farmers there to continue to grow GMO alfalfa for eight more years.

Despite the setback in court, the fact that a ban on GMOs passed in a conservative county like Josephine suggests the issue could eventually gain traction in the Legislature.

Meanwhile, Josephine County Legal Counsel Wally Hicks said that if the Legislature ever changes course to allow a ban on GMOs, the county's ordinance is technically still on the books.

"If the Legislature were to change that statue at some point ... it might make it enforceable again," he said.
For now, he added, it's "on the books — unenforceable and unenforced."

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Photo from Oregonians for Safe Farms and Families.

With little notice, more than two dozen state legislatures have passed “seed-preemption laws” designed to block counties and cities from adopting their own rules on the use of seeds, including bans on GMOs, according to a list compiled by the American Seed Trade Association. Opponents say that there’s nothing more fundamental than a seed, and that now, in many parts of the country, decisions about what can be grown have been taken out of local control and put solely in the hands of the state. 

“This bill should be viewed for what it is — a gag order on public debate,” says Kristina Hubbard, director of advocacy and communications at the Organic Seed Alliance, a national advocacy group, and a resident of Montana, which along with Texas passed a seed-preemption bill this year. “This thinly disguised attack on local democracy can be easily traced to out-of-state, corporate interests that want to quash local autonomy.”

Seed-preemption laws are part of a spate of legislative initiatives by industrial agriculture, including ag-gag laws passed in several states that legally prohibit outsiders from photographing farms, and “right-to-farm” laws that make it easier to snuff out complaints about animal welfare. The seed laws, critics say, are a related thrust meant to protect the interests of agro-chemical companies.

Nearly every seed-preemption law in the country borrows language from a2013 model bill drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The council is “a pay-to-play operation where corporations buy a seat and a vote on ‘task forces’ to advance their legislative wish lists,” essentially “voting as equals” with state legislators on bills, according to The Center for Media and Democracy. ALEC’s corporate members include the Koch brothers as well as some of the largest seed-chemical companies — Monsanto, Bayer, and DuPont — which want to make sure GMO bans, like those enacted in Jackson County, Oregon, and Boulder County, Colorado, don’t become a trend.

Seed-preemption laws have been adopted in 29 states, including Oregon — one of the world’s top five seed-producing regions — California, Iowa, and Colorado, according to the American Seed Trade Association. In some cases, the preemption is explicit, and in others implied and subject to interpretation. In Oregon, the bill was greenlighted in 2014 after Monsanto and Syngenta spent nearly $500,000 fighting a GMO ban in Jackson County. Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, and Syngenta also spent more than $6.9 million opposing anti-GMO rules in three Hawaiian counties, and thousands more incampaign donations. (These companies are also involved in mergers that, if approved, would create three seed-agrochemical giants.)

Montana and Texas were the latest states to join the seed-preemption club. Farming is the largest industry in Montana, and Texas is the third-largest agricultural state in terms of production, behind California and Iowa.

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From our friends at Our Family Farms -- "Join us Saturday, May 20th at Caldera Tap House in Downtown Ashland to celebrate our 3rd Birthday! Come by between 3:30 and 5:30 for cake and light appetizers and Raise a glass to toast our Victory!"

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/120366261851946

April 19th, 2017 | Valley 106.3 Morning Show Host, Paul Gerardi, talks to Chris Hardy, local farmer, activist, and owner of Hardy Seeds, who also serves on the board for Southern Oregon Organic Seed Growers’ Association. Paul and Chris discuss the status of Non-GMO initiatives old and new, and about Chris' talk at The Hearth on Thursday April 20th. 

Source: Paul Gerardi on SoundCloud

Photo by Chris Hardy.

A ruling striking down the ban on genetically engineered crops in Josephine County, Ore., is being appealed by supporters of the ordinance.

The prohibition was passed by voters in 2014 but overturned in May by Josephine County Circuit Court Judge Pat Wolke, who held that state law clearly pre-empted local regulations of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

Oregonians for Safe Farms and Families, a nonprofit, and Sisikou Seeds, an organic farm, defended the GMO ban in court and have filed a notice informing the judge that they will appeal his decision.

Mary Middleton, executive director of OSFF, said the group continues to believe in local control and wants to vindicate the will of voters who created the GMO-free zone.

“Winning sets a precedent for the rest of the state,” Middleton said.

Middleton and other supporters of the GMO ban feared that biotech crops will cross-pollinate with organic and conventional ones, ruining their marketability.

Farmers Robert and Shelley Anne White filed a lawsuit against the ordinance last year because they wanted to plant genetically engineered sugar beets.

Wolke agreed with them that state lawmakers disallowed such local restrictions in 2013, rejecting arguments that the pre-emption law was unconstitutional.

John DiLorenzo, attorney for the plaintiffs, said he’s confident the Oregon Court of Appeals will affirm the decision, preventing county-by-county litigation if other local governments pass similar GMO bans.

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Image from Flickr

A Josephine County judge said Monday that a ban on growing genetically modified crops is invalid. The ruling clears up the legal limbo county officials have lived with for that last two years.

"The state law says that the localities may not legislate in this area; and the voters of Josephine County have attempted to legislate in the exact same area," wrote Josephine County Circuit Court Judge Pat Wolke. "The local ordinance must give way."

The lawsuit was filed by Robert A. White, Jr. and his wife, Shelly, who claimed they rely on GMO sugar beets for a living. They were supported by Oregon farm groups that typically defend growers' use of pesticides and GMO crops.

"Farmers have a right to make their own choices about the crops they plant and farming methods they use," said Katie Fast, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter, about the ruling.

Josephine County voters approved the May 2014 ban -- which would have required farmers with genetically engineered plants in the ground to rip them out and prohibit anyone from planting new GMO seeds -- with 58 percent of the vote.

However, it came too late.

Josephine County residents were in the midst of drumming up support for the measure when the Oregon Legislature intervened. In October 2013, the legislature essentially banned all GMO bans, making the state the sole regulator of seeds.

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Photo from Wikimedia Commons.