Pesticide Action Network NEWS Advancing alternatives to pesticides worldwide • www.panna.org
Farmworkers’ Time Is Coming
Spring 2014
by Dr. Margaret Reeves
Finally, there’s movement to strengthen U.S. rules — notoriously weak and difficult to enforce — that protect farmworkers and their families. Meanwhile, farmworkers, growers, retailers and allies are launching a ground-breaking initiative modeling how to work together to grow food safely, fairly and profitably. From its inception, PAN has worked with farmworkers across North America and around the world to help raise the voices of agricultural labor in a collective effort to reduce the use of hazardous pesticides and protect workers and their families from exposure to these chemicals. Victories along the way have been important but too few: the first DDT prohibitions in United Farm Worker contracts in 1968; adoption of EPA’s Worker Protection Standard in 1992; and overturning the registration of the carcinogenic soil fumigant methyl iodide in 2012. This is very personal for me. I’ve been working with and for farmworkers for more than 30 years, the last 18 on PAN’s staff. With supporters like you, PAN stood behind union efforts for rights to representation through strikes, boycotts and legislation, as well as campaigns to win meaningful immigration reform. I am thrilled to report on a recent doubleheader of progress.
EPA proposes better rules; we can make them stronger In February, EPA finally issued proposed improvements to the protection standard, something PAN has worked with farmworker advocates for since 2000. Right now we’re gathering input from workers, health professionals and people like you, telling EPA that they should not bow to industry pressure to weaken those protections. In fact, increased worker protections benefit the industry by reducing healthcare and insurance expenses, turnover and retraining costs.
Equitable Food Initiative The second part of this doubleheader is the upcoming launch of the Equitable Food Initiative. EFI is creating a win-win for all the stakeholders—farmworkers, growers, retailers and consumers of fresh produce. It will certify farms that comply with stringent labor, food safety and pest management standards, using trained worker-management leadership teams on each farm to ensure compliance and quality assurance year-round. I have been deeply engaged in EFI, helping design the environmental stewardship standard and a robust certification scheme that integrates workers into on-farm compliance and ongoing resolution of any “nonconformities” that inevitably arise. I’ve been inspired by this inclusionary process through which all parties’ interests are
From field to fork, the PAN-supported Equitable Food Initiative unites farmworkers and growers in shared leadership, assuring quality control and worker protections.
served—well-trained workers provide a safer product, growers receive better prices and market access, and well-compensated workers enjoy safer work conditions and opportunities for professional development. We’ll bring you more about EFI in coming months. Today, you can help by urging EPA to strengthen the new Worker Protection Standard and pledging to support EFI.
TAKE ACTION: R Sign on to PAN’s EPA comments at www.panna.org/stand_ with_farmworkers. R Pledge your support of EFI at www.takepart.com/chavez. Dr. Margaret Reeves, a soil scientist, represents PAN on EFI’s executive committee.
Inside This Issue Minnesotans Take on Potato Baron p. 2 Cultivating Resilience p. 3 Building the Buzz for Bees p. 4
Minnesota Communities Take on the Potato Baron Nearly a decade ago, two organizations in central Minnesota asked PAN to help detect pesticides drifting from potato fields. Most of the fields were operated by one grower: RDO, the world’s largest potato producer. White Earth Land Recovery Project and Minnesotans for Pesticide Awareness had a long list of reasons to be concerned about pesticide drift. Farmers who’d lost livestock soon after potato production moved into their area suspected that drift might be to blame. Others witnessed frequent pesticide applications on the potato field across the road from the green, healthy school they’d built on the White Earth Reservation. And some were managing chronic health issues that flared up during peak periods of pesticide use. These residents saw clear, damaging impacts on communities near potato fields. Together, they called on RDO to cut pesticide use and transition to more sustainable practices to support healthy communities. In spring 2006, White Earth tribal members, parents and grandparents were trained to monitor their air with PAN’s Drift Catcher instrument. Confirming local residents’ suspicions, 66% of samples analyzed by PAN between 2006–2009 contained pesticides, with 64% testing positive for the fungicide chlorothalonil—which the EPA has classified as a likely human carcinogen. With this compelling data in hand, and long-distance support from PAN’s staff, the groups sought solutions from RDO and the state. Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture (MDA) responded with voluntary measures to minimize potato fungicide drift. But, as Carol Ashley of Park Rapids observed, “I don’t have much confidence that anything voluntary will be effective, given that RDO and MDA have known about this problem for years.”
Toxic Taters turns to McDonald’s Frustrated by the lack of effective protection policies, in 2012 the groups joined forces as the Toxic Taters Coalition with support from staff in PAN’s new office in Minneapolis. And the coalition turned to another stakeholder: McDonald’s, the largest potato buyer in the United States. McDonald’s has the power to influence the growing practices of the entire potato market. In February 2014, the coalition launched a campaign asking McDonald’s to require sustainable practices from all of its potato suppliers, including RDO. In April, PAN staff joined coalition members in traveling the state to tell their stories and build support for the campaign. Creating a healthy, safe food system includes protecting the well-being of rural, agricultural communities. As Bob Shimek of the White Earth Reservation said, “The companies responsible need to stop this chemical trespass into our land, air, water and lives.”
TAKE ACTION: Sign the petition at www.panna. org/toxic-taters urging McDonald’s to do the right thing.
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Using a Drift Catcher, Don Smith of Frazee, Minnesota, monitors the air on his farm for pesticides from RDO’s nearby potato fields. Photo: Lex Horan
The Science
for your conversations about pesticides Chlorothalonil is a drift-prone fungicide, detected in the air in California, Florida, Minnesota and Prince Edward Island in Canada. • It is applied an average of 9.9 times per season to 86% of potato fields in Minnesota. • It is ranked a “probable carcinogen” by U.S. EPA based on ingestion studies. • EPA has not yet completed studies of inhalation toxicity, more likely a major route of exposure. • A manufacturing impurity in chlorothalonil is hexachlorobenzene, a persistent organic pollutant that poses a health risk.
Pesticide Action Network News Spring 2014
Cultivating Resilience Nikiko Masumoto is radical: a feminist farmer, writer, performer and agrarian artist. She takes pride in being Yonsei — fourth generation Japanese American — and working 80 acres south of Fresno beside her parents and farmworkers to raise organic peaches, nectarines and grapes. “Surviving as a family farm has always been a struggle. My dad (“Mas”) is known as a writer and poet-farmer, and my mom, Marcy, develops peach products and manages fieldwork while working as a rural education specialist. We’ve needed off-farm income to make it.” As Mas did many years before, Nikiko left rural Del Rey, California, for UC Berkeley with no intention of returning home. But in her first-year environmental science class, “a visiting scientist from PAN talked about the global pesticide problem, and it blew me away to realize how farming organically in the Central Valley was revolutionary.” Before she’d earned a degree in women’s and gender studies, Nikiko decided to carry the Masumoto Family Farm into a fourth generation. In 2008, Nikiko became Pesticide Action Network’s youngest board member at just 23. We profiled her in PAN’s magazine as she headed off to graduate school at the University of Texas.
We’re constantly in dialogue about how to realize our values while responding to sometimes overwhelming market forces. I know farming is a risky business. Yet I’m tapping into an ecological consciousness that many millennials have, not just living in alignment with our beliefs, but deeply investing in the edge of change. I believe we need to go beyond sustainable, to resilience ecology: struggling through the uncertainties of climate change, accepting both stumbling and rising, discovering new ways to work.
For example, with drought forecast for 2014, last winter the Masumotos pruned some of their raisin grapes so severely the vines can’t produce summer fruit. They’re giving the vines a
Invest in a safe & sustainable future
s abbatical and themselves a little break. As the drought has become worse, they’re testing resilience: how much water the vines need to stay alive and come back stronger next year. Since coming home, Nikiko started the Valley Storytellers Project, and she’s performed a one-woman piece based on testimonies from the Japanese American movement for redress. As she looks ahead, she’s hoping to continue working at the roots of farming, art and community. There are no borders for Nikiko between multigenerational farming, social justice and healing communities.
OUR MISSION• •Pesticide Action Network North America works to replace the use of hazardous pesticides with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens’ action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to ensure the transition to a just and viable society.
Pesticide Action Network News Spring 2014
90 COUNTRIES
Join the PAN Sustainers’ Circle by pledging monthly or quarterly to ensure PAN’s success year-round. Pledging provides reliable funding and shows your commitment to a resilient and fair food system, rooted in justice and equity. Pledge $10 or more a month, and we’ll thank you with a copy of The Perfect Peach by Marcy, Nikiko and David Mas Masumoto. Learn more at www.panna.org/pledge
The luscious peaches Nikiko serves are imbued with the spirit of generations caring for the land and the people whose resilience will feed us. Photo: Marcy Masumoto
30+ YEARS
As she wrapped up her M.A. in Performance as Public Practice, with plans to go for a doctorate, her grandfather, who’d founded the farm in 1948, died. While mourning, Nikiko realized, “I didn’t want to wait any longer before coming home to farm.” In 2011 she moved back to her room in her grandmother’s house to apprentice with her father.
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Building the Buzz for Bees Honey bees and other pollinators are still in trouble. Are policymakers starting to wake up? Bees are hard at work this spring, pollinating much of our food, from almonds to apples to avocados. Yet this is the twelfth consecutive season we’ve seen dramatic declines in bee populations. In 2006, beekeepers started reporting unprecedented annual losses of 29–36%—and last year some faced bee losses of 40–70%. We don’t have the overwinter loss data for this year, but early reports indicate that the situation is still dire. As you know, for years PAN has been marshaling the scientific evidence and naming a key part of the problem: pesticides, alone and in combination with other factors, are harmful to bees. Neonicotinoid pesticides—widely used systemic insecticides—are particularly damaging. The evidence is clear: more studies continue to link “neonics” to bee kills, impaired brain function and weakened immune systems. Still, EPA won’t conclude its review of these chemicals until 2018.
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n March, our coalition hand delivered petitions from more than half a million people to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, urging her to prioritize protecting bees from pesticides.
With your support, we’re continuing to keep the pressure on EPA to speed up their timeline. Although EPA is moving at a stubbornly slow pace, there are signs of progress. Members of Congress have taken up the issue by supporting the “Saving America’s Pollinators Act” (HR 2692). Introduced by Representatives Conyers (D-MI) and Blumenauer (D-OR), this bill would mandate EPA to remove neonics from the market until the agency’s review is complete. It currently has 57 co-sponsors, with more to come.
Even more progress is visible at state and local levels, including: • Minnesota: PAN and partner beekeeper groups advanced two bills, one ensuring that flowers treated with neonics be labeled “pollinator lethal,” and the other to create a fund to compensate beekeepers for pesticide-related bee losses when the source of the pesticides is untraceable. The bills’ prospects look good. • California: We worked with the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Association on a bill that ensures state officials complete their evaluation of neonics on a clear timeline. The bill is moving through hearings in the State Assembly and will likely be passed on to the Senate by summer. • Oregon: With support from PAN allies Beyond Toxics and Xerces Society, the city of Eugene passed the first comprehensive policy to eliminate the use of neonics in public places like parks, setting a new bar for communities creating Honey Bee Havens. You can help build momentum to save bees. Start a dialogue in your community, keep the pressure on policymakers or create a bee haven in your own back yard.
TAKE ACTION: Learn about what you can do for bees at www.honeybeehaven.org.
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