A few days ago, I was able to watch the Food Evolution movie.  I’ve read so many reviews about it and was really excited to see it.  I’m cheering that there is finally a pro-science movie being played!

I have to admit that it really brought out a range of emotions in me.  The first 15 minutes left me feeling infuriated beyond belief because the Hawaii anti-GMO movement was replayed.  The same emotions I felt as that unfolded became fresh again.  I felt sick, angry, and sad.

It still upsets me to this day that my home, Hawaii, was used to affect the world’s ability to access the very technology that save our family farm.  That same technology is helping farmers in Bangladesh, India, South Africa, Brazil, and so many other places.  However, wealthy elites like Andrew Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety and pseudoscience pushers like Jeffrey Smith are using fear and intentional misinformation to keep improved plants from the global farmer.  The foodie culture that touts non-GMO and organic food as better does the same to the small subsistence farmer in need of tools.  They say no to technology but offer nothing in return.

Food Evolution isn’t just a movie or “propaganda” as the anti-GMO activists claim.  It’s communication of the true story of biotechnology globally. It tells the story of the papaya in Hawaii and other innovations in the world.  When people like Vani Hari, Zen Honeycutt, Charles Benbrook, and others use primitive psychological tactics like fear to move their followers to stop the story from being heard, our fellow global citizens are being denied a basic quality of life.  Zen even goes as far to say she trusts only the social media and needs no scientist to tell her what to believe.

There is something afoul in society when dishonesty and blockading of technology starts to harm the most vulnerable.  As I’ve observed for years of the discriminatory nature of the anti-GMO activists, it’s the well nourished and well fed that parade as Earth saviors that are against the well being of humanity.  To proudly dress up as bees or bananas then proclaim you’re doing mankind a favor is exactly what your costume represents, something transient and fake.  Even putting on hazmat suits and destroying plants promotes suffering.  Once the facade is gone, we are all humans and are you doing the right thing for our fellow human?

In one clip of the movie, the organic banana farmer realizes that with no food means famine and poverty.  If we truly want to save our planet, we have to have consideration for humanity.  Providing a basic quality of life for our fellow human being is the pono thing to do.  Listening to imported fear that takes advantage of ignorance is the most toxic poison in the world because it denies technology and innovation to those who could benefit the most.  This is what breaks my heart knowing what the future will hold for those worlds away from us.

July 10th at Kahala Mall Consolidated Theaters will play Food Evolution.  I hope it touches you as much as it inspired me to continue the fight for truth.  It’s a movie of hope for the future and a challenge for many to face the reality of what they may believe.

They voyaging canoe, the Hokulea, arrive in Honolulu yesterday which was a tremendous fear after traveling the globe.  Millions watched as it sailed into the shore. A long journey was completed.

If it were not for the brave souls who decided to collect information from the wind, stars, weather, and ocean currents, what we know as Native Hawaiians may have not arrived here in Hawaii. As Hokulea traveled the world following the ancient ways, it’s a reminder that someone must take that first brave step to change the future.

Is it good to be clinging to the relics of old and be blinded to what the future holds? Or do we use the past as a reminder of what our ancestors did to get us where we are today?

To look well into the universe to see beyond what we know is like jumping into that canoe and taking a new journey for the people of Hawaii and even humanity.

My dad has a very funny story he tells about his adventures on the farm.  I love hearing him tell of such a different life that so many of us know nothing about.

When my grandparents moved to Kaneohe in the late 1930’s, the majority of the landscape was farms.  They settled down near Keole Road to start up their farm.  They tended to cows, taro, and bananas.  Being that the area was rural, no sewer lines or cesspools were in the area so if you wanted a toilet, you had to build an outhouse.

My grandfather was a resourceful man who would take my dad and his siblings down to the junk pile to search for little treasures that might be useful to make something.  He’d take an old can and fill it with old nails and screws and other stuff.  Many of the old structures he had built were made from stuff that was thrown out.  Back in those days, it wasn’t too hip to recycle and using old junk was just a symbol of a poor farmer.  I doubt he really cared about that image very much because he continued to use junk and scraps for years to make sheds and other farm structures.

From the junks of others, a useful outhouse was built outside their home.  Nothing was bought to make it.  I think of it as a pretty amazing feat how he could transform what looked like trash into a fully functioning outhouse.

Back in those days, there wasn’t bountiful amounts of affordable of toilet paper either and people had to make do with what they had.  Toilet paper for my dad’s family was using the old tissues that wrapped oranges.  They saved all of the tissues from the oranges and recycled the old crates to store it.  Just to have tissue to wipe was a luxury for my dad.

One night, when my dad was about 8 years old, he had to go to the outhouse very badly.  In those days, there was no lights and everything was pitch black.  Being the resourceful kid he was, he decided to take the matches with him to provide some light while using the toilet.  He made his way in the dark to the outhouse with no problem but inside, he thought he’d make some light and lit a match.  He took the match and lit a piece of tissue for light.  Before he knew what was happening, the tissue burst into flames and he dropped it into the crate of tissues.  In no time at all, the tissues were set afire and then the entire outhouse was set on fire, sending him running into the bushes naked.

He told me that it is a story that he would never live down because the blaze could be seen from a distance and it was well known to many that Kenneth burned down the family toilet.  We still laugh heartily at that story every time he tells it.  It also reminds me how his generation really was the first “green” people.

As an occupational therapist working with rehabilitating people, I see firsthand how much the older generations were very much “green.” When someone has a hip replacement or some major illnesses, the basic task of toileting becomes difficult.  I have to teach people how to get back to being independent with something so many take for granted.  One thing I’ve noticed is that my seniors have a very unique way of using toilet paper.

Instead of grabbing a wad of toilet paper, my patients will carefully count out their preferred about of toilet tissue.  If you hand them a wad of toilet paper, they will unfold it and separate the squares.  Then they fold it in a very certain pattern before wiping.  They will use those 4 or 5 squares to get multiple wipes from it and I get so impressed with this toilet paper origami.  These behaviors are lifelong learned patterns of using resources wisely because they knew there would be times when there may not be any.

I do chuckle about this but there is a grain of truth in the old ways and learning from the lessons they experienced.  When we are in abundance, we do go for quantity, whether it be food or toilet paper.  It’s human behavior to indulge.  There is a price to pay with indulgence as it leads to unintended consequences like a clogged toilet or weight gain.  No longer do I see huge advertisements for supersizing food or buying huge quantities of food.  I admit that I used to stock up at Costco for foodstuff only to realize that we weren’t eating all of what we bought.  That discount we thought we were getting became a wash when we landed up wasting the food.

It’s easy to want to fall back on that behavior of more is better.  My friend started gardening and I mentioned to her that she needed to apply slug bait to prevent rat lungworm disease.  She rushed out to buy the pesticide and said she shook that stuff all over her garden instead of following the label.  There’s not much to lose by using more to home gardeners and following the label isn’t a big deal when the bottle costs less than $20.  If a gardener were to do the cost analysis of growing those cucumbers and lettuce, heads, they’d be shock to know how much it would cost to grow it.

To farmers it’s a complete different story.  Some people believe that farmers will toss fertilizer out like crazy but when it means cutting into your bottomline, that is far from the truth.  When you’re trying to maximize the benefit of a product to help support your livelihood, you’re not going to toss out bags of stuff that costs you money!  It’s not going to provide any additional benefits and will have an unintended consequence along the way.

We all can learn from the lessons of the past to guide us for the future.  Clamoring for the old is a different story when you’ve actually lived it to know what it’s like.  My dad’s lessons keep me grounded and appreciating what I have now.

Who uses pesticides? Many people and it’s evident by the violations issued to homeowners, landscapers, county workers, businesses, agricultural users, the state, and pest control operators.  

A few days ago, I decided to start my usual routine of digging up weeds from my garden. As hacked away at the weeds filling my garden boxes, I dug up a nice fat Cuban slug from my taro box hidden among the weeds.  I remembered that I hadn’t put slug bait in that new box so decided to treat my garden with it to prevent rat lungworm disease.  Eww is all I could think of.

As case number 15 of rat lungworm disease came to light last month, my blood boils a bit because of what has happened over the last several years.  For years, I had to testify to legislators about farmers’ need for pesticides and that we indeed were proper users for good reason.  I remember a meeting where Representative Chris Lee as well as several others sat there listening and the feedback we got was that the farmers need to do more to educate the public.  No sooner did that meeting happen then I hear of Rep. Lee, Rep. Creagan, and Senator Josh Green joining in on the anti-pesticide bills being lobbied by the Center for Food Safety’s Ashely Lukens.  The fear mongering continued for nearly 3 years masquerading as a “big ag” issue but really was something affecting all farmers statewide.

When the pesticide mongering was at its height, I remember walking past farmer’s market booths bragging about selling pesticide free products.  Many signs also touted that it was grown organically too.  I used to think that this “hipster” eating will bite us in the ass sooner or later and sure enough, it has brought to light a real microscopic monster that has been in Hawaii for nearly 50 years.

I’ve seen lots of blame being placed on the Department of Health for not doing enough about the issue and legislators not funding research about this.  A few weeks ago, I received a mass email from Ashley Lukens of the Center for Food Safety bragging about not getting the organic tax credit law rescinded this past session.  Her group, along with the other anti-ag groups like the Surfrider Foundation, the Sierra Club, and even Earthjustice, spent taxpayer dollars to fight a conflated problem and enabled a real problem to surface.

We also stopped multiple industry bills aimed at attacking small farmers (HB452), repealing the organic farming tax credit (HB961) and setting unreasonable standards that mandate all applicators of any pesticide be forced to report their usage (HB1302).

There was ZERO mention of a real food safety issue affecting every farm.  No peep of rat lungworm disease.  Organic farmers and even conventional farmers have lost a lot of sales because of this issue and buyers have turned to the mainland sources instead of heeding the buy local slogans.  For a group that demanded the right to know, I’m not shocked that she prefers to keep the public in the dark about what organic farmers spray and the amounts being used.  Shouldn’t it be fair across the board? I get so mad knowing that this is just another chip at agriculture overall that will make us 100% dependent upon imports.

None of these environmental groups even shared info to their followers on opportunities to follow good agricultural practices either.  These groups told people that government couldn’t be trusted and by sharing info from extension agents only contradicts what they’ve been telling the public all these years.  The focus on trusting experts is in dire need right now but none of these groups could ever turn that stone over and show how wrong they were to begin with.

The tax credit for organic farmers won’t even matter when no one wants to buy their produce in fear of rat lungworm disease.  Why would any consumer want to risk catching this preventable illness to eat expensive, possibly unsafe produce, that wasn’t grown properly?  The experts have already stated that controlling the vectors like rats and slugs is a huge way to prevent this from happening.  There’s even emergency situations where organic farmers can use pesticides to manage this issue.  The fact that pesticides have utility is really coming to the forefront as more stories are told of pain and debility from this parasite.  I’d like to see the politicians repeal that law next year and put the funds back in to help ALL farmers produce safe food and get a tax break, not just one certain group.  To not do that is discrimination if you ask me.

The failure of legislators to not focus on evidence based problems is showing up as many unintended consequences.  The little fire ant invaded a Maui lot necessitating a court order to allow for treatment of the pests is telling of the fear mongering by those claiming to protect the environment.  The Zika virus and even sharp rises in dengue fever also brought fear to the Big Island and Senator Green called for spraying of pesticides to protect people.  The Civil Beat article also notes that spraying becomes difficult with many organic farms who will lose certification but fails to mention that there are emergency measures that can be taken to avoid that.

I’ve always thought that the leaders of our state, the legislators, had a duty to protect the public and use resources wisely.  That clearly isn’t what’s happening here.  The fear mongering of the organic industry against pesticides has brought rat lungworm disease to the forefront and helped to harbor the little fire ant.  Many livelihoods including their own farmers have been impacted and will be if there isn’t some accountability placed upon these “leaders.”  They’ve clearly made some bad decisions that have permanently changed the lives of many people.  The public deserves better from those holding office and a reminder of the oath they took to protect us, as well as make the best decisions instead of looking at ways to pad their own coffers and egos.