Renewable Farming

Dr. Don Huber shows New Zealand farmers a great opportunity: Stay non-GMO

New Zealand farmers have fended off repeated, intense pressures to allow GMO crops to take over their “crown jewel” in the food-export world: Clean, GMO-free crop and livestock products. Dr. Don Huber, Purdue University professor emeritus, just visited New Zealand for speaking engagements, and Auckland, NZ radio broadcaster Tim Lynch captured the key points of Huber’s message to farmers there.

Dr. Don Huber

Oct. 16, 2017 — Using the links here, you can listen to Tim Lynch’s original interview with Dr. Huber, who is in our book the leading educator with warnings about the dangers of GMOs, glyphosate and the array of corporate domination back of those technologies. Or, you can download a PDF of the interview.

1. We suggest visiting Tim Lynch’s website to gain a bit of background on his years of thoughtful concern about health and ecology. The website name and home page is www.ourplanet.org.

The website gives you access to Tim’s broadcasts on FM with the program name of GreenplanetFM. 

Displays on the home page will change, but currently the feature dated Oct. 12 is labeled: “Professor Don Huber: The facts on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the glyphosate Trojan Horse.” (Scroll down to the lower part of the page to see the selection of interviews.)  The Huber item carries a both a recording of the interview and a written summary by Tim Lynch.  For a direct link to the Huber interview and summary, you can also click this link: 

https://www.ourplanet.org/greenplanetfm/professor-don-huber-the-facts-on-genetically-modified-organisms-gmos-and-the-glyphosate-trojan-horse

When that window opens, you can click on the right-pointing arrow to hear a podcast recording of the interview. Or you can read an extensive summary of the interview, assembled by Tim Lynch.

2. If those links aren’t accessible to you, we’ve also made available a PDF of Tim Lynch’s summary you can download and read. Just click here.

The Convention on Biological Diversity published a summary of the dramatic change in New Zealand’s farming sector. in the years leading up to 1984, New Zealand was fairly described as a welfare state, with a heavily subsidized agriculture. The financial crash of the early 1980s collapsed their subsidy schemes, and the nation dropped virtually all ag programs that transferred tax money to farmers. Surprisingly, only 1% of farmers abandoned agriculture as a direct result, although the ag sector went through wrenching changes. The drop in land prices there about equaled the U.S. plunge in farmland values in 1980-86. But today, farmers are essentially subsidy-free and financially sound. They’re aggressively tuned to markets, especially the booming export markets in Southeast Asia including China.

Huber’s encouragement focused on preserving their independence, rather than allowing corporations to control their seed sources and lead them into an unsustainable, toxin-dependent dead end.