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Contested fields: an analysis of anti-GMO politics on Hawai’i Island

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Abstract

This paper details the evolution of activism against genetically modified organisms on the Big Island of Hawai’i. It offers an explanation for the ability of rural residents on the Big Island to pass anti-GMO legislation while other states and communities have tried and failed. I argue that the Big Island’s recent anti-GMO legislative success is due to the articulation of interests and actions between settlers to Hawai’i and Native Hawaiian community members seeking to protect Native Hawaiian rights. Tracing the history of the anti-GMO movement on Big Island highlights the unique circumstances that facilitated the passage of this bill, and is also significant for making sense of the potential future trajectories of anti-GMO-related food sovereignty movements elsewhere.

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Notes

  1. The bill did grandfather in GM papaya and GM corn silage (grown by local papaya farmers and a small-scale dairy farmer, respectively), though limiting their acreage to current use.

  2. As an ethnographer, an integral component of my research involved participant-observation (Guest et al. 2013). Specifically, I worked closely with a local non-profit where a number of the original anti-GMO activists worked. Along with interacting with my interlocutors on a regular basis, I attended numerous organizing events, including lecture nights, tabling events, and sustainable agriculture workshops. The empirical data gathered through these processes informs the following narrative and analysis, which unfolds in some places through direct quotes and in other places through paraphrasing or synthesis.

  3. For example, some states like Maine, Vermont, and Connecticut have successfully passed GMO labeling laws. Though to date more than 70 bills have been introduced in over 30 states to require GMO labeling or prohibit GM foods, most of these pieces of proposed legislation have failed—perhaps most notably, California’s Proposition 37 and Colorado’s Proposition 105.

  4. See articles in special issue 3 (4) 2014 in Agriculture and Human Values on Smallholder Farmer Voice.

  5. Today 25,000 acres of the total 1.12 million acres farmed in the state are owned or leased annually by the seed industry (Monsanto 2013; National Agricultural Statistics Service 2012).

  6. Haole is the local Hawaiian term for those living in Hawai’i who originate from the mainland United States. Historically it referred to any foreigner, but it has come to be used in reference to someone of European/Caucasian ancestry (Pukui and Elbert 2003).

  7. However this ban became a moot point when UH and HARC were ultimately unsuccessful at genetically modifying the coffee plant.

  8. The reaction of the Native Hawaiian community to attempts to genetically modify taro highlights the way in which attempts to genetically modify culturally significant crops meet with particularly heightened resistance, as documented in numerous other contexts (McAfee 2008; Fitting 2010; Kudlu and Stone 2013; Schnurr and Mujabi-Mujuzi 2014).

  9. These groups included: Center for Food Safety, Greenpeace Europe and Southeast Asia, PANNA, Consumers Union, Organic Consumers Association, GMO Free CA, and BioThai.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Science Education and Engineering for Sustainability postdoctoral fellowship under Award Number 1215762. Many thanks to my interlocutors in Hawai’i as well as to my colleagues Mez Baker-Medard, Lindsey Dillon, Alice Kelly, Kendra Klein and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, who provided helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

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  1. Department of Human Ecology, University of California, One Shields Ave, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Clare Gupta

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Gupta, C. Contested fields: an analysis of anti-GMO politics on Hawai’i Island. Agric Hum Values 35, 181–192 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-017-9814-8

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