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If you want a front row seat to the fight over GMOs head to Boulder County, Colorado . . . where an elected board of commissioners is considering whether to pull the plants off large swathes of publicly-owned land.
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Since the 1970s, the county has been aggressive in its land acquisition. . . The county buys farms and leases the land back to farmers. All told, the county manages more than 100,000 acres . . . Of that land, about 1 percent is planted with GMO corn and sugar beets every year.
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The county’s farmland is a small island in the middle of rapidly expanding urban development. Those urban dwellers are more than willing to voice how they think farming on public land should be done. That puts the conventional farmers who lease public land in a unique position.
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GMOs are a physical, tangible manifestation of a much larger set of economic and political concerns, something Will Toor, a former Boulder County commissioner, knows firsthand. He sat on the board the last time this issue came up.
“I certainly think it’s true that GMOs have become symbolic of something much larger,” Toor says. “And I don’t think they’re a very good symbol at that.”
. . . .When the issue came up during his tenure as commissioner he decided to study up. The intense focus on genetic engineering misses the point, Toor says. He’d rather see people organizing for better water efficiency, soil health and adaptation to climate change.
“Those are the interesting questions, and they have almost nothing to do with GMO or non-GMO or even organic and non-organic,” he says.
Read full, original post: In Boulder County And Beyond, GMOs Are A Pawn In A Much Larger Food Fight
