The word Monsanto tends to send shivers down my spine.  Kind of like the scene in The Lion King, when the hyenas taunt each other by invoking the name of the dreadful king Mufasa:

Hyena 1:  Mufasa!
Hyena 2: Ooooohooo, say it again!
Hyena 1: Monsanto!
Leah: Ooohooo, say it again!

The primary source of my fear comes from the series of lawsuits that agricultural corporation, Monsanto, has launched and won against small farmers for “stealing” the company’s patented Roundup Ready seeds, which had accidentally drifted from Monsanto-planted farms onto unsuspecting neighboring fields.  (See The Center for Food Safety’s report for more).  The lawsuits were just so screwed up and unethical, and the thought that they won many of them felt downright Orwellian – hence the uncontrollable shivers.

Recently, however, Jacobs Farm, an organic farm in Santa Cruz, launched a case of it’s own – and won!  Their suit was not against Monsanto, but against a pesticide company whose chemicals drifted and contaminated a crop of organic herbs.  A jury awarded the farm $1 million in damages.  It’s a hopeful case – and a glint of hope from within the bleak landscape that Monsanto (ooohooo!) has created.  Read the full story below.

(Hat tip to Emily Freed, a Jewish farmer who works for Jacob’s Farm, and is helping to plan Hazon’s Food Conference.)

Santa Cruz Organic Farm Wins Pesticide Suit
The San Francisco Chronicle
By: Bob Egelko
Sept 30, 2008

A jury has awarded $1 million to an organic farm in Santa Cruz whose edible herbs were contaminated by pesticides sprayed on nearby farmlands.

The pesticides wiped out a year’s worth of culinary herbs including sage, rosemary and dill at Jacobs Farm Del Cabo, lawyers for the farm said Monday. They said the organophosphate chemicals – chlorpyrifos, diazinon and dimethoate – are legal on the Brussels sprouts on which they were sprayed, but are forbidden on culinary herbs or any organic crops.

“The message from the jury is pretty clear, both to industry and to regulators: It’s not acceptable to apply these poisonous chemicals and turn your back on the consequences after the point of application,” said Nathan Benjamin, an attorney for the organic farm.

Western Farm Service, supplier of the pesticides, said it is likely to appeal Friday’s verdict by a Santa Cruz County Superior Court jury. The company said it followed standards on the product labels and county agricultural permits when applying the chemicals. It also said Jacobs Farm was partly to blame for “coming to the conventional (farming) area with incompatible crops.”

Assessing the uses and risks of pesticides should be the job of federal, state and county regulators, not local juries, Western Farm Service said in a statement. It said the verdict “raises concerns about (the) future use of organophosphates in California.”

Jacobs Farm, which leases state coastal land in Wilder Park, said it first detected trace levels of pesticide on its herbal crops in October 2006. The farm notified county officials, who found no violations, and also contacted Western Farm Service, which promised to take precautions against windblown contamination, Benjamin said.

The attorney said the pesticides hadn’t been blown from adjoining lands during aerial spraying. Instead, he said, they evaporated from crops one to three days after being sprayed and then were carried over by winds to the organic farm.

Researchers have known about that characteristic of organophosphates for several decades, Benjamin said, but neither federal nor state regulations account for it or provide any protection for organic farmers. He said the jury verdict signaled the need for regulations to protect growers against volatile pesticides that can drift after they are applied.