Movimento Verde Eufémia mows first GM Field in South Portugal

On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND
This year the first GMO field ever has been plant­ed in the Algarve Region in Por­tu­gal. Already years before the plant­i­ng of his GM corn there has been strong oppo­si­tion from civ­il soci­ety against the cul­ti­va­tion of GMOs in the Algarve. This includes social and envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, farm­ers and a pub­lic opin­ion who is in gen­er­al against the cul­ti­va­tion and con­sump­tion of GM crops. Also from the polit­i­cal field oppo­si­tion was made. As a result the Algarve was the first GMO free zone in Por­tu­gal declared by the Jun­ta Met­ro­pol­i­tana do Algarve already in 2004. On the lev­el of the munic­i­pal­i­ties over time motions have been passed reject­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of GM crops on their ter­ri­to­ry.

Despite the strong oppo­si­tion with­in lay­ers of civ­il soci­ety and from local author­i­ties against GMOs the poli­cies of the Por­tuguese Gov­ern­ment and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion con­stant­ly dis­re­spect the moral and demo­c­ra­t­ic right of those oppos­ing actors to ban GMOs from their fields and their plates.

MOVIMENTO VERDE EUFEMIA
For rea­sons described in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, an infor­mal group of peas­ants, ecol­o­gists and
con­cerned cit­i­zens have gath­ered to take direct action with the aim to re-estab­lish the demo­c­ra­t­ic, moral and eco­log­i­cal order. The move­ment that we are now start­ing will go under the name “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia”, in homage to the peas­ant strug­gle against the for­mer por­tuguese fas­cist regime.

The strug­gle of Cate­ri­na Eufémia and the peas­ant move­ment of which she was part aimed at defend­ing the rights and the well-being of peas­ant com­mu­ni­ties. Our move­ment will con­tin­ue this strug­gle in the con­text of new appear­ing threats, name­ly the agro-biotech­nol­o­gy sec­tor and their pow­er­ful lob­by.

THE ACTION
The direct action involved 65 mow­ers, destroy­ing 1 hectare of the 50 hectare GM corn field in less than 20 min­utes around mid­day. The activists took the well con­sid­ered risk to announce the action before­hand in the media. This was done for rea­sons of receiv­ing the high­est media cov­er­age for the largest direct action since the post rev­o­lu­tion­ary peri­od in Por­tu­gal. How­ev­er, the activists were aware of risks of com­pro­mise that this deci­sion would bring along.

After 10 min­utes, the own­er and his col­leagues noticed the action. About 8 farm­ers attacked the group of mow­ers using phys­i­cal vio­lence. The mow­ers took a defen­sive stand by using their high­er num­ber but did not use vio­lence in return. One farmer fired shots from an alarm pis­tol and the activists were threat­ened with poi­son sprayers. One police patrol arrived short­ly after. All mow­ers abort­ed the action after 20 min­utes and moved on the pub­lic road to mix up in the parade. The 10 police offi­cers that were in the area could not do any­thing else but reg­u­lat­ing the traf­fic for the parade then count­ing more than 120 peo­ple, mov­ing towards the near­est vil­lage of Poço Bar­reto. 3 iden­ti­fi­ca­tions were made by the police, this involved the police speak­ers and the media spokesper­son. The whole group was picked up by busses and the action end­ed in all order.

Know­ing that the activist were hit­ting the prop­er­ty of a farmer, even though it was a big one they announced that they would pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age inflict­ed. In the end the activists intend­ed no harm towards the farmer him­self who for one or anoth­er rea­son choose to cul­ti­vate GM crops. The activists pro­posed that they would pro­vide the farmer with organ­ic seeds for the sur­face (50 hectares) which is cur­rent­ly being plant­ed with GM corn.

THE AFTERMATH
Now, five days after the action, the name Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia is still front­page news. All tele­vi­sion sta­tions and radio sta­tions give con­tin­u­ous updates on the case. Major polit­i­cal par­ty lead­ers are now involved in the debate. The Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion are main actors in the debate while the Pres­i­dent has com­ment­ed on the issue as well on tele­vi­sion.

The dis­course from the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture is one that main­ly evolves around state­ments con­firm­ing sup­port towards the farmer in the legal pros­e­cu­tion of the activists and point­ing out that the activists hit a ‘poor farmer’ and they should be pun­ished for tres­pass­ing and destruc­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. An esti­ma­tion from the Min­istry after the min­is­ter vis­it­ed the field under huge media atten­tion, he came to the con­clu­sion that the dam­age counts up to around 4000 euros. How­ev­er the Order of Lawyers issued a press release yes­ter­day stat­ing that that deliv­ery of legal finan­cial sup­port to from the min­istry would be an ille­gal act as it would mean gov­ern­men­tal inter­fer­ence in a civ­il court case. As a reply to that the min­istry back off stat­ing that ‘obvi­ous­ly’ they meant to sup­port the farmer win the paper work and in the devel­op­ment of his legal dis­course in the court. Next to that, the min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture takes a com­plete­ly out­bal­anced pro-GMO posi­tion, say­ing that: “There is no prob­lem, this is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven”. This can be con­sid­ered as a com­plete invalid state­ment since the sci­en­tif­ic world is at least very divid­ed on the mat­ter of GMOs.

The dis­course of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Admin­stra­tion, being the head of police, devel­ops main­ly around the goal to crim­i­nal­ize Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia and its last action. On one of the main tele­vi­sion sta­tions in a news stu­dio inter­view he labelled the action as ‘soft’ eco ter­ror­ism. The dis­course of the min­is­ter receives addi­tion­al­ly a lot of sup­port from the Pres­i­dent.

How­ev­er it is not all bad news. Now that the media have almost exhaust­ed all vari­a­tions on head titles stretch­ing over two pages, they also start to go more in debt, cov­er­ing the dif­fer­ent opin­ions and posi­tion on GMOs and explain for exam­ple the sta­tus of GMO Free Zones. Through their press releas­es, MVE has invit­ed all asso­ci­a­tions in Por­tu­gal to use the media space cre­at­ed to voice their argu­ments against GMOs. In a reac­tion to that, some main actors in the GMO debate, who ini­tial­ly dis­tanced them­selves from the action, and still do, they have now tak­en up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their con­cerns on GMOs. For that rea­son and oth­er reac­tions that the action has pro­voked from the polit­i­cal field the MVE has expressed their con­tent see­ing that their action has result­ed in an open­ing of the debate on GMOs

INVESTIGATION
Now, for the activists involved in the action it is clear that they should be very care­ful in their cur­rent steps. The min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion him­self is, as announced in the media, involved in the coor­di­na­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the Infor­ma­tion and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SIS) and the Police Jus­tice Depart­ment (PJ). Their aim is to uncov­er the net­works of activists that were involved in the action in order to run legal pros­e­cu­tion.

KNOW MORE
MVE has cur­rent­ly a blow where you can fol­low up on the devel­op­ment of the case. The link is http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/

ARGUMENTS AGAINST GMOs
The argu­ments against GMOs are sit­u­at­ed on dif­fer­ent lev­els. For the con­sumer, the few inde­pen­dent stud­ies that were car­ried out, indi­cate that they can induce aller­gic reac­tions, can­cer and oth­er long term neg­a­tive effects, which have not been stud­ied pro­found­ly yet. Intro­duc­ing GM crops in agri­cul­ture pro­duces effects that are irre­versible. The mod­i­fied genes quick­ly start appear­ing in oth­er crops, on oth­er field and in oth­er species, a process which is impos­si­ble to pre­vent. Besides that the cul­ti­va­tion of trans­genic may induce cumu­la­tive effects, rang­ing from the appear­ance of weed resis­tant to her­bi­cides and insects resis­tant to insec­ti­cides until the death of organ­isms that do not form any dan­ger to the agri­cul­tur­al crops. These effects go along with the appear­ance of mul­ti­ple forms of eco­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ties. The major study about the effects of trans­genic in the envi­ron­ment was pub­lished by the British gov­ern­ment in 2003. It came to the con­clu­sion that cul­ti­vat­ing GMOs is a lot worse to wild life than con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture. North-Amer­i­can farm­ers that chose to cul­ti­vate GMOs already under­stood the dis­ad­van­tages: high­er expens­es on seeds, more con­sump­tion of pes­ti­cides, clos­ing inter­na­tion­al (and even local) mar­kets, prod­ucts that are less prof­itable because they are GMOs. Because of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, bio­log­i­cal farm­ers are forced the emi­grate or change pro­fes­sion. Insur­ance com­pa­nies are not will­ing to secure trans­genic cul­tures because of the high risks involved. Lloyds, one of the major insur­ance com­pa­nies allo­cat­ed GMOs in the same finan­cial risk lev­el as acts of ter­ror­ism. The use of GMOs implies that farm­ers are for­bid­den to use sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds pro­duced by their own crop. This is an asser­tion for the seed sell­ing com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue their busi­ness the next year.
Already tens of farm­ers in the US and Cana­da have already been con­vict­ed in tri­bunal, hav­ing used sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds with­out autho­riza­tion.

Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia
http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/