1.Seedy business: A sustainable-ag champion gets plowed under at Iowa State
2.Corporatization panel becomes documentary debate
EXCERPTS
"Kirschenmann... says his move from director to "distinguished fellow" came suddenly and without his own input." (item 1)
"Under Kirschenmann the Leopold Center [at Iowa State University] bluntly criticized and rigorously documented the environmental and social calamities being wrought by industrial agriculture." (item 1)
"Iowa State's College of Agriculture draws agribusiness cash the way a penned-up pig wallowing in its own waste draws flies." (item 1)
"The question we all have to face . . . is to what extent universities and the public sector in general are being colonized by the for-profit sector" (item 2)
"This university is one of the most aggressive universities around creating a corporation-friendly campus and business-open kind of campus, and this video threatens the environment that this administration is actively creating here."
"There's no doubt in my mind that if the video had been pro-industry it would have been released three years ago" (item 2)
COMMENT
The critical independence of the Leopold Center under its director Fred Kirschenmann has been a thorn in the side of agribiz.
Kirschenmann has now paid the price (see item 1) for speaking out on issues like protecting non-GM seeds and participating in the launch last year of the Union of Concerned Scientists' report "Gone to Seed: Transgenic contaminant in the traditional seed supply."
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_environment/genetic_engineering/gone-to-seed.html
He has consistently argued for the urgent need for agriculture to go forward "into a more intelligent, diversified farming system." GMOs, Kirschenmann has said, are "simply another tool to make the monoculture work a little longer" in the face of the pests and diseases that monocultures encourage. For Kirschenmann GMOs are at odds with a more intelligent style of farming.
http://www.foodfirst.org/postcards1
The Leopold Center's research has also thrown up unwelcome findings. Even before Kirschenmann became director, its survey of approximately 800 farmers in Iowa showed that while over half chose GM soyabeans because they believed they produced higher yields, the actual data from their farms showed the exact opposite.
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/1999/10-11-1999/gmosoybeans.html
The study also showed that GM soybeans and corn provided no economic benefits to farmers. When the study was repeated using information from the year 2000, it showed the same results: GM seed did not help a farmer's bottom line.
http://ngin.tripod.com/230702e.htm
Those findings were published in 2001. In May 2002 Iowa legislators approved the transfer away from the Center of $1 million worth of funding earmarked for its work. "Given our budget restrictions we have few choices other than to drastically scale back programs, including funds for new research," Kirschenmann was forced to announce.
Kirschenmann pointed out, "Slashing the Leopold Center's budget does far more damage than simply crippling the Center's ability to fund projects to support midsize farms. It sends a message that Iowa has given up on the long-term vision of an agriculture that is economically and environmentally sound."
http://ngin.tripod.com/230702e.htm
In case anybody failed to get that message, Kirschenmann himself has now been purged. Don't be surprised if the Center's funding soon improves.
---
1.Seedy business: A sustainable-ag champion gets plowed under at Iowa State
Tom Philpott
Gristmill, 02 Nov 2005
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/11/1/193245/785
Plunked down in the land of huge, chemical-addicted grain farms and the nation's greatest concentration of hog feedlots, Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has always had a tough row to hoe.
Imagine trying to operate an Anti-Cronyism League from Bush's West Wing, and you get an idea of what the Leopold Center is up against. Industrial agriculture runs the show in Iowa, sustained by regular infusions of federal cash and its government-sanctioned ability to "externalize" the messes it creates. The state grabbed $12.5 billion in federal agriculture subsidies between 1995 and 2004 -- second only to Bush's own home state. Iowa leads all states in hog production: It churned out 14.5 million pigs in 2001 alone, the vast majority from stuffed, environmentally and socially ruinous CAFOs (confined-animal feeding operations).
Yet since springing to life in 1987 by fiat of the Iowa legislature -- funded ingeniously by state taxes on nitrogen fertilizer and pesticide -- the Leopold Center has become an invaluable national resource for critics of industrial agriculture and seekers of new alternatives.
Now, however, a sudden purge at the top has called the Center's much-prized independence from industrial agriculture into question.
The Leopold Center operates under the authority of Iowa State University's College of Agriculture. Last Friday, the college issued a press release announcing that the Leopold Center's director of five years, Fred Kirschenmann, had "accepted a new leadership role as a distinguished fellow of the center."
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/news/newsreleases/2005/kirschenmann_102805.htm
The college went on to state that it had named an interim director, effective Nov. 1.
Kirschenmann himself, however, tells a more interesting tale than what's contained in the press release's bland prose. He says his move from director to "distinguished fellow" came suddenly and without his own input.
"On Wednesday [Oct. 26] I received a letter from the interim dean asking me to resign by Friday and decide by then if I would accept the position of distinguished fellow at the center," Kirschenmann told me yesterday.
"I wrote her [the interim dean] back telling her I thought she was moving too fast, that there wouldn't be time for a smooth transition. She wrote back that it was a done deal -- she had already named a new director."
Kirschenmann says the interim dean, Wendy Wintersteen, had been on Leopold's advisory board for years and had served on the search committee that hired him in 2000. "She was always very supportive of what we were doing," Kirschenmann says. "Until about two years ago. Then she became very critical."
Her critique centered on the idea that in its work the Leopold Center was neglecting "key stakeholders," Kirschenmann adds. "But she never really clarified who those stakeholders were."
Might she have been refering to agribusiness interests? "You can draw your own conclusions," Kirschenmann says. She never cited any reason for the de facto purge, save for "some verbiage about how I would be free to pursue my own work without having to worry about administrative duties."
To be sure, Iowa State's College of Agriculture draws agribusiness cash the way a penned-up pig wallowing in its own waste draws flies. I have a call into the college for a list of corporate donors; until that call is returned, let it suffice that this is the sort of research the college commonly proffers: A study claiming to show that the genetically modified seed industry deserves a greater "level of intellectual property protection ... than what existed in the North American seed corn market in the late 1990s." Collaborators: a pair of scientists from GM seed titan Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., a subsidiary of DuPont.
Here are glowing testimonials from two of the college's "partners": John Deere and Cargill.
http://www.foundation.iastate.edu/corp/stories.html
Kirschenmann says he accepted the "distinguished fellow" position because Wintersteen assured him he could continue doing his own work on sustainable agriculture. And that work is important. Under Kirschenmann the Leopold Center bluntly criticized and rigorously documented the environmental and social calamities being wrought by industrial agriculture.
Will he continue to be able to do that work at Leopold? "We'll see how it goes," he told me.
In the meantime, I'll be doing some research about which corporations and commodity groups give what to Iowa State's College of Agriculture.
---
2.Corporatization panel becomes documentary debate
Chelsea Moore, Staff
The Manitoban, Volume 93 Issue 11, Nov 2, 2005
http://umanitoba.ca/manitoban/2005-2006/1102/1106.corporatization.panel.becomes.documentary.debate.php
Mauro's seeds [Ian Mauro is one of the makers of the film 'Seeds of Change'] are not all that have changed as public-private partnerships snowball at University of Manitoba campus in recent years
Students and staff who have raised concerns over the encroachment of corporations on campus got an earful last week, as a panel discussion on the issue quickly deteriorated into a discussion of the controversial documentary "Seeds of Change."
Media networks, bussinesspeople, and U of M students and staff crowded around the university on Oct. 25 to witness the debate, hosted by the Graduate Students' Association. The panel discussion, entitled "Are Corporate Interests Jeopardizing Academic Freedoms?" pitted the two makers of the film against two university administrators.
According to one panellist, economics professor Robert Chernomas, corporate funding has essentially surrogated federal transfer payments to post-secondary institutions, the latter of which was reduced by 34 per cent from 1990 to 2002. Over the past five years, U of M's Smartpark has expanded considerably to house tenants such as IDERS, RTDS Technologies, Transgrid Solutions, IMRIS, Cangene Corporation and many others. This year’s project, One Research Road, will house a number of new companies, including Monsanto Canada - a corporation that is criticized extensively by farmers in the documentary Seeds of Change.
"The question we all have to face . . . is to what extent universities and the public sector in general are being colonized by the for-profit sector engineered by the federal liberals in this country," said Chernomas.
Alan Simms, president of Smartpark, took part in the panel by explaining the purpose of the university's research and development park. "The idea was that the university is responsible for basic research; there's a place for applied research, not within the university campus, but on the door step of the university.
"Now, I would have to say that in my three and a half to four years I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of start-up companies created by a professor and his student to commercialize, and two of those would be Mr. Mauro and Dr. McLachlan in their start-up company for the production company to commercialize this research," said Simms.
Graduate student Ian Mauro, one of the filmmakers, who has often alluded to a potential conflict of interest between the university and Monsanto, countered this.
"Ironically, Alan Simms actually recommended that we start a start-up company to protect the film," said Mauro. "We would have never done it if we didn't have to. Why would we spend a year and a half of our time if we didn't have to? It doesn't make any sense."
According to Stephane McLachlan, associate professor in the faculty of environment and co-producer of "Seeds of Change," private interests on campus have consequently reduced academic freedom at the U of M, specifically in regards to the right of students to disseminate critical research. He claims that this is reflected by the three-year struggle he and Mauro have faced to release their publicly-funded research.
"This university is one of the most aggressive universities around creating a corporation-friendly campus and business-open kind of campus, and this video threatens the environment that this administration is actively creating here."
"It's controversial in the sense that it represented the radical centre, so it presented both pros and cons of the issue, and explicitly it was very critical of the biotech industry as experienced by farmers and other experts . . . There's no doubt in my mind that if the video had been pro-industry it would have been released three years ago," said McLachlan.
The video contains raw footage of interviews with farmers, who express their views on the bio-technology industry and intellectual property rights.
According to U of M's vice-president of research, Joanne Kesselman, "his case does not represent a threat to academic freedom and, in fact, is not a case about academic freedom." Keselman said that the film was not a research project, but rather a commercial enterprise.
The interest of the video is reflected in the university's copyright bylaw that accords the university 50 per cent ownership of raw footage of all video research conducted in conjunction with the university - which means that the university must be involved in the video's release, as long as two conditions are met.
The university requires a disclaimer stating that the video does not represent the view of the university, as well as personal release forms from the farmers interviewed in the video.
Mauro argued that the university originally supported the documentary and, in fact, participated in drawing up its distribution agreement. He projected for the audience's viewing several documents from the university to support his position that the university had changed the conditions required for the release of the video, reducing the requirements from "egregious" to two. Mauro claimed that the outstanding release forms would be provided to the university very soon.
Mauro also announced that the film would screen for the first time on Nov. 18 at the annual convention of the National Farmers' Union; it will be shown in Winnipeg on Nov. 30 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
To Rachel Gerson, a student in the faculty of environment, the issue should not focus on how the video was prevented from being released, but on the content of the video itself.
"The whole point is that there's an important issue about genetically modified food that concerns everybody," said Gerson. "It's unfortunate that so many issues about not releasing the information are going on . . . each person has to do their own research and really listen to both sides with a non-biased view, and make their own opinion."
Following the panel, UMSU president Amanda Aziz noted that private funding on campus is necessary, however public-private partnerships must be approached with vigilance so as to avoid a conflict of interest.
"Certainly, there is a role to play for industry with education, but I think the concern is - at what point does it compromise academic freedom?" said Aziz. "It's one thing to hear the administration say that it would never enter into an agreement that did compromise research . . . however, it would be prudent for us to make this a priority of senate to investigate the kinds of partnerships and who's overseeing them."
On Oct. 31, almost one week after the panel discussion, John Danakas, the university's director of public affairs, said that the university had not yet received the personal release forms.
"That seemed to be the crux . . . . the claim was that the university was stalling; the university has not yet received those documents," said Danakas.