My new film is about the GMO/pesticide connection and the underground movement of young people moving back to the land and growing their own food in response to corporate corruption. I’ve learned that food is perhaps the most important cause of today’s environmental and social ills, and I’m trying to communicate the complex issue of industrial agriculture through the medium I know best.
I first learned about GMOs a few years ago, and I was shocked to learn that they were in most of our food. Around the same time, I started getting involved with various back-to-the-land movements like permaculture and other methods of regenerative farming practices. I began hearing about the issues in Hawaii ,and realized that what’s going on there is indicative of our food problems across the entire United States.
With the demise of much of the pineapple and sugar cane enterprises in Hawaii in the 1990’s and the advent of of genetic engineering technology, the Islands are now home to more genetically modified crop experimentation than anywhere else in the world. With Hawaii’s long growing seasons, the world’s largest seed companies are using these remote islands as testing grounds for plants which are largely being modified to survive an increasingly powerful cocktail of chemical pesticides. Most of the companies producing these seeds also own the chemicals they are sprayed with. While it is argued that the dangers of genetic modification are nill, the pesticides which they are grown in concert with have long been proven to be harmful to public and environmental health.
In just a couple weeks from now, elections on both Kauai and Maui county will have a great impact on the future public and environmental health of the islands. Right now, biotech companies like Monsanto, DOW, BASF and Syngenta are spending millions of dollars to sway voters to vote down anti-GMO candidates and legislation.
Please join me in finding real solutions to corporate corruption and chemical contamination by contributing to and sharing this Kickstarter project with your friends. This is an issue that affects all of us. The time is now to educate ourselves and stand up!
Check out Cyrus Sutton’s Kickstarter and help him create a documentary that needs to be made here.
