Alpine pennycress removes cadmium and zinc from the soil (phytoextraction). It can concentrate cadmium in its leaves up to 8,000 parts per million. Harvesting the vegetation makes it possible to gradually reduce the soil concentration of cadmium to safe levels. The cost of phytoextraction is $250-$1,000/acre/year, vs. $1 million/acre to clean it by removing contaminated soil and replacing it with clean soil.¹

Patents have been filed on the use of Alpine pennycress for phytoextraction by the University of Maryland, and a patent has been granted in Australia.¹ They are patenting the way an organism is used—a life process.

So, let’s say you read about the plant and what it will do, and your farm has an old junkpile of batteries (cadmium and zinc), and you plant some Alpine pennycress to clean the soil. Are you violating the patent? If you accidentally plant it on an excess zinc site, are you violating the patent?

My question is, what gives a university or Corporate America the right to patent life? I thought that was God’s job.

Corporations have been patenting biotechnology products (live organisms) for several years nowÑTerminator Genes, Roundup Ready plants, and others. But there are many ways that Corporate America and biotechnology companies are not satisfied with just patenting life; to be all inclusive, they want to take away individual and local government rights, so you have absolutely no say (or control) over what they want to do.

Right now, agribusiness is targeting local laws on seeds. State legislators who support large-scale agriculture—and are often funded by associated business interests—are introducing preemptive bills to prevent towns and counties from passing laws relating to control of agricultural seeds (see also “About Agriculture” on page 11). An industry proposal for a “biotechnology state uniformity resolution” was introduced at a 2004 forum sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group with over 2,000 state legislator members and more than 300 corporate sponsors.²

Have you talked to your state legislators lately?

Twelve states—Georgia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas, Indiana, Florida, and West Virginia—have already passed laws preventing local control of seeds. North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas are working on passing them. The Maine Department of Agriculture is seeking to forestall local actions on genetically modified organisms (GMO) via an overreaching interpretation of the state’s “Right to Farm” Law.²

Why all this concern from Corporate agribusiness and their allied legislators about local laws? Since 2002, towns and counties have passed laws to control the use of GMO in their area. Almost 100 towns in New England have passed resolutions opposing unregulated GMO use; nearly a quarter of them have banned planting GMOs.² In 2004, three California counties banned GMOs—both crops and livestock.² These are local places that know what they want—and what they do not want.

The whole point of this editorial is to remind you that it is not possible to just sit at home and farm while ignoring the rest of the world. Even if you do not make a living from your farm—if you are a lifestyle or hobby farmer—do you really want Corporate America telling you what you can and cannot do on your land and in your area? I sure don’t.

Contact your legislators now and make sure you know where they stand on these issues. Write to your local paper. Talk to area organizations. Remember, “We all stand together, or we all fall separately.”