Filing rejects Big Ag and Monsanto’s vision for an agriculture system that doesn’t serve them
Farmers and farmworkers would not benefit from a Supreme Court of the United States ruling for Monsanto in the upcoming Monsanto v. Durnell case, according to a brief filed in the case today. This brief, authored by fair food system advocacy organization FarmSTAND and signed onto by 15 organizations dedicated to the wellbeing of farmers and farmworkers, argues that a decision protecting the chemical giant from lawsuits over its failure to warn consumers about the health effects of glyphosate in Roundup would serve corporate profits, not the health and wellbeing of rural communities.
The organizations signing onto today’s brief are Centro de los Derechos del Migrante (CDM), Dakota Resource Council (DRC), Dakota Rural Action (DRA), Farm Action, Family Farm Defenders (FFD), Friends of Family Farmers, FrontLine Farming, HEAL Food Alliance, The Idaho Organization of Resource Councils (IORC), Illinois Stewardship Alliance (ISA), Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Land Stewardship Project (LSP), the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), and the Organic Farmers Association.
“In Monsanto’s and its amici’s telling, glyphosate has been such an economic boon for farmers that this Court should bend over backwards to protect it,” FarmSTAND writes in the introduction to today’s amicus brief. “But they disregard the harms that glyphosate inflicts on the people who grow our food.”
The brief goes on to explain how Monsanto exploits farmers, and how glyphosate both endangers farmworkers and the long-term viability of American agriculture. It rebuts arguments by Monsanto and its industrial-agriculture aligned amici in previous briefs, which claimed that a ruling affirming the lower court would supposedly threaten the global food supply.
Through today’s brief, American farmers are standing against the appalling idea that Monsanto and its handful of Big Ag allies have the interests of American farmers at heart on this issue.
“At every turn, monopolistic agriculture corporations and lobbyists claim to speak for America’s farmers while lining their own pockets at the expense of the farmers and food workers who help fund our local economies,” said Tim Gibbons, Executive Director of the National Family Farm Coalition. “The biggest threat to farmers right now is high input costs and low prices due to policies written by corporate special interests. Instead of protecting billion-dollar companies who say they need immunity from lawsuits, our government should instead be working on solutions that keep family-scale farmers in business and enable farms to be passed to the next generation.”
Monsanto’s amici claim that glyphosate helps farm laborers by freeing them from labor-intensive manual weeding. In reality, research shows that the ubiquity of the chemical in rural areas leads to negative health effects for farmworkers and their families.
“Every worker deserves a workplace that guarantees their health and safety,” said Julia Solórzano, Legal and Policy Director for Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. “CDM proudly stands alongside farmworkers in their pursuit of justice against corporations that prioritize profit over people by marketing toxic herbicides and pesticides. We honor the bravery of those speaking out to protect both the land and the hands that harvest it.”
“This Supreme Court amicus brief represents a core piece of FarmSTAND’s mission,” said Nathan Leys, FarmSTAND Staff Attorney. “We and our clients are challenging these claims by industrial agriculture companies to represent the interests of independent farmers and working people, when their true aim is to obtain impunity for their own wrongdoing.”
Oral argument in Monsanto v. Durnell is scheduled for April 27.