Those wary of Monsanto’s aim should tour its property

There was a double rainbow over the farm when I drove onto the Monsanto property in Kunia. As I pulled over to take a cellphone photo, I imagined the online comments:

Monsanto engineered the rainbow to trick people into letting their guard down. It’s not a rainbow. It’s a vapor trail of oily pesticide sprayed into the sky to keep us all docile. Double rainbows are actually never found in nature – it’s a frankenrainbow, and that proves the grand conspiracy.

“How do you talk in an understandable way about reality versus what they read on Facebook?” asks Shay Sunderland, Ph.D., who has been with Monsanto for 23 years.

It’s a sincere question for this era, when hysteria and untruths have drowned out thoughtful conversation on a most crucial topic: how to feed the world’s people.

Sunderland and John Purcell, Ph.D., a biologist who has worked for Monsanto all over the world for 27 years, have been reaching out to community groups, schools, legislators, any interested parties who want to see what Monsanto is doing in Hawaii. They bring tours through the Kunia land, let them see the fields and ask questions. They call it AMA — ask me anything.

“Ask me any question. I’ve probably heard it before,” Sunderland says.

“People come up here and go, ‘Oh, you guys are growing corn.’ They were expecting crews in hazmat suits,” says Purcell. Purcell is nothing like the image of a scary, humorless Monsanto scientist. He’s witty, plainspoken and gleefully takes photos of bugs and flowers for his Instagram account.

Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world. That’s not just biotech seeds, but conventional and organic seeds and the little packets you buy at Lowes or Home Depot for your home garden.

Growing seed is the largest component of agriculture in Hawaii. In a place blessed with three or four growing seasons a year, seed cultivation has remained and flourished where pineapple and sugar cane faltered. Hawaii plays a critical role in U.S. agriculture and around the world.

When they talk to schools and community groups, Sunderland and Purcell explain that the amount of pesticides they use is akin to filling up a 16-ounce bottle of water and spreading it across a football field over the course of a year — a quarter teaspoon a day. Monsanto’s application of restricted-use pesticides is disclosed on their website. They show visitors the equipment used for applying pesticides. The nozzles are close to the ground and the equipment operator is always evaluating such things as wind speed and direction.

Part of the tour includes getting up close to the genetically modified corn plants. Sunderland pulls an ear off a stalk, cleans away the husks and silk, pulls off a kernel and pops it in his mouth. He does this without fanfare, but the moment registers: See? He eats what they grow. Right off the plant. Those lawyers for the bad guys in “Erin Brockovich” wouldn’t drink the water, but he will eat the corn. He actually keeps eating as he talks, so it’s not just the one kernel. It is a strong endorsement.

I grew up in a sugar plantation family. My father, both grandfathers and three great-grandfathers all worked in sugar. I grew up hearing about growing cycles and crop yields at the dinner table. Walking along a dirt road with blue-green mountains as the backdrop and a long sweep of rectangular fields stretching toward the ocean is like stepping back in time to a Hawaii I dearly miss.

So I am inclined to like agriculture. Not just hazy Pinterest photographs of darling boutique farms, but agriculture — the science of growing crops to feed the population.

I don’t understand why there is hysterical distrust of science. It is fearmongering. It is often wildly untruthful. It is unproductive. I can’t imagine Hawaii without agriculture. I’d rather see those lands in crops than in rows of look-alike houses.

But that’s me. You should take the tour, ask all your questions, talk face-to-face with the people who work in the fields. Yes, there are people who work in the fields, just like in the days of sugar and pineapple. The corn is fertilized by hand. Harvested by hand. John Deere tractors have iPad connections in their cabs now and fields are planted using GPS technology, but the human touch is still a part of modern farming.

“Every plant is touched four to five times by human hands during its life cycle,” Sunderland says.

The Kunia workers recently organized fundraisers among themselves for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, as many workplaces do. It was an employee thing, not a corporate mandate. When a picture of the smiling workers in their pink T-shirts was posted on Facebook, the comments were vicious:

“Great job donating money towards something you caused! Scum bags.”

It went on and on and on.

So should we just stand down and trust everything Monsanto (and Syngenta and Dow and Pioneer, etc.) says? Of course not. We should be watchful and open-minded, willing to consider new, science-based data that may challenge our understanding about what’s safe and what isn’t. If you see something, say something. But that’s very different from forwarding a scary meme you saw on Facebook and trusting it as irrefutable truth.

I came home after my visit to Monsanto in the same shape as when I left, no obvious lingering effects from being so close to dust, pesticides and genetically manipulated plants. But I was no closer to understanding how we have allowed agriculture to become demonized in a place where so many of our families have such a strong connection to farming the land.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.