At one time or another this past year, Hawaii, Kauai and Maui islands have all laid claim to being "ground zero" for the controversies over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and pesticide use.

With Kauai’s controversial pesticide ordinance tied up in litigation, Maui’s November ballot initiative to ban GMO farming has taken center stage.

It is a conflict between rational perspectives on agriculture and an extremist fringe. Key to the issue on Maui is whether the initiative is a "farming ban," as opponents contend, or whether it is a surgical approach intended only to drive GMO companies off the island, without touching Maui farmers and backyard gardeners.

One thing that hasn’t figured in this debate, unfortunately, is what the plain language — the words themselves — of the initiative says. A close reading reveals that calling this a "farming ban," while not entirely correct, is far more accurate than not.

Let’s focus on Section 5, which spells out what the initiative would actually outlaw. It declares that it will be "unlawful for any person or entity to knowingly propagate, cultivate, grow or test Genetically Engineered Organisms" on Maui.

"Any person" would appear to mean, literally, anyone. The initiative goes on to declare that it does NOT apply to GMO crops that are in "mid-growth cycle when this chapter is enacted." The problem is that "mid-growth cycle" is not defined anywhere in the initiative. It is also a term found nowhere in any agriculture glossary.

I emailed the Hawaii Department of Agriculture to ask what "mid-growth cycle" means. A spokesperson responded: "I checked with several people and no one is familiar with the term. Perhaps you should check with the authors of the bill." I tried to do that, without success.

Let’s say "mid-growth cycle" means a crop about halfway along, so the initiative would let farms continue cultivating it until harvest.

But then, the initiative decrees that literally anyone who plants a new GMO crop could be subject to civil and criminal penalties.

It stipulates that the "any person" who grows as little as a single GMO papaya tree or 10 GMO corn plants will be subject to fines of $10,000 for the first violation, which the initiative seems to say means one plant, cultivated on one day. After that, the fines escalate to $25,000 for a second offense (day two for the single papaya) and $50,000 for a "third and subsequent violation."

Pity the poor little papaya, incurring $85,000 in fines for being in the ground for three days.

But that’s not all. There is also a section headed "criminal recourse." It says that every single violation is a misdemeanor crime, subject to an additional fine of $2,000 per offense (remember that an "offense" is growing one GMO plant for one day), or imprisonment for one year "or both, for each offense."

So, is this a farming ban? Not exactly, though it is definitely a repressive anti-agriculture initiative that anyone concerned about food self-sufficiency for Hawaii should find alarming. A farmer who could somehow figure out what "mid-growth cycle" means might be able to bring in one more harvest. But after that, one of the most draconian systems of punishment imaginable takes over.

This ill-conceived measure deserves to be resoundingly defeated.