Florida Organic Growers joins defensive lawsuit against biotech empire

For the vast majority of Americans, food is food. And corn is corn. And a soybean is a soybean. And a seed of either of these vegetables is, well, a seed.

Or is it? To the corporate eye of Monsanto, that seed looks more like one of its transgenic creations, and if they can fish a lawsuit out of it, possibly millions of dollars.

Transgenic seeds are simply Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Many crops and foods are genetically altered nowadays. Corn, alfalfa sprouts, soybeans, cotton, sugar beets and rapeseed are just a few of many GMOs being specifically engineered with Monsanto-manipulated herbicide-resistant DNA.

Taking into account all the products derived from GM crops, experts estimate 60 to 70 percent of all processed foods sold in the U.S. contain at least one GM ingredient. GMOs are omnipresent in the modern diet and lifestyle. Omnipresent; however, not omni-wanted.

Organic farmers are trying their hardest to retain at least some portion of our food in its natural state, with DNA unmutilated. This isn’t the fight many are familiar with, or at least expecting.

In a way, this is the stereotypical “little guy vs. massive corporation” fight. But the “little guy” here includes more than just the “crunchy granola” organic farmers. Plaintiffs in Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto also include non-organic farmers who simply don’t want to produce GM crops.

March 2011 marked the beginning of a preemptive lawsuit, with 83 plaintiffs joining forces against corporate giant Monsanto. Florida Organic Growers, a nonprofit organic certification and sustainable farming outreach group based in Gainesville, joined the fight in July.

The 83 plaintiffs, representing a coalition of more than 270,000 farmers, united together as the Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), represented by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), are filing this lawsuit against Monsanto out of fear.

Some of these farmers have forgone growing certain crops they feared could have the possibility of being cross-contaminated with Monsanto’s seed. They would rather lose money from under-production than subject themselves to the risk of being sued by Monsanto and potentially losing their farms.

Tom Helscher, director of corporate affairs, made sure to clarify that Monsanto would, has and will take legal action if farmers retain or replant seed obtained from the original seed purchased from Monsanto. By buying Roundup Ready seed, farmers are entering into an agreement with Monsanto to not save, reproduce or redistribute purchased seed.

This agreement forces farmers to buy new seed every planting season, guaranteeing Monsanto’s sales will stay strong.

Sometimes a contract isn’t good enough, though. In 2007, Monsanto acquired ownership of Delta & Pine Land Company and thus, ownership of its extremely controversial patent, co-owned by the USDA, for Terminator seeds. Yes, like the Arnold Schwarzenegger terminator.

Terminator seeds only live once, unlike natural seeds that may be saved, cleaned and recycled for the next growing season. After the first round of harvesting, the suicidal seed self-exterminates. This is an especially concerning issue for farmers in developing countries who typically cannot afford to buy new seed every year. Many farmers are also concerned about cross-pollination and potential infection of traditional and organic seed by the terminator gene.

In the eyes of Monsanto, terminator seeds seem like a reliable method to stop biopiracy, but widespread public opposition and uproar has quelled the use of these seeds for now. Monsanto made a legal commitment not to produce, distribute, or sell Terminator seeds, but skeptics believe Monsanto is still furthering research into this technology.

Clearly, Monsanto is willing to go to great lengths to maintain domination of the seed market and safety of its patents from what it sees as intentional theft, even though it is common agricultural and sustainable practice to recycle seed. However, what if this patented genetically modified seed is unintentionally replanted, grown, harvested and sold?

Many of the plaintiffs in this case are modest family-owned farms; their entire life, savings and future is invested in their farms. With commercial farms occupying tracts of farmland saturated in Monsanto’s transgenic seed, the much smaller neighboring farms fear that cross-contamination is inevitable.

Monsanto has suggested farmers create a buffer zone to avoid inadvertent seed drift, which is just one of many ways crop contamination can occur. This is an expensive suggestion; small-scale organic farmers typically are not sitting on wads of cash. And this suggested buffer zone wouldn’t even guarantee their crops’ safety from Roundup Ready.

For farmers like Noah Shitama, co-founder and owner of the small organic farm, Swallowtail, in Alachua, a patent infringement lawsuit from Monsanto would mean complete extermination and death of his farm.

The farmers in this case just want assurance and the promise that Monsanto won’t sue them for patent infringement in the case of accidental cross-contamination by Roundup Ready.

After all, organic farmers don’t want to produce and sell Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds. Such contamination would strip the farmers of their organic certifications that they worked so hard to be granted, following a strict set of regulations set forth by the USDA. Organic crops are more difficult to grow and sell, but the profit the farmers gain is significant enough to encourage them to keep up their efforts. This monetary incentive is, of course, complementary to the farmers’ concern for providing healthy foods to the public.

“I want clean food that’s not going to poison me,” Noah said. “Some non-organic commercial farmers won’t even eat their own crops; how are we expected to be able to eat it?”

These non-organic commercial farmers, “the big guys,” who choose to buy Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds do so for the convenience herbicide immunity affords them. This convenience factor makes theft tempting, so It’s understandable why Monsanto worries.

Genetically modified soybeans, for example, have been engineered to host an herbicide resistant gene. This allows farmers to douse their farmland in herbicide without worrying about its effects on the health of their crops, stripping the land of everything save their desired crop.

But, since the Roundup Ready seeds are entirely undesirable to the plaintiffs in this case, it would seemingly make just as much sense for the plaintiffs to sue Monsanto for having their seed “trespass” onto their farms.

However, “trespass” as a legal term implies that some sort of monetary or physical damage was inflicted upon the victim of the trespassing. And, since this is a preemptive lawsuit, OSGATA is merely taking a defensive stance. The organic farmers are not looking to collect money or damages from Monsanto — they’re just asking for a written promise.

“Right now, Monsanto says they don’t have plans to sue, but they refuse to make a written legally binding promise. So, they could just wake up tomorrow and decide to sue,” Daniel Ravicher, Executive Director of PUBPAT and patent attorney on the OSGATA v. Monsanto case said, explaining the plaintiffs’ worries.

It may seem difficult to imagine how small organic and family-owned farms can show up on such a large corporation’s radar. If a neighboring farmer suspects any seed sharing, intentional or unintentional, he may call Monsanto’s anonymous tip line and report his suspicion. Then, Monsanto may send an investigator to the accused farmer’s land to take samples for lab testing.

Monsanto has made a promise to the farmers; however the confusion resides in Monsanto’s actual intentions and meanings behind its words.

“Monsanto policy never has been, nor will be, to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of its patented seeds or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.” Helscher made this perfectly clear. So did Monsanto’s website, their motion to dismiss, and a letter to the USDA signed by Monsanto Vice President Jerry Steiner.

Yet, despite how confidently Monsanto espouses this promise, plaintiffs feel the corporation’s words are legally insignificant.

To some degree, this case hinges on simple semantics. Marty Mesh, director of FOG, along with the 82 other plaintiffs is skeptical of Monsanto’s vague definition of “trace.”

“What if you get more pollen from your neighbor this year, and that adds onto the “trace” amounts from last year?” Marty said, voicing the concerns of many small farms.

After seed drift, accidental cross-pollination, contamination via harvest and processing equipment, traces upon traces start to become a drawing. And Monsanto may interpret this drawing as a patent infringement.

However, according to Helscher, “defining ‘trace’ doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant.”

“Of course it’s relevant if you’re the one being sued,” Mesh said.

Despite Helscher dismissing many farmers’ worries of this vague definition, the organic farmers are not set at ease.

In mid-July, Monsanto responded to OSGATA’s request by motioning for a dismissal of the case. Monsanto fears granting the plaintiffs the explicit and immutable promise they are requesting would be diminishing the significance of its patents. This preemptive commitment may just be too open-ended. Monsanto worries farmers with intention for patent infringement may join one of the plaintiff organizations and thus be legally protected if Monsanto is forced to issue the promise the plaintiffs are demanding.

The corporation’s motion for dismissal isn’t enough to snuff out OSGATA, though. OSGATA objected to Monsanto’s request for dismissal and is pressing on. As of now, both parties are awaiting the Southern District Court of New York’s decision. Ravicher says if the objection is denied, OSGATA will still push through to the Court of Appeals, unrelenting in this drawn-out legal battle, which has the potential to be an extremely influential case for the agricultural underdog. Although Monsanto would only be legally committed to presenting a written promise to the 83 plaintiffs, this case would set a precedent to any case that may arise in the future.

A documented and unequivocal promise would be nice, and necessary, for the life of organic farms, but there’s also a possibility that the court could deliver a harsher ruling against Monsanto.

This further verdict would potentially deem Monsanto’s transgenic seed patents invalid because of their being “injurious to the well–being, good policy, or sound morals of society,” as presented in OSGATA’s documented complaint.

If the court rules Monsanto’s GM seed patents invalid, “the precedent from such a decision,” Ravicher explained, “may also indirectly call into question the validity of other similar GMO patents.”

“The only real advantage Monsanto has is their deeper pockets,” Ravicher said. “They don’t have the truth on their side.” Monsanto’s seemingly infinite cash flow is intimidating to the organic and smaller-scale farms involved in this case. If the 270,000 farmers prevail and win this case, the final verdict would ripple through not only the United States, but the world.

Remember, Monsanto domineers the world in terms of GMO seed distribution. If organic or non-GMO conventional farmers overseas have their crops contaminated with Roundup Ready and then want to turn around and trade their products in the U.S. market, they will have crossed back into Monsanto’s more familiar territory and onto their radar, giving Monsanto a better opportunity to press charges for patent infringement. Again, these overseas farmers are no different than many of America’s small-scale farmers–their farm is their life and they cannot afford a battle with a mammoth corporation.

“They just lie and lie and lie, and try to keep up the con for as long as they can so they can make as much money as they can,” Ravicher said, likening Monsanto to the tobacco companies in America. “That’s what corporate America is about.”

Ravicher says he feels really good about this case, representing “the best people who are just trying to give back the best foods. They’re not greedy and not corrupt.”

Unfortunately, at the start of 2010, a severe freeze swept over the state, threatening Florida’s crops. Farmers fought for their right to use water in excess of regulated limits so they could spray their crops and protect them. The Southwest Florida Water Management District allowed strawberry farmers in Plant City to pump an extra 1 billion gallons of groundwater from the Floridan Aquifer each day for 11 days. As a result of the rapid water draw-down, 760 residential wells went dry and 140 sinkholes were created.

A few months later, all the crops became ready to harvest and hit the market at once. Strawberry prices plummeted. Farmers chose to destroy the recently saved crops instead of harvesting them at a monetary loss.

As clean supplies of potable water dwindle across the globe, the debate over who owns the water and has rights to it has intensified.

The United Nations claims that water is fundamental to life and a precondition for the realization of human rights, yet more than 800 million people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, 2.6 billion have no access to basic sanitation and an average 1.5 million children under the age of five die every year from waterborne diseases.

Even in developed countries, water is becoming scarce. The St. John’s River Water Management District currently estimates that by the year 2030, the Northeastern part of Florida will need an extra 91 million gallons of water per day than can feasibly be pumped from groundwater sources without damaging the environment.

To make matters worse, the bottled water industry has been purchasing rights to extract water from spring and underground sources across the country for the last 20 years. By 2009, 22 bottling companies had established operations along Florida’s waterways, pumping anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million gallons per day. Bottle and brand label producers in the area utilize even more fresh water for their operations. In fact, producing the average bottle of water takes about five times the amount of water contained in the bottle.

Bottled water reports yearly profits of 50% to 200%, which are understandably high. The industry is able to buy cheap extraction permits from local water management districts and only needs to comply with voluntary water treatment standards, which lowers their capital costs.

In 2005 and 2009, The Florida Senate and Governor Charlie Crist, respectively, proposed a state extraction tax on bottling companies, which would have netted about $56 million a year in state revenues. Industry representatives argued that they were being singled out and proposed a state sales tax instead. However, a large portion of the water bottled in Florida is shipped and sold outside the state’s borders, including the Dasani water that Coca Cola bottles nearby from Ginnie Springs. The extraction tax law never passed.

Water is a limited resource. Its proper allocation needs to be enforced or Florida’s world-renowned springs will run dry.

In future editions of The Fine Print, the effects of lax water protection laws, rapid urbanization and the trend to buy bottled water will be explored. Claims from the industry, as well as community activist groups, will be analyzed. Hold your breath.

The three-day Harvest of Hope Foundation Music and Arts Fest is back for its second year, March 12

The Harvest of Hope Foundation, a “non-profit organization that provides financial, educational, and service-oriented aid to migrant farm workers all over the country,” according to its web site, was founded by Phillip Kellerman in 1997.

Kellerman’s initial exposure to issues concerning migrant farm workers came from his involvement in 1989 with the ESCORT Migrant Education Program at the State University of New York in Oneonta, where he answered phone calls for the National Migrant Education Hotline. Kellerman says he received hundreds of calls from about 25 states, including Florida, from migrant farm workers seeking emergency aid for “vehicle repairs, housing, utilities, clothing, food, medical services and helping their children in schools.”

“I soon discovered there was not much federal, state or local help in these states. There was no help out there,” Kellerman said. “That’s what led me to set up the Harvest of Hope Foundation.”

In 2004, Kellerman moved to Gainesville.

“Before I left, a good friend of mine I worked with in Oneonta contacted her friend, Ryan Murphy,” Kellerman said. “He really liked the foundation and what I was doing.”

Murphy, who was getting his master’s degree in bilingual education at UF, worked in an afterschool literacy program called Libros de Familia, which promoted literacy to migrant children in Alachua County. The program received funding from the HOH Foundation to buy books, fund afterschool workshops and get UF students involved.

“I met with Phil, and I was excited about what he did [with the Foundation] and asked what I could do to help raise funds,” Murphy said. “I worked at No Idea Records going to school, and once I got involved with Phil, I wanted to bring the two worlds together. Knowing Harvest of Hope needed money, the most immediate thing I could do was to put on benefit shows.”

Murphy thought some bands he knew would be interested because “their politics would fall in line with helping workers and social justice issues.” Murphy asked his friends in Against Me! to play a benefit show, and “they took the ball and ran with it,” he said.

“They did a series of shows around the country and raised $18,000. It got us motivated and inspired Phil to realize other avenues of fundraising.”

“We just thought there was a really good connection between grassroots, alternative and progressive musicians and the grassroots work the Harvest of Hope Foundation was doing,” Kellerman said.

While setting up a benefit show for Against Me! and some other local bands with Ryan Detera of Café Eleven in St. Augustine, Detera mentioned he had “just become the general manager of the Fairgrounds and why don’t we do three days. I laughed because it seemed ridiculous compared to what I wanted to do.  He said, ‘You do the Fest in Gainesville. I think you would have the ability to do it here,’” Murphy said.

As a non-profit organizing an event of that size, HOH was eligible for a grant from the county. They applied and received $50,000, the largest grant ever awarded. The money comes from tax revenue received through tourism, which is then allocated to aid organizations seeking to do special events in the county.

“Once I got together with everybody who works on the Fest and motivated everyone and got them on my team, we couldn’t look back,” Murphy said.

Through both Detera and Murphy’s connections, they began to assemble the 2009 line-up for the first HOH Fest.

“I know a lot of bands, punk bands, through No Idea, and Ryan [Detera] knows smaller indie bands through Café Eleven. He was also booking through the Fairgrounds, so he was working with agents [of national bands] as well,” Murphy said.

They came up with a diverse selection of punk, indie, hip-hop, folk and acoustic.

Last year, although 7,800 tickets were sold and 17,000 people came through the gates, nothing was raised. Kellerman explains it was a first-year test, and “most first-year tests lose a ton of money.”

But Kellerman is not disappointed with last year’s turnout.

“Even though we didn’t make money, the off-shoots from the fest were wonderful. We had a lot of bands, subsequent to the fest, doing their own benefits for the Foundation, locally and around the country. Was it worth our effort? Yes!”

This year Kellerman hopes to see double the attendance of last year and give a stronger focus to the HOH Foundation cause.

“The first year we just wanted to create a general awareness of what it was all about.  This year there will be a much stronger focus on what HOH is about, with a strong emphasis at tables and the non-profit section that works with the migrant farm workers.  There will be a double CD of last year’s event available, as well as a documentary of the first year that incorporates the music and the message” on sale at the festival.

The CD is currently available now at fail-saferecords.com and interpunk.com. Three-day passes to the HOH Festival are available at harvestofhopefest.com for $49.50.

Photos courtesy of Morgan Bellinger – www.movephotography.com/ – and Celia Roberts – www.celiaroberts.com

The High Springs Farmers Market springs up from the black pavement of an empty parking lot each week to provide a space for locals to buy and sell food grown in North Central Florida. It brings consumers to the source of their food the way McDonald’s severs them from the source. Money flows from house to farm and from farm to store, circulating through the local economy, instead of skipping town buried in the pockets of corporate giants.

Gainesville citizens have their own farmers markets throughout the week, but unlike High Springs, where everyone has access to healthy, local food regardless of income level, the Gainesville markets aren’t available to everyone yet.

The High Springs Farmers Market is the only market in Florida that accepts federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, formerly known as food stamps. So everyone in High Springs has the opportunity to eat Florida-grown produce that’s washed in in water, not pesticides, and bought from fellow citizens instead of a Super Wal-Mart. Although this isn’t the case in Gainesville now, Florida Organic Growers (FOG) and its partners in the city and county have a plan to change this and join High Springs in setting the precedent for other Florida cities.

Last May, FOG received a one-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate food security for low-income residents of the county and how it can be increased. The organization worked through the year to assemble ideas and potential plans to present to the USDA and the city of Gainesville this spring.

The goal of all their ideas is to increase access for people who have trouble getting fresh foods, said Melissa Desa, the FOG project coordinator.

“SNAP at the farmers market is a win-win because it’s federal dollars being spent in the community and kept locally. So it’s kind of the best of all scenarios,” Desa said.

About $4 million of federal money comes to the county each month through SNAP beneficiaries, according to the Department of Children and Families. As it is now, about six or seven of the 29,449 people who receive benefits go to the High Springs’ market each week, but the majority live in other towns in the county, like Gainesville, where their benefits are only accepted at corporate stores with national economies. There’s been a steady rise in the last year and a half with more than 7,000 additional people receiving benefits since December 2008. And that’s only one-third of the people in the county who qualify, according to John Skelly, the director of Poverty Reduction for Alachua County.

Christine Hale, the director of education and outreach at FOG said that “because there are so many people added to the [SNAP] list every month, this is a great opportunity to bring those federal dollars back to farmers.”

Desa and Hale are looking at how other cities have structured their programs for guidance while formulating the plan for Gainesville.

Most markets get a hand-held, card-reading machine where customers can scan their cards, whether it’s a debit, credit or Electronic Benefits Transfer card, which draws from a SNAP funds account. In exchange, customers get tokens worth certain amounts to purchase food and plants from individual booths.

The plan can’t stop at just setting up the infrastructure for the program though.

“It’s not like all of a sudden people will flock to the farmers market,” Hale said. “Education and outreach is needed to get people eating from the middle of the store – the processed food isle – to the market.”

Cities throughout the country that are home to the 753 farmers markets authorized by the USDA to accept SNAP benefits have tried different programs to increase the ease, access and awareness of the SNAP benefits at farmers markets.

One program, which Desa and Hale are optimistic about, relies on the sponsorship of outside companies. A business can sign up to provide incentive coupons to SNAP beneficiaries that double their benefits. So a $10 token can earn a $10 coupon, and the beneficiary then gets $20 worth of food at the market.

Autry Ellison displays the size of his shrimp, "as big as your hand," that he brings down from Jacksonville weekly for the High Springs and Gainesville farmers markets. Photo by Jessica Newman.

“The coupon program is really key to making this happen,” Hale said. “We can easily obtain [Electronic Benefits Transfer] machines for relatively little cost, but getting the people to the market might not be successful. If they know their value is going to be doubled, they’re more likely to do it.”

The coupon program, along with paying someone to run the Electronic Benefits Transfer machines and distribute money from federal funds to local farmers, is the biggest cost obstacles to bringing SNAP to Gainesville farmers markets.

A lack of funding to set up and run the program and the amount of cooperation needed between federal, state and local organizations are what have prevented Gainesville from trying this before now. But since the USDA grant spurred FOG to look into the program, “everyone is seeing the connections [of those who can benefit], and the wheels are turning and we’ve got the ears of city and county people,” Hale said.

Farmers markets in Gainesville could begin accepting SNAP benefits as early as this summer or fall if people step up to fund it. Desa and Hale hope eventually to make the program self-sustainable so that it won’t have to rely on outside money. Until then though, FOG is applying for grants and working toward forging partnerships with local businesses.

“We need funding to make this happen,” Desa said. “We know there are companies out there to support projects like this and help the hungry in our community, help farmers, our local economy and help the people. I think they’ll see the rewards trickle up from the low-income people and benefit the entire community as a whole.”

]]> http://www.thefineprintuf.org/2010/02/11/no-cash-no-problem-bringing-local-healthy-food-to-everyone-in-gainesville/feed/ 1 http://www.thefineprintuf.org/2009/11/07/foer-on-the-future-of-farms-and-food/ http://www.thefineprintuf.org/2009/11/07/foer-on-the-future-of-farms-and-food/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:50:34 +0000 Travis Pillow http://www.thefineprintuf.org/?p=634 I’m excited that one of my favorite novelists – Jonathan Safran Foer – has a new book out in which his own struggle to break free of the factory farm takes the form of a personal narrative carries echoes many of the themes of his earlier work while addressing perhaps the most important issue of our time.

Three quotes from a recent interview Foer did at Salon draw an important distinction between folks like us, who worry about the effects of industrial agriculture, and what I’m going to call the PETA crowd, who tend to dominate our side of the debate with emotional nonsense:

It’s a shame in a way that PETA videos or slaughterhouse videos are most people’s exposure to factory farming because it gives the impression that the horrible things are the exception, when in fact they’re the rule. So an animal running and getting beaten up or running around with its neck slit open: That is the exception, even on the worst farms it’s still the exception. But the rule that happens even on the best factory farms is animals are genetically modified to the point of being unable to reproduce sexually, animals that never see the sun and never touch the earth, animals whose cages are never cleaned. These things are not as shocking and don’t work as well in a video, but they’re something to be concerned with much more because they’re happening to billions and billions of animals every year.

I’m with Foer. I really don’t give a shit if someone injures a cow they’re about to kill anyway, or whether it’s a “clean kill” or not. But I do care about the underlying mentality, which, as I’ve written in the past, can wind up affecting the quality of the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breath.

“Is it right to eat an animal, is it not right to eat an animal?” That’s how most people talk about vegetarianism. But to me it doesn’t even matter. The truth is I actually don’t know what I think about that question. What I know is that it’s wrong to do it the way that we’re doing it. And we could sit here and argue about a perfect farm where animals are treated perfectly and slaughtered perfectly and whether that’s right. But if it exists at all it exists in a place that is impossible for us to find on any regular basis.

I’m not willing to follow Foer’s logic all the way to strict vegetarianism, for a simple reason: I like meat. Plus some types of meet, like beef from cows that eat grass, or venison shot by hunters, allow humans to consume calories in grass or forest foliage that we couldn’t otherwise convert to usable energy. But I realize that I – and everyone else – am going to need to get used to eating a lot less of it. The price paid by the planet is just too high. I’ve seen that elusive near-perfect farm Foer talks about, and he’s right: it can’t possibly be reproduced on a large enough scale to allow us to maintain our current levels of consumption.

The last one speaks for itself:

Factory farming supplies a demand for cheap meat. That’s it. It doesn’t taste good, it’s not healthy for us. The only good thing about it is that it’s cheap. But the thing is that it’s not cheap. It’s cheap at the cash register, and it’s sold as cheap — that’s the defense for factory farming, “Look, we’re making affordable food for normal people and all other arguments are elitist.” But in fact factory farming is like the ultimate elitism because it’s the most expensive food ever produced in the history of mankind. We pay very little at the cash register, but we pay and our kids are going to pay for the environmental toll, obviously the animals are paying, rural communities are paying. And for what? So that corporations can prosper. The huge agribusiness — companies make hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars, not in the name of feeding the world, but in the name of making something that’s so cheap that people become literally addicted to it.

These days most dairies are crappy – covered in the feces of hundreds of cows, packed into industrial feedlots, injected with hormones and antibiotics, and engorged with chemical-laced feed, so they can’t help but shit themselves.

But Bubba runs one of Florida’s cleanest milk operations, with some of the state’s healthiest cows. In 2007, Kurtz and Sons Dairy won the prize for the cleanest milk in the state. Since he went into business on his own in 1991, Bubba has won the prize three times and consistently ranks in the top 20, out of hundreds of dairies. His relatively tiny herd has built a legion of loyal customers from Tallahassee to Ocala.

The majority of those customers seek raw milk, a product the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Protection considers unfit for human consumption.

Ever since the emergence of dirty urban dairies a century ago, regulators have required milk to be pasteurized. Pasteurization is a process of heating liquids, usually to 161 degrees or more – high enough to kill potentially harmful bacteria, including salmonella and E. coli. Pasteurization vaporizes nutrients in the milk, along with the enzymes that help humans digest it, which may ultimately contribute to problems ranging from allergies and autoimmune disorders to digestive problems including lactose intolerance.

“A lot of people don’t realize milk has Vitamin C in it,” Bubba says. That’s because Vitamin C is eliminated at roughly 116 degrees.

Bubba, along with a chorus of raw milk advocates, says pasteurization gives farmers an excuse to be less careful.

Raw milk is illegal to sell in much of the United States and all of Canada, but all over North America its evangelists are spawning black-market networks that attract government scrutiny. They insist the stuff is safe, even beneficial, and that it tastes better.

The emerging black market has triggered police raids and sparked legal battles. Last October, Canadian farmer Michael Schmidt asked for the maximum possible sentence after he was found in contempt of court for ignoring an order to stop selling raw milk. The judge didn’t give him jail time, saying he didn’t want to make him a martyr to the cause. Schmidt took a $55,000 fine and vowed to continue the fight, declaring: “When Gandhi picked up the salt, he kept marching, and when Martin Luther started the Montgomery bus strike, he kept going until the law was changed.”

People like Schmidt are motivated by more than a richer flavor and some extra Vitamin C. The government keeps industrial dairy farming alive by subsidizing corn-based feed that cows were never meant to eat, failing to require cattlemen to care for their immigrant laborers or pay decent wages, and setting minimum prices for milk sold in stores. The system creates incentives to produce milk deprived of some its most health-giving properties.

Meanwhile, despite multimillion-dollar ad campaigns (“Got Milk?”), milk sales in America have been declining for more than two decades. But the niche market for raw milk is growing steadily.

The acolytes of the raw milk revolution are questioning the way we feed ourselves. Is it fair, much less sustainable, for the public to prop up farms that consume tons of fossil fuel to grow millions of bushels of corn and soy to feed unhealthy cows that produce bacteria-laden milk that must be sapped of nutrients before it’s safe to consume?

Bubba Kurtz is hardly an outlaw or a revolutionary. He sells his raw milk strictly as pet food, in compliance with Florida law, though what his customers do with it is up to them. He started in the dairy business with a herd that numbered in the hundreds, but three decades working on dairies and immersing himself in the scientific literature gradually convinced him to change his ways. In recent years, curious UF students have made the 90-minute drive north to his farm near Live Oak, to see his radical farming methods up close.

Bubba says his milk is safe to drink raw because of the way he cares for his cows, which now number less than 30. Fewer cows means less stress – both on the Kurtz family and their herd. Less stress means less crap in the parlor during milking time, which means cleaner milk.

Cows produce the most milk right after they calf. Bubba's herd is fertile year round, which allows him to meet milk demand when it peaks in the Fall.

Bubba milks his cows to the sounds of Neil Young and the Beatles, maybe a little bluegrass or what he calls “good” country. Music helps keep cows calm, he says, citing a study by Purdue University. The kind of music isn’t important to the cows; what matters is that they get good vibes from the humans in their midst.

Unlike most larger dairy operations, his cows don’t eat feed. They eat the fresh green grass grown on his ranch, except during the winter when they eat silage and hay.

Cattle feed, made mostly of corn and soy, doesn’t allow the cows’ digestive systems to function properly, Bubba says. To produce the cleanest, most nutritious milk, they have to eat grass.

“One of the old adages in the dairy business is you don’t feed the cow. You feed the bugs inside the cow.”

Healthy cows store trillions of helpful bacteria in their rumens, 30-gallon fermentation vats that store the cud they chew. The bacteria thrive on the cellulose in grass, which the cows can’t break down themselves. A cow fed on fresh grass is a walking ecosystem in which good bugs keep out the bad.

Kurtz calls it competitive inhibition, and cites a test by a California farmer who added E. coli, salmonella and listeria bacteria to a sample of grass-fed raw milk. The germs died within eight hours.

“Chlorophyll is one of the best disinfectants nature has ever made,”  he explains in his deep-throated twang. “It’s anti-microbial, except when it comes to the good bugs.”

At the Gainesville farmer’s market, customers arrive early to line up for raw milk before Bubba sells out.

Anita Sundaram says she drinks his raw milk for her health and because it tastes better. Enzymes in raw milk help reduce lactose intolerance, she adds, and raw milk is easier for her to digest.

“I want cows that are ruminants, that eat grass instead of corn and wheat,” she says.

Noah Shitama, with two young kids in tow, says he likes raw milk for the same reasons, and his children also drink it from time to time. But he would never drink raw milk from what he calls “factory cows.”

“It totally depends on where it’s from,” he says. “Like all foods, if you know where it comes from, it’s usually safer.”

About a year and a half ago, Kurtz and Sons lost some customers after someone arrived at Shands complaining of liver problems after drinking his raw milk. The milk had been purchased at Ward’s Supermarket, so the store pulled that batch from the shelves.

“Now it was one person mind you, and I sold about 300 jugs in Gainesville alone that week,” he says.

The hospital was suspecting ungulate fever . But Kurtz tests his cows for the disease every year, and his whole herd was clean. The diagnosis changed to leptospirosis .

“That’s another funny one there,” he says. “Because I don’t necessarily test for lepto, but I have always vaccinated for it.”

Leptospirosis causes infertility in cows, and the females in the Kurtz herd were all getting pregnant on schedule. The disease infects the kidneys in humans, he adds, not the liver.

The patient recovered and the issue faded away. Nobody knows for sure whether his milk caused the illness.

But regulators and health officials tend to regard unpasteurized milk as suspect. Between 1998 to 2005, there were at least 45 outbreaks of food-borne illness traced to raw dairy products, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In those cases, more than 1,000 people got sick, 104 were hospitalized and two died.

Raw milk proponents say federal regulators, who caution against unpasteurized dairy products, are used to dealing with ranchers who operate on a much larger scale, with less care and cleanliness. Industrial ranchers, they charge, wield far more lobbying power than their smaller competitors.

Bubba likes to say that he is no longer in the “commodity business.” His family’s farm hasn’t been profitable in years.

But life is simpler, less stressful. There are no longer workers to manage, other than his wife and his daughter, Virginia. And the herd is healthy enough to care for itself.

His typical annual vet bill is less than $80, he adds, and that just pays for a routine checkup to ensure his beef is safe to eat. His methods yield between 6,000 and 7,000 pounds of milk per cow each year, compared to the Florida average of 16,000. But by reducing the stress on his herd, he keeps costs down by avoiding antibiotics or other chemicals.

His cows also live longer. The average life span of a Florida cow is four and a half years. Kurtz estimates his herd, which is young, is currently near that average, but he plans on keeping them much longer than that.

“Cows perform better on grass,” he says. “And when I say perform better, I don’t necessarily mean maximum milk production. I’m talking about staying healthy and living a long time.”

Healthy cows produce milk that’s healthier for people. Many raw milk drinkers are interested in feeding the bugs in their own guts. Our internal ecosystems have been losing biodiversity in an era of cheap, sterile food.

A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that the factory farms that produce less biologically beneficial but “inexpensive” meat and dairy relied on $35 billion in federal subsidies for corn-based feed between 1997 and 2005, as well as more than $100 million in annual “pollution prevent” payments since 2002. And these operations have suffered during the economic crisis, as commodity prices plummeted.

The current industry norm is not only destructive and unhealthy; it isn’t really economically viable. Meanwhile, farmers like Bubba Kurtz, who don’t benefit from such public largess, are validating the environmentalist mantra of less, but better. Better means cleaner, healthier, safer.

The raw milk revolution augurs an end to the era of more.