In Boulder County, An Effort To Ban GMO Crops Moves Ahead

Officials in Boulder County have released a plan to remove all genetically-modified crops from county-owned farmland within the next five years.  The county’s commissioners directed staffers to draft the plan following a series of heated public hearings in early 2016, where scientists argued farmers were being unfairly targeted and local activists said the crops in question threaten the county’s agricultural viability, and its reputation as an environmentally-conscious community.  The plan calls for farmers who lease county land for their operations to stop planting GMO corn within the next three years, and sugar beets within the next five years. Nine farmers currently grow the modified corn and sugar beets on the county land they lease. The plants are engineered to withstand applications of an herbicide, sold under the brand name RoundUp, that kills weeds. Since the 1970s, the county has been in the business of buying farmland, leasing the land back to farmers. As of early 2016, the county manages more than 100,000 acres of open space. Of that land, about 1 percent is planted with GMO corn and sugar beets every year.