Associated Press | By KIM BACA | June 23, 2003
Agriculture ministers from around the world gathered Monday for the first day of a conference on genetically engineered farming as police braced for a second day of protests.
More than a dozen demonstrators started Monday's protests near county and federal buildings, dressed as butterflies and giant tomatoes and ears of corn and singing "Old Monsanto Had a Farm."
Demonstrations were expected to be larger than the day before when hundreds of activists marched on city streets to denounce the conference even before it began.
Chanting, banging drums and carrying signs that read "We Don't Want to Eat Their Corporate Creations," protesters swarmed the streets around the state Capitol and nearby conference center. Some demonstrators overturned a trash bin near a hotel where agriculture ministers were staying.
Police in riot gear and on horseback faced off with the demonstrators, arresting 22 people on charges of unlawful assembly, vandalism and possessing weapons, including a switchblade and other sharp objects, authorities said.
Another 14 people were arrested late Sunday at the site of a former community garden in Sacramento that is slated to become a 118-unit housing development.
Several activists removed sections of the fence around the site and locked themselves together with steel pipe. Others planted lavender and cactus. The protesters were expected to be charged with trespassing, police said.
Officials were bracing for protests throughout the three-day Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, which was expected to draw officials from more than 100 countries. Some offices and restaurants downtown had closed because of the anticipated demonstrations.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the conference convenes at a time when the debate over genetically modified foods has reached a fever pitch. The United States is demanding that the World Trade Organization force the European Union to end its ban on genetically modified food. The EU ministers were absent from the conference.
Opposition to biotechnology is galvanizing outside the United States, and the protesters say inside the country as well.
Agriculture Department officials say the conference is designed to help developing countries reduce hunger and improve nutrition using advanced technology. They say biotechnology can help reduce pesticide use and yield better harvests than conventional methods, helping preserve the environment and improving health.
But activists argue that biotechnology is not the antidote to the complex food problems facing developing nations. Instead, they fear the conference is an attempt by corporate farming and biotech interests to push into new markets.
"The policies they are talking about do not benefit poor people in the world, they benefit large agriculture companies," protester Eddy Jara, a 30-year-old nutritionist from Berkeley, Calif., said Sunday.
The Bush administration "is trying to force dangerous and untested food on poor countries," said Patrick Reinsborough of the Mobilization for the Food and Sovereignty, Democracy and Justice, the umbrella group organizing the protest.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman said the conference will also highlight farming methods and pest management to help developing countries cut world hunger by 2015, a goal set by agriculture secretaries at the World Food Summit last year. More than 800 million people face chronic hunger or malnutrition, she said.
"What we're talking about is increasing food productivity in areas of the world where people are both hungry and poor," she said. "Many developing countries get 90 percent of their food from local production and there isn't any infrastructure."
The Agriculture Department has closed the conference to the public and certain events to the media. The press did not receive an agenda until the day before the conference. Department officials cited security reasons.
On the Net:
Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology: http://www.fas.usda.gov/icd/stconf/conf-info.html
Protest information: http://sacmobilization.orgAssociated Press:
