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The It Gets Better Project is a national effort to stop people from bullying LGBT youths. Public figures have created videos in which they encourage youths to keep persevering in their lives, including Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and many many more – over 6,000 videos so far. Why am I bringing this up on Biofortified? Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has submitted a video and posted it on the  There is certainly a lot of commotion about the first ever US Supreme Court hearing involving genetically engineered crops, which is being held today. The case is Monsanto Company v. Geertson Seed Farms, (SCOTUS Wiki) and depending on how this turns out, it could mean the end of genetically engineered alfalfa forever or the eventual destruction of all organic dairies, right? Well, no. So what is the court case about? The court case is not actually about GE alfalfa, although this legal battle began with alfalfa. In 2006, several groups joined together led by the Center for Food Safety to sue the Secretary of Agriculture over the deregulation of roundup-ready alfalfa produced by Monsanto. The USDA had conducted an Environmental Assessment according to its GE crop approval policies and concluded that there were no big issues that they needed to investigate further. If they had found any in the assessment they would have moved on to the much more involved Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The court case over GE alfalfa was decided in 2007, with US District Court Judge Charles R. Breyer saying that the USDA should have done the full EIS, and placed an injunction on future plantings of GE alfalfa until such an EIS is conducted by the USDA. Farmers already growing the alfalfa could continue to grow it. Since then, the case was appealed a couple times by Monsanto, leading up to the Supreme Court. The case is not about the specifics of alfalfa cross-pollination, organic farms, or export markets – it is actually just about the specific details of what is required to grant an injunction under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). At one point, an evidentiary hearing was part of the short list of issues, but that has been dropped and this is what we have left:
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What the heck is alfalfa, anyway?
Alfalfa by TwoWings via Wikimedia Commons.
Alfalfa is an awesome plant that is quite unique among field crops. It’s a legume, which means it can fix nitrogen (meaning less nitrogen fertilizer needs to be added) as well as being one of very few perennial crops, which means it can be left in the field to grow year after year and keep being harvested. It’s roots can grow quite deep so it can be very drought tolerant. It produces a high quality forage for animals, and is especially great for dairy cows.
One problem with alfalfa is that, as it is left to grow for multiple years, weeds can accumulate and the alfalfa stand will need to be plowed under. Weeds can be controlled to some degree with harvesting at just the right time (before the weeds make seeds) but at some point that isn’t enough. Enter Roundup Ready alfalfa which can be sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate to control weeds while leaving the alfalfa healthy.
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