The Food Babe Hates the Small Farmers of Hawaii

by Joni Kamiya, Hawaii Farmer’s Daughter, July 23, 2015

Just when I thought there would be nothing more for me to blog, it never fails that some anti-GMO post comes up that just infuriates me.  Who is the latest awardee of the anti-education/anti-farmer movement? It’s none other than the Food Babe.

The Food Babe has decided to attack the small farmers of Hawaii that includes my dad, brother, and their farm manager, Neil, as well as the hundreds of others including the organic farmers.  She posted an article telling her dimwitted, gullible followers to avoid Hawaiian papayas because they are GMO.  She spells out the types that are GMO and the ones that allegedly aren’t.  She even tells people to buy papayas from other countries and claims that even organic ones are contaminated. 

From her anti-Hawaii papaya post:

She never discloses any real facts about the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association either.  She only perpetuates the repeated, fact-less myths about biotech and tries to make a connection about pesticides to papayas.  Nor does she mention that the people who grow papayas here are all small family farms!

Why I say the anti-GMO folks are anti-education is because she has no mention about the nature of the modification or how this technology saved the industry here.  These activists talk about people being in the dark about GMOs but they obscure any facts from their followers.  Facts make people think and thinking is dangerous to this house of cards.

She will never post real science or anything that actually educates people like this: http://youtu.be/2G-yUuiqIZ0

I’m starting to think that this anti movement is really anti-American at heart.  They attack an innovation that has saved the smallest of farmers that have no ties to big ag.  They attack the legacies of long time, multi-generational farms here in Hawaii.  Majority of the papaya farmers here came to the U.S. with nothing and built themselves up through hard, honest work and dedication.  Their families learned the same lessons and carried on those same dreams.  The Hawaii farmers are becoming fewer as many are retiring and the next generation does not continue those farms.  Vani and her ilk must want people to quit farming altogether with the way she blatantly spreads misinformation.

It’s really disgusting how people like the Food Babe and others like Nomi Carmona of our Hawaii Babes Against Biotech can bring nothing but fact-less campaigns to our state and feel good about their actions.  They perpetuate attacks against the hardest working people I know.  They can sit pretty and go on TV or spout their BS about their “expertise” against farmers.  How can anyone with a conscious ever do such a thing? Apparently it’s easier to make money lying than it is to farm.  These women know nothing about earning an honest living through actual hard work.  A broken finger nail is likely devastation to their careers.

I applaud the generations of papaya farmers that toil on their farms everyday to grow their miracle fruits that Vani Hari calls them.  Yes, it’s a really good product that millions have enjoyed for nearly 20 years thanks to biotechnology.  Our customers who buy our papayas for decades know how healthy these biotech miracles really are.  Vani probably doesn’t even know that papayas are staples here and might contribute to why Hawaii is due to have the highest elderly population.  

So Vani Hari and the other anti-education activists out there need to get a clue and either work on a farm and grow a comparable crop.  They needs a lesson in honesty and some work ethics before them come criticizing my fellow farming friends.  When the Food Babe can grow a sweet papaya like our Hawaii farmers and talk real science, I might stop criticizing these charlatans of Google.

P.S. Food Babe better adopt her precautionary principle with the imported papayas.  Many countries have their own strain of PRSV infecting the papayas making it a natural GMO.  Guess she’s better not eat these fruits at all!