My comments on the proposed APHIS regulations

To all:

Since the comment period ends March 10 (not January 10, as I once thought),
Im am reposting these thoughts I wrote up to stimulate comments.  If one of
these ideas lights a fire for you, develop the idea and pass it on to the
USDA.  

I believe we were reminded to keep comments polite, simple, transparent, and
to the point.

I just checked the email comment page and found a total of fifteen (15)
comments posted.  Go to https://web01.aphis.usda.gov/regpublic.nsf/ and
click on 03-069-1 to read what is already posted.

We can do better than that!

Courtesy of J. L. Hudson:
Go to: http://www.JLHudsonSeeds.net/DocketNo03-069-1.htm to read the entire
text, for the latest USDA proposal for phasing in a "white list" (which will ban
import of all plants and seeds except for a USDA approved list)


I very much want for interested parties, no matter what their position, to
read the proposed regs.  The opportunity to send courteous, well-reasoned
comments about weaknesses and problems with the regulations is rapidly
coming to an end.

I don't believe that one should assume that my position is identical to the
forwarded post.

The post from David Theodoropoulos (aka J. L. Hudson) was sent because it
contained relevant links as well as a summary (an intensely strongly felt
one, I admit) of a plant collector.  I don't totally agree with him, but
being a devil's advocate by nature, I find it hard to agree with any
position totally.  This is a very complex situation, and I will oppose any
stupid-simple, brute force solutions.  I welcome strongly worded arguments
as a spur to discussion, as long as it doesn't degenerate into pitched white
hat-black hat warfare.

I welcome the opposing opinions that have surfaced.   Now I will list a
series of confounding concerns:

1	Import Barriers.  I have collected plants in Mexico with the folks from
Yucca-Do and gone through the Laredo APHIS Inspection Station twice.  This
service is very much understaffed, and historically they have had very
little technical support.  

	This meant that, in order to get them to allow the importation of seed, you
had to supply them with technical information about the plant, like a
scientific paper describing the plant. It also helped if you came with
someone they were already familiar with, like a botanist from a Texas
university.  You allowed them total control of the situation.  Plants had to
be cleaned down to bare stems and bare root, with all possible pest-infected
parts removed.  Even with all this done, you might wind up with your
material confiscated if they were in a bad mood or were in a hurry.

	Even back then (around 1986), inspections were done on only 5% of trucks
carrying produce for pests and chemical residues.  The last I heard, the
percentages had dropped to 2%.  With NAFTA in force, this has not improved.
And given the priorities of the current administration and the state of the
budget, is it reasonable to expect more funding, except for bioterrorism?
APHIS is one unit moved to the Department of Homeland Security.

2	Development of Research and Monitoring Tools.  I experienced another
funding problem when I wrote a grant with Dr. John Kartesz to develop a
database for exotic (read invasive) plants with images.  The Invasive
Species Executive Order of February 3, 1999 released funds for many
purposes. Most of it went to the National Invasive Species Council.  Besides
government and academic scientists, the main group of people sitting at the
council table were from agribusiness.  Nurseries and botanic gardens were
barely represented.   Guess whose needs were getting served!  John needed a
paltry fraction of this money to develop what would have been a useful tool
for weed control.  He has been working on the Biota of North America for
around 30 years, and funding has gotten tighter.  Biotech funding on college
campuses has been growing, but only for research that can quickly be used to
generate a profit.

3	Funding of Local Environmental Controls.  Lack of funding also is going to
have a severe impact on state and county attempts to deal with environmental
problems.  My county ag agent has not only been deputized to cover Federal
APHIS chores, he has been given more counties to cover.  North Carolina is a
heavily agricultural state, and is also cutting back resources because of a
mandate to balance the state budget.  Shall we increase unfunded mandates?

4	Environmental Restoration.  Do any of you know Bert Wilson of Las Pilitas
Nursery in California?  He works on restoring destroyed landscapes by
reestablishing correct plants for the particular environment.  He points out
that the total environment needs to be considered.  Besides the soil,
rainfall, exposure, and geography, the microflora and microfauna need to be
considered.  You don't plant desert plants by a stream because they won't
survive, and attempts will cause more of a mess.  The `pathogens' in the
soil are there to keep foreigners out.  This is also true for any exotics
that might wander in, unless there is a match with their native environment.

	With global warming, floral zones will move, and human intercession will be
needed.  Bert's skills will be badly needed.  There isn't much funding for
this kind of work.  Bert, by the way, favors strong regulations, but not at
the expense of freezing out nurserymen and scientists.  I agree with him
that if you introduce a pest that causes great damage, you should pay for
it.  There should be an effective mechanism for dealing with this situation,
and it should apply to large corporations as well.

5	Preserving Biodiversity of Important Crops.  Native Seed/Search in Arizona
works with native Indians of the southwestern USA and northwestern Mexico.
They try to help them fit into the world of NAFTA, large corporations,  and
biotech.  The ejidos (remote Indian communities) of Mexico are homes for
many strains of corn, beans, cotton, and various vegetables.  As such, they
are valuable genetic resources.  By allowing cheap corn to be imported from
the USA into Mexico, they are destroying the ejidos by removing an income
source.  And then there is the effect of bringing the bioengineered corn in
to pollute or directly replace the rare germ plasm.  This is also a problem
with rice and other vegetable genetic stocks around the world.  You would
think that the biotech industry would try to protect this gene pool as a
resource, but they don't seem to care, relying on scientific wizardry
instead.  Has anyone heard yet about funding for government seedbanks?

6	Impact on Independent Scientific Research.  The proposed regulations are
also an impediment to independently funded scientific research on the
institutional and university level both inside and outside the United
States, according to Dr. Bob Bye.  He runs the botanical garden of the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and was one of the editors
of the Biological Diversity of Mexico along with T. P. Ramamoorthy, Antonio
Lot, and John Fa.

7	Response to Regulatory Impact by Small Businesses.  I grew up on a dairy
farm and we had our own milk routes.  Our business thrived (relatively
speaking) because of our reputation.  The same is true of nurseries like
Logee's Greenhouses, Tony Avent's Plant Delights, and Yucca-Do Nursery.  Why
would we endanger the good will of our customers, one of our most valuable
assets, by introducing a noxious weed?  If not trialled by Alan Armitage at
the University of Georgia for a fee, new plants are grown in gardens like
the J. C. Raulston Arboretum or with fellow plant enthusiasts that have
established professional attitudes and credentials to assay the virtues or
dangers of a plant.  Only the largest nurseries could even begin to think
about meeting all the scientific prerequisites of the proposed regulations.
Definitely, even the largest biotech corporations would give pause to what
they want to import based on expected returns on investments.

8	Response to Regulatory Impact by Large Businesses.  And finally (for now),
many of these regulations will have relatively little impact on large
agribusiness corporations, not only because only they can best afford to do
all the tests and comply with all the regulations, but because they will
have the means to expedite imports with their power and connections.  This
will freeze out the small businessmen.  If you think this is an
exaggeration, consider that agricultural pesticides are developed for major
crops only.  No one has or is going to develop a pesticide specifically to
protect the peppermint crop.  Compared to corn and soybeans, peppermint is
small potatoes (pun intended).  Who is going to pony up expenses to evaluate
and test pathogen problems for a handful of begonias, ferns, or salvias that
a collector or research scientist wants to import?

	I know about this kind of situation because I initiated and ran a research
project to control cigarette beetles.  This project was worth doing because
recovering the loss of very expensive tobacco paid for the project many
times over.  The technology would have been and still is very important to
preserve third world food stores, but no one put up research funds for this
important and urgently needed work.  It doesn't affect any corporations
bottom line, and we are trying to reduce the size of government..

Summary.  There are already many barriers to importing plants into the
United States.  While some of these are insufficient, new regulations should
not effectively shut down the perennial business and severely impede related
enterprises like NGOs that work with native cultures, the environment, and
the ecology, and independent scientific research.  

The common thread in all the points listed above is that government is
responding to the concerns of big business, which is so totally bottom-line
driven that funding for the controls is an empty mandate.  Only quickly
realized profits are valued.  Resources like training and staffing of
regulatory agencies are being squeezed, and tools for monitoring and
controlling noxious pests are not being funded, except by dedicated
independent scientists who have to struggle for the small amounts they are
able to get.  While these may prove to be a minor impediment to large
corporations, the lack of these resources will be lethal to small businesses
and entrepreneurs trying to comply with the new regulations.  Additionally,
we are ourselves resources for the very same corporations.  Consumer
capitalism, indeed!

Small nurseries do not have the time and resources to deal with the new
regulations as they stand without allowances.  We are the trial laboratories
that supply the larger nurseries (at no developmental cost to then) with the
new Epimediums, Salvias, ferns, Agaves, etc. that they refresh their
catalogs with.  Given that we are becoming less dependent on large
corporations for income, is it wise to stifle small- and medium-sized
businesses?  Shouldn't we be encouraging entrepreneurs instead?  I would
hate to give near absolute control of the biosphere over to agribusiness
corporations by either design or default.  Isn't it imperative to read the
proposed regulations and send in your comments, no matter what side of this
discussion your views are?

If necessary, I will make comments on the views of Faith Campbell, David
Pimentel, and Native Plant Societies on a later post.

Richard F. Dufresne
1216 Okeeweemee-Star Road
Star, North Carolina  27356 USA
910-428-4704
World of Salvias:  http://www.eclectasy.com/gallery_of_salvias/index.htm
Salvia email list:   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Salvia
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