Of cops and corn
A journal from Sacramento, where calls to globalize U.S. agricultural standards are being met with protests

By Rachel Brahinsky

Editor's note: Bay Guardian reporter Rachel Brahinsky is in Sacramento covering the international Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology. She filed this dispatch on the evening of June 23. For a more complete report on what happened in the halls and on the streets, read next week's edition or check sfbg.com for related links and breaking news.

It's late afternoon on Sunday, and the hot Sacramento day is just barely beginning to cool. Over at the Torch Club on 15th Street, a blues band wails and revelers spill out into the street, smoking cigarettes and watching the police-protester game unfold.

This is the first day of large demonstrations here as more than 150 government officials from around the world gather to discuss international agricultural policies. While officials talk about "technology transfers" and "harmonizing regulations," demonstrators roam the city dressed as ears of corn and butterflies to raise questions about the methods and goals of corporate agriculture, particularly the promotion of genetically modified foods.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has gathered officials here to promote such technologies and discuss ways to ease regulations and increase profits for corporate producers. The activists, in the spirit of protesters who stormed the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, are participating in both legal and illicit demonstrations – including marches, plant-ins at a phased-out community garden, and political theater.

If the mood at the Torch Club is any indication, demonstrators – many from the Bay Area and some from as far away as New Jersey – face serious obstacles in educating a relatively conservative public in this generally quiet town.

One man, suffering from a severe sunburn and wearing a leather vest with a Harley-Davidson "live to ride" patch, voices a common complaint: "It's all bullshit. The agricultural assembly is here to make farming better. The protesters are here to make a hassle out of it."

Clearly, it's a clash of different worlds as locals, activists from out of town, and delegates each go about their business.

It's also a clash of odors.

In the Hyatt Hotel, where the media must present three kinds of identification to register for the conference, there's a lingering smell of chemical cleanser. Out in the street, a wafting cloud of sage, patchouli, and people smells follows sun-baked protesters. And all across town, the sidewalks and streets are spotted with piles of steamy, squashed horseshit – evidence of the dozens of mounted police who had bracketed protesters from block to block all day.

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Of course, there's also a serious contrast of assumptions and ideas. Conference leaders on Monday insist their goal is feeding a hungry world. Speakers vow to end starvation and increase food security with improved seeds and pesticides. But there's little mention of the international policies that perpetuate hunger.

Across the street, the message is different. At a press conference focusing on developing nations that are refusing imports of genetically modified foods, Anuradha Mittal of Food First/the Institute for Food and Development Policy accuses the United States of exporting unproved science.

"When you have not solved the problem of hunger in the richest country of the world, you are not going to help [other countries]," she says.

Plus, she points out, we already have enough food: throughout the world there's enough to provide 4.3 pounds of sustenance daily to every living person on the planet, she tells us. Her colleague Peter Rosset adds, "The genetic composition of crop seeds is nowhere near the top 10 causes of hunger."

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Meanwhile, back on the streets, thousands gather to march. There are clashes with police that seem to grow more extreme as the day wears on. Though compared with Seattle or with recent antiwar activity in the Bay Area, police-protester interactions have been mild.

But on Monday, after about two thousand participated in a legal march through the city, cops grow more aggressive. There are reports of people being zapped with taser stun guns, and many expect things to only get worse in the coming days as legal protest gives way to the likelihood of increased direct-action protest.

Several witnesses report that a group of people resting in Capitol Park were surrounded by police who shot rubber bullets at them, hitting one woman on the upper thigh. Others report being randomly snatched from crowds, and there are some, as yet unconfirmed, stories of abusive conditions in holding cells.

What's next? The meetings – and protests – continue over the next two days. And while police have succeeded in protecting the street immediately surrounding the delegates' meeting rooms, stories of dissent permeate the conference.

Even the heads of top agro-chemical companies admit they are listening. "We now live in a time when information on all sides can be shared globally," Dow Agro-Sciences president and CEO Charles Fischer tells an assemblage of ministers. "Public perception is, as you know, very important."

E-mail Rachel Brahinsky