BOULDER — The Boulder County commissioners decided early today to delay allowing the planting of genetically modified sugar beets and to study the issue for a least a year.
The commissioners asked county staffers to take a long-term look at the issue.
When the meeting began Tuesday, farmers who want to grow the genetically modified beets on Boulder County open space had asked that their controversial request be shelved to allow for more study and calmer debate.
“We think an opportunity for civil dialogue would benefit both sides,” Longmont farmer Jules Van Thuyne Jr. said to the commissioners. “We had no idea our petition for this would pit farmer against farmer in this county.”
The commissioners debated the issue late into Tuesday night before agreeing on the delay.
Two county subcommittees gave different views on the proposal and organic growers in the county have attacked the idea, saying genetically modified crops are potentially dangerous and could contaminate non- GMO crops.
Thuyne spoke on behalf of six Longmont-area farmers who are hoping to plant genetically modified sugar beets on roughly 1,000 acres of county open space that they lease.
The farmers say raising Roundup Ready sugar beets would be more economical and give them a better chance to survive in a market where 95 percent of the sugar beets in the United States are already Roundup Ready.
Roundup Ready sugar beets were developed by the agribusiness corporation Monsanto to survive after an area has been sprayed with Roundup, an herbicide made by the company.
At least 90 people were signed up to debate the issue Tuesday night. A public hearing on the Roundup Ready idea in July took more than seven hours.
The farmers originally requested a delay in the decision late last week in a letter in which they said, in part: “We would like to have the opportunity to grow Roundup Ready sugarbeets like the other sugarbeet growers in the United States and Canada, but our request has turned into a broader emotional debate that has deeply divided our community.”
Thuyne repeated Tuesday night that the farmers did not want to be in the middle of a controversy over their GMO crops. Still, he said, “from our perspective the data is conclusive Roundup Ready can lower environmental and labor costs for us.”
The county can begin more studies of GMO crops and ways to encourage more organic farms, said Tina Nielsen, parks and open space special projects manager.
