Courts rule organic farmers can sue over contamination by pesticides and herbicides

Exciting news from Minnesota!  Last Monday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that damaging chemicals that cross property lines constitute trespassing.  The Star Tribune reports on it here.  This is great news, meaning that organic farmers can sue if negligent conventional and GMO farmers contaminate and thus destroy their organic crops via drifting clouds of pesticides and herbicides and possibly even GMO pollen or seed.

This follows a few months after California’s Sixth Appellate District Court ruled in December that Jacobs Farm/Del Cobo could sue a neighboring farm whose pesticides drifted over and covered an organic dill crop, making it unsalable.  Read the story here.

It will be interesting to see how these rulings affects the case against Monsanto that we’re a part of as it goes forward.  Stay tuned…

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