Isaura Andaluz
It is August. As I drive along the banks of the Rio Grande, a smoky aroma, tinged with the scents of the rich soil, accompanies me. My mouth waters in anticipation of tasting this year’s first crop of Chile Nativo, the native chile of New Mexico. Freshly picked green chiles are fire roasted, then carefully peeled and layered onto a flour tortilla, a traditional thin flatbread of New Mexico. The tortilla has been prepared with a generous dollop of sour cream, a bit of salt, and fresh crushed garlic. The coolness of the cream, the warmth of the chile, and its spiciness unfold into a subtle explosion of flavors on one’s tongue. Later in the fall, the green chiles are left to ripen on the plants, where they will turn a deep red color. The red roasted chiles have a spicy, caramel flavor that is truly indescribable.
“Chile” is the Spanish word derived from chil, the Nahuatl (Aztecan dialect) name for capsicum plants. Its arrival in the 1500s to New Mexico has defined who we are as a people, while shaping our culture and diet. Chile is a constant reminder of how intricately we are entwined with the seasons, the land, the river, and our communities. The seeds tether us to the land in an annual ritual of planting, harvesting, saving, and sharing, and for some, to ceremonial dances. Passed down for centuries among the Native American and Hispanic people, the seeds are carefully returned to the soil, accompanied with a quiet blessing.
Through traditional practices, landrace varieties of chile have been developed and adapted to local microclimates. They are resistant to disease, and are identified by their specific pod shape, size, and taste. They go by many names, usually in reference to the locality where they were cultivated. A partial list includes: Alcalde, Chimayo, Cochiti, Dixon, Escondida, Española, Isleta, Jarales, Jemez, Nambe, San Felipe, San Juan (Ohkay Owingeh), Santo Domingo (Kewa), Velarde, and Zia.
New Mexico’s unique bioregions create prime conditions for diversity. Chile Nativo must endure high solar radiation, arid and windy conditions, and a broad range of temperatures from highs of 95°F/35°C, to nighttime lows of 65°F/18°C. The chiles range in length from two to seven inches; some are long and smooth, others curled and crinkly. The shoulders, the widest part below the stem, vary in width from ¾ to 1¾ inches (1.9–2.54 cm). The thin to medium skins make Nativo varieties excellent for drying, as they will not lose weight or flavor, due to excess water in the cell walls.
Where do chiles originate? Chile is a Capsicum annuum, one of five domesticated capsicums originating in Mesoamerica. As one of the earliest domesticated plants (7500 BC), its specific area of origination and domestication has evaded researchers.1 Chile belongs to the Solanaceae family, which includes tobacco, potato, tomato, and petunia. Some consider chile a self-pollinating plant, but with simple observation, insect pollinators can be seen flying from flower to flower ensuring cross-pollination. Domesticated crop plants generally retain approximately 66 percent of the diversity present from the wild source,2 but chile appears to be different. In a 2009 study conducted in Mexico, researchers took eighty samples of chile from ten states—fifty-eight semi-wild and twenty-two domesticated. The domesticated chiles were found to retain 91 percent of the level of diversity found in the semi-wild samples.3 This finding is significant, as domesticated chiles like the Nativo may be invaluable in retaining diversity. For example, commercial chile growers in New Mexico have been experiencing severe problems with phytophthora, which causes chile wilt, for more than twenty years. Farming practices such as monoculture or failure to rotate crops may be contributing factors, but phytophthora is uncommon among Nativo farmers. Does this mean the Nativo gene pool has a resistance that modern or hybrid chiles do not?
Chile has another equally significant aspect. Genetic engineering uses a technique called “protoplast fusion,” wherein a plant’s cell wall has been partially or completely removed. This allows protoplast from different species to be introduced. The cell is then regenerated, creating a genetically engineered cell. Although other Solanaceae such as tobacco are commonly used in genetic engineering, researchers have been unable to regenerate chile from protoplasts. The chile will just not cooperate.
In 1888, Dr. Fabián Garcia, a horticulturist at New Mexico State University (NMSU), began the university’s chile improvement program. His goal was to produce a stable canning chile that would have less heat, and be larger, fleshier, smoother, tapered, and shoulderless. The breeding lines he used included the chile pasilla (long and dark brown) and colorado (a red chile). Over a span of thirteen years, Dr. Garcia selectively bred the New Mexico No. 9, released in 1913. This was the first standardized variety of a new pod type called the New Mexican. It launched New Mexico as a leader in the United States for industrialized chile farming, processing, and canning. In 1958, a milder chile called New Mexico 6-4 was released, which became and remains the industry standard. NMSU continued to develop a total of twenty-one modern chile cultivars through proven classical breeding techniques. These include: Sandia (1956), NuMex Big Jim (1975), and Española Improved (1984). The last variety officially released was the NuMex Mirasol in 1993, the first year that research commenced for a genetically engineered chile resistant to phytophthora.
In 2008, New Mexicans were in for a shock. A bill was introduced in the New Mexico state legislature requesting $250,000 to develop a genetically engineered (GE) chile. This was the first time the general public had heard about this. An appropriation using taxpayers’ funds to develop a patented GE seed? Who is behind this? Who will own the patent? The taxpayers? No. This was a coup for biotech companies.
In New Mexico, many farmers irrigate their crops through the use of acequias—irrigation ditches. As land has been passed down through generations, it is often divided into long, narrow tracts to ensure access to the acequias. These drain into the Rio Grande, which divides the state as it runs from the north to the south into Texas. Both waterways serve as venues for seeds to travel for miles, sprouting hidden volunteer plants the length of the state. In the fall, dried red chiles are hung into ristras and transported in open trucks. If a chile pod shatters, seeds can be strewn along the road and be carried by the wind.
Farmers may unknowingly come into possession of patented traits in the seeds they save because of these volunteer plants or due to cross-pollination with the GE chile, as test-site locations are undisclosed to the public. This could result in farmers being sued for patent infringement and, worse, almost certain loss of the invaluable and unique traits of their own seed, developed through years of breeding. Farmers have a right to save their own seed for future planting; this right is now at risk.
In 2008, the community sought to confront this threat through a united effort called the “Save NM Seeds Coalition.”4 Its first action was to introduce a bill aimed at protecting farmers from being sued if their seeds were to unknowingly become contaminated. The Farmer Liability Bill was introduced three times through bipartisan sponsorship (2009, 2010, and 2011). Although it has failed to pass, huge progress was made in 2011 when the bill made it to the House floor in record time, ending with a tied vote. Heavy lobbying by the GE chile players contributed to it failing upon being reheard a second time. But New Mexicans have not given up, nor have the GE chile players.
Development of a GE crop usually includes three primary players: a biotech company, a university, and the promoter. In this case the players are Monsanto and Syngenta, New Mexico State University, and the New Mexico Chile Association. In the United States, the other players include BIO (the biotechnology trade association), the Farm Bureau, and money.
The New Mexico Chile Association (NMCA), formerly called the NM Chile Task Force, was created in partnership with New Mexico State University (NMSU). In 2006 it changed its name and became a nonprofit membership organization that lobbies for government and public funds. The NMCA is primarily composed of chile processors and businesses; it works closely with NMSU and its Agricultural Experiment Station (AES), and with biotech companies. The NMCA directs NMSU in the use of some of the funds received from the New Mexico state legislature.
Until 2012, the board of directors was composed of the owners of three of the largest food processors in New Mexico—Bueno Foods (a.k.a. El Encanto, Inc.), Rezolex, Inc., and Cervantes Enterprises. Bueno Foods is one of the oldest chile processors in the state. Rezolex is one of two companies in the United States that extracts oleoresin from paprika and operates farms in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. Cervantes Enterprises, with a farm operation in southern New Mexico, is primarily a processor producing approximately 80 percent of all the cayenne pepper mash used in tabasco sauces in the United States.5 All three companies import chile from outside the United States, and Cervantes Enterprises has more acreage planted in Mexico than in New Mexico.6 Dino Cervantes, of Cervantes Enterprises, the current board president, has close ties to the New Mexico state legislature. His aunt, Senator Mary Jane Garcia, introduced and supported bills funding the GE chile. In 2013, his brother, Senator Joseph Cervantes, usurped the legislative process to get a bill passed that prohibits farmers from calling chiles by their geographic names unless they register with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture.7
The alleged need for the development of a GE chile is the unsurprising inability of our local chile industry to compete with countries like Mexico, Peru, and China. Labor costs, problems with disease, and cheap imports necessitate a GE chile that can be mechanically harvested in order to make New Mexico competitive again. The NMCA began exploring ways to market a GE chile to the public as far back as 2002. The result was a campaign promoting GE chile as “environmentally friendly agriculture,” which included a GE market-friendly packaging strategy, as the solution to the industry’s woes.8
Many of the issues facing the New Mexico chile industry have been of their own making. Most commercial chile is planted in only three southern counties—Hidalgo, Doña Ana, and Luna. Lack of ecologically sound agricultural practices such as crop rotation and the overuse of fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides have all contributed to eroding the health of the soil. For more than twenty years, phytophthora and beet curly top virus have plagued the fields. Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) is a common New Mexico pigweed that is edible; it is now a superweed resistant to glyphosate as a result of other glyphosate-resistant GE crops grown in the state.
Palmer amaranth can harbor the insects that carry phytophthora and curly top virus, both of which have mutated into varieties unknown in chile fields. The amaranth can grow to heights of 6.5 feet and produce up to 460,000 seeds per plant.
Although the total acreage planted has dropped from its peak in 1992, the amount of chile harvested per acre rose from 3.37 tons in 1992, to 7.25 in 2011. These statistics only include farmers participating in USDA surveys; the produce of all others, especially smaller and Native American farmers, is not counted. Many commercial chile farmers have switched to more profitable crops. Farmers growing chile under contract for large processors make 50 to 75 cents a pound, versus $2.50 to $4.00 if sold at a local farmers’ market.
New Mexico does not have the capacity—land or water—to meet the chile demand for the mass-produced salsas and chile products manufactured by the chile industry, thus the continual need for imported chiles. The majority of chile products are exported from the state, and do not necessarily contain New Mexico chile—the mild cultivar preferred by industry. Once a GE chile seed is developed, what is to prevent the NMCA from selling the GE seed to Mexico, China, or some other country?
So, how much money has the chile industry received? And why is there such a lack of knowledge about the research taking place? It is murky to say the least. This is partly due to the fact that the NMCA and NMSU determine how the funds are spent.
In 1992, phytophthora became a major concern of the chile industry. This prompted NMSU to secure $250,000 of recurring research funds from the New Mexico state legislature for the NMSU Agricultural Experiment Station. Funds were allocated for research on phytophthora control, development of resistant varieties, a glyphosate-resistant GE chile, and mechanical harvesting.9 Initial funding for GE chile research was only 8 percent of the total. In 2010, NMSU’s Professor Steve Hanson stated that the university would own the patent on virus-resistant crops, since the GE chile is being developed through cisgenics, a form of genetic engineering.10 Total recurring funds from 1993 through 2011 total $4.8 million. In 2006, the NMCA lobbied for an additional $7 million in funding; and from 2006 to 2010, an additional estimated $3.5 million was secured through various bills, all for the GE chile.
The reason the public was unaware of GE chile research is because the bills introduced in the New Mexico state legislature have had innocuous names like NMSU Chile Industry Research, Chile Task Force, and Economic Sustainability of Chile Industry. Bills were sent to committees not normally designated to hear such bills, such as committees on corporations and transportation, and education. The net result: a lack of transparency and appalling evidence that tobacco settlement funds have been used for the development of this GE chile.
After the introduction of the Farmer Liability Bill in January 2009, the GE players’ first response was to conduct a survey showing public support for a GE chile. The New Mexico Chile Association’s survey of consumers (C) and restaurant owners (RO) found:
• (C): 74 percent support genetic modification of chile plants in certain cases, mainly because they feel it will help prevent disease and save chile farms.
• (RO): 58 percent support taking a gene from one kind of plant and introducing it into another because they feel it will help prevent disease and farmers can grow more.
Interestingly, consumers were asked about “genetic modification” and restaurant owners were asked about “cisgenics”—where a gene from the same plant or related species is used to genetically engineer a seed. It is still “genetic modification,” but the intention was to see how consumers and restaurant owners responded. What is even more interesting is that two years later, in 2011, local television station KOAT conducted a survey and 84 percent of respondents were against development of GE chile.
In July 2009, the NMCA copied the Save NM Seeds website (www.savenmseeds.org), inserting the word “chile” instead of “seeds”: www.savenmchile.org. A billboard was posted to “Save NM Chile” and “Demand New Mexico Grown.” Ultimately this action backfired for the NMCA, because once consumers discovered who was behind the GE chile they were infuriated.
“Demand New Mexico Grown” is the NMCA’s emerging theme, and has been in use for years on Bueno Foods’ packaging. This is the fourth “player” required for a new GE crop—an emotional appeal to rally people’s support. The GE players are working to convince New Mexicans that their beloved New Mexico chile, especially green chile, is in peril—although fresh green chile constitutes only 5 percent of the New Mexico chile industry.
In 2011, the NMCA successfully lobbied to pass the New Mexico Chile Advertising Act. The NMSU Board of Regents will enforce and administer this law, whose rules are promulgated in consultation with the “chile industry.” So, now, the same entities that are developing the GE chile, and will own the patent, will also decide what constitutes “New Mexico Chile.” The New Mexico Department of Agriculture, which is under the NMSU Board of Regents, will enforce it. The law went into effect in July 2012. It requires the compulsory registration of all farmers and chile processors who sell a chile or chile product that bears the name “New Mexico Chile.”
In 2013, the NMCA and NMSU returned to the New Mexico legislature to pass an amendment to the Chile Act called “Expanding Violations of the New Mexico Chile Advertising Act.” This bill now criminalizes any grower who uses the name of any city, town, county, village, pueblo, mountain, river, or other geographic feature or features located in New Mexico, unless the grower is registered with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. This is an attempt to take control of our local identity and our Chile Nativo by blurring history and commodifying a staple food crop.
There are also different requirements for selling fresh or processed chile. Fresh chile requires the registration of all farmers and the location of their farms; processed chile requires only a copy of the label of the product.
Why do farmers selling “fresh” have to provide the location of their farms? This puts farmers at risk of their seeds being contaminated. NMSU and NMDA, who work with the biotech companies, will now know where the chile fields are located. If farmers’ seeds become contaminated, they will have to turn over their crop to the patent holder. This bill threatens seed sovereignty—the rights of New Mexico farmers to plant their own seeds, save and exchange seed with neighbors, and pass them down to future generations.
Over the past few years, a proliferation of seed laws have been passed in other countries that prohibit seed saving. Mexico passed one in 2007, after heavy lobbying by biotech seed companies—now it is against the law for farmers to exchange seeds unless the seeds are certified or registered with the proper entity. What does this mean for New Mexico farmers? Will we have to register our farms, certify our seeds, or be in databases to exchange our seeds with our neighbors? Will farmers be forced to only purchase seed certified by NMSU in order to call it New Mexico chile? Bueno Foods already requires this, as evidenced on their website (www.buenofoods.com): “Bueno Foods requires its farmers to use certified chile seed to maintain integrity of the genetic strain.”
So who really owns the GE chile patent? NMSU has stated it will. Syngenta has been working with NMSU on a GE chile for years. Monsanto announced in January 2012 that their phytophthora resistant chile is in the “Advanced: Phase 3” of four phases. It includes Anaheim (from the New Mexico long mild), cayenne, jalapeño, and pasilla, from which the modern New Mexico cultivars were derived. Will all three own the patent?
No one knows what the true impact of a GE chile will be on traditional seed keepers, biodiversity, or the wild species still remaining. The 2009 study on Mexican chiles cited earlier, coauthored by a Monsanto researcher, acknowledges this at the end of the article:11
Knowledge of gene flow (i.e., extent and directions) in chiles will be important to evaluate the potential effects of transgene release into the environment and the role of wild progenitor genetic diversity in conservation and breeding. Last, the impact of traditional farmer management in structuring genetic diversity and population dynamics of chile landraces should be investigated.
How can companies create and release a GE chile without understanding how it works? This arrogance may be the downfall of the agricultural system, leaving starvation, crop failure, superweeds and pests, and destruction of germplasm and diversity in its wake. This is why farmers and consumers are uniting to sound the alarm about the potential destruction of our chile, our culture, and our freedom to farm.
As the seasons end, some chiles will be left to dry on the plant for seed. They will have endured the year’s extreme heat, dry conditions, pests, and other fungi or bacteria that we cannot see. For now, the seeds will prevail as they have done for centuries. For seeds are sacred; they are the memory of life.
We are now not only not able to call our chile “New Mexico,” but in 2013 they amended the law to include in the name any geographic area in New Mexico, which now criminalizes us for calling our native chile by its appropriate name unless we register. Expansion of the New Mexico Chile Advertising Act makes it illegal for us to “knowingly advertise, describe, label or offer for sale chile peppers, or a product containing chile peppers, using the name of any city, town, county, village, pueblo, mountain, river or other geographic feature or features located in New Mexico.”12
1. E. S. Buckler, J. M. Thornsberry, and S. Kresovich, “Molecular Diversity, Structure and Domestication of Grasses,” Genetical Research 77 (2001): 213–218.
2. Araceli Aguilar-Melendez et al., “Genetic Diversity and Structure in Semiwild and Domesticated Chiles (Capsicum annuum; Solanaceae) from Mexico,” American Journal of Botany 96, no. 6 (2009): 1190–1202.
3. Ibid.
4. See www.savenmseeds.org.
5. Kevin Robinson-Avila, “Imports Scorch New Mexico Chile Producers,” New Mexico Business Weekly, September 2009, www.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2009/09/21/story2.html?page=all; Associated Press, “Despite Red-Letter Year, Domestic Chili Pepper Growers Worry about Foreign Imports,” August 13, 2006, http://lubbockonline.com/stories/081306/agr_081306001.shtml; Jerry Hawkes, James D. Libbin, and Brandon A. Jones, “Chile Production in New Mexico and Northern Mexico,” Journal of the ASFMRA 84 (2008), http://portal.asfmra.org/userfiles/file/journal/291_libbin_1.pdf.
6. NM Chile Task Force, Report 11 (2002); statement by Dino Cervantes at coexistence meeting conducted by NMDA, October 2012.
7. Press release, August 19, 2014, www.savenmseeds.org.
8. Theodore W. Sammis et al., “Improving the Chile Industry of New Mexico through Industry, Agriculture Experiment Station, and Cooperative Extension Service Collaboration: A Case Study,” Journal of Extension 47, no. 1 (February 2009).
9. New Mexico State Legislature, Interim Economic and Rural Development Committee, September 2010.
10. Statement by Professor Steve Hanson, New Mexico State Legislature, Interim Economic and Rural Development Committee, Third Meeting, Barbara Hubbard Room, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, September 21, 2010; Suman Bagga, Jose Luis Ortega, Wathsala Rajapakse, and Champa Sengupta-Gopalan, “Development of Glyphosate Resistant Chile by Expressing a Mutated Chile EPSPS Gene,” 2013 Graduate Research and Arts Symposium, http://web.nmsu.edu/~wwwgsc/gras/postabs_13.pdf.
11. Aguilar-Melendez et al., “Genetic Diversity and Structure in Semiwild and Domesticated Chiles (Capsicum annuum; Solanaceae) from Mexico.”