September 28, 2004
Wrong Place, Wrong Time... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
Ever heard of Percy Schmeiser? Monsanto Canada has. In 1996, Percy was a small farmer in Western Canada who had already spent some 40 years raising canola. Each year he gathered the seeds his crop generated and planted them in the next crop. Then somehow Monsanto found that Percy's fields contained their genetically-modified canola seeds, which were specifically created to work with Monsanto's popular weed killer, Roundup.
The one-two technology punch is that farmers can grow robust GM-modified canola and then spray Roundup to get rid of those pesky weeds. While Percy Schmeiser argued that the bioengineered seeds had somehow gotten over the fence, Monsanto asserted it should still receive its "technology use fee," which it collects on a per acre basis.
I don't care who you are — if you're in your mid-60's, worked an honest four decades, were looking toward retirement, it's got to be confounding to get a knock on your door from a huge company with a lawsuit.
That was 1996. Just last May, some eight years later, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Percy Schmeiser didn't have to pay. But now he's spent more like 50 years farming canola and $400,000 in legal fees.
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Now let's switch from canola to something called "creeping bentgrass," catchy little name which is being bio-tinkered with for the golf course market. Two companies are trying to win approval for its use: Monsanto, again, and Scotts, and it, too, is resistant to Roundup. Like the visionary farming scenario, fairways and greens could be planted and then sprayed with Roundup, and those pesky weeds would be a problem of the past. But it's not the weeds that are the concern; it's the bioengineered grass itself.
There's a new Environmental Protection Agency study which is testing these new strains of creeping bentgrass. Whole fields were planted, and pollen from the GM grass on one Oregon test field actually pollinated the same strain on a test field some 13 miles downwind. That's right — the pollen made the commute, and it didn't just make a beeline. It also pollinated some natural wildgrass of a different species some 9 miles away. And that's just what we know about.
Trying to understand the response from every sector is head-spinning. Perhaps the only blessing is that no one is challenging its basic truth.
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Facts and arguments are being offered from everywhere: Bentgrass is a perennial, while crops like soybeans, corn and canola must get planted every year. Golf courses are in suburban areas, while farms are in rural areas. Bentgrass and canola have wild relatives with which they can cross-pollinate, but other crops either don't, or can be controlled. Golf courses tend their lawns in such a way that the GM grass will never pollinate. The nature of pollen and pollen behavior for bentgrass is much different than these other GM crops.
There are also fears and speculation: Superweeds will emerge, resistant to Roundup. Our organic crops will be permanently compromised, keeping them out of the lucrative GM-free European market.
The only thing that's absolutely clear is that no one suspected the pollen could travel so many miles. Feet perhaps. Even a thousand feet. But miles? Which is why test fields are carefully surrounded with plants that won't cross-pollinate.
Which gets me back to Percy Schmeiser. If I were he, I would read this study with great interest, and I'd have to wonder: Just what did I do to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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