Seeds of discontent. (Interview).

In the past decade, the Monsanto chemical company has reshaped itself into a biotech firm positioned to supply farmers with much of what they need--pesticides and seeds. But these seeds, which farmers agree to buy each year, have been engineered to survive doses of the company's brand of chemical herbicides. Today there is only one thing standing between companies like Monsanto and their market strategy of taking control over agricultural supplies: traditional farmers who breed and plant their own seed. In August, 2001 WORLD WATCH interviewed one of these farmers, Canadian canola grower Percy Schmeiser, who last year lost a lawsuit filed by Monsanto for patent infringement because some of his fields had sprouted the company's bioengineered canola seeds.

WORLD WATCH (WW): Why did the Canadian courts find you guilty of stealing Monsanto's genetically modified (GMO) canola if you didn't plant any of their seeds?

Percy Schmeiser: My crime was that I infringed on their patent--Monsanto's patent on GMO canola--because some of the plants were in my field. The court ruled it didn't matter how [the Monsanto canola] got there, whether it cross-pollinated, blew in by the wind, fell off trucks hauling seeds, washed in during a flood, or was carded by birds and bees. You name it, it didn't matter. It was the fact that there were some plants there that meant I was guilty.

WW: How is this different than, say, if I dumped my belongings into my neighbor's yard and then had him arrested for burglary?

Schmeiser: It's exactly the same thing. People here say that if you don't like your neighbor, all you have to do is take a handful of Monsanto's GMO canola and throw it in the wind on the end of his field, and then call Monsanto a month or six weeks later and say "hey, my neighbor's growing GMO canola."

Basically what the judge ruled is that the polluter does not pay, it's the person that receives the pollution that pays. This is like what happened in Alaska when the Valdez tanker spilled all that oil. Except now it's the people who have to pay Exxon for the cleanup.

What the judge has ruled has far-reaching implications. He stated that if I have a recorded conventional canola plant and it gets cross-pollinated by Monsanto's GMO variety, my plant becomes their property. So you see how far-reaching that is. Monsanto contaminated seed I developed for 53 years, they ruined that. I can't use that seed any more.

The judge also ruled that all the profits from my 1998 crop go to Monsanto, even from a field never tested for GMOs, and from two fields that the testing showed had no GMO seed present. He ruled that even the profit from those pieces of land would go to Monsanto because there was a probability that there could be some of the company's seed in the crop because I was a "seed-saver"--I was planting my own seed saved from the previous season's harvest.

WW: How did Monsanto discover their canola seeds on your property?

Schmeiser: Basically, one of my neighbors (I cannot give out his name), a farmer who had worked for Monsanto as a sales representative for two years, used the Monsanto hotline--or snitch line--to report GMO canola on my land. Previously he had farmed some of the land I now farm and had grown canola in it a year before me. That was the land that he reported. Evidence has now shown that he was growing GMO canola that year before regulatory approval was given in 1996 because he was working for Monsanto.

WW: How do you think the Monsanto's canola got on your land?

Schmeiser: Well, there could have been some GMO seed that volunteered from the previous farmer. But, being a seed developer and a long-time grower of canola, I think that one of the big causes was direct movement, like seeds being blown in by the wind or falling from farmers' trucks. A two-mile stretch of my land runs along the main road that leads to the canola crushing plant and the gathering station. One farmer testified that he lost a lot of the GMO canola seed he was hauling when his tarpon broke in my area. He estimated he lost enough canola to seed 2,000 acres.

I guess the judge maybe didn't understand the situation fully: canola is an open pollinate crop variety. It's very different from corn or soybeans and can spread quite easily. Canola requires cutting, like hay. And then it has to be put in rows to dry. Dried canola can act like tumbleweed and can blow for miles. If you get a heavy wind, it will blow and will end up in fence lines and road ditches and trees. Another way it spreads quite easily is in the wintertime. When you get snow and then you get a little warm thaw, a little bit after you will get an icy covering on the snow. Plants that were not harvested will shell out, or seeds spilled by a farmer hauling after harvest time will travel for miles and miles on a lightly covered snow surface. It's not uncommon for seeds to go five, ten miles. So, that is why canola can spread so easily. There is no stopping it.

WW: How much has this case cost you, and are you filing an appeal?

Schmeiser: Yes, I have appealed it. And very likely it will not be heard until the spring. Well, right now it has cost me around $200,000 (Canadian) [U.S. $125,000]. Basically, my wife and I--we are both 70 years of age--have financed our defense from our retirement funds because we feel the issue of farmers being able to use their own seed is so important. The cost of an appeal is likely to run $80,000 [U.S. $50,000].

Now that I have filed an appeal, Monsanto has come back with a counter appeal. They want $1 million [U.S. $625,000] instead of just my profits for violating their patent and to cover their trial costs.

WW: Is there any way that farmers can fight back?

Schmeiser: At the end of the day, what is the purpose of all this? The purpose is the complete control of the seed supply. Farmers are now starting to wake up to how these multinationals are trying to gain control of the seed supply by using patent laws. You can have all the farmers' rights in the world, you can have property rights, you can have what they call "farmers' privileges," where a farmer, through law, always has the right to grow a crop from the seed he has produced in previous years.

But now, the courts have ruled that you can't do that anymore, because there is the possibility that you might infringe on Monsanto's patents, because your seed may have GMO strains due to cross-pollination and all the other factors I mentioned before. That takes the farmer's right away, his freedom of choice to be able to grow the crop and develop what he wants for his region. And this has serious implications not only here or in the northern part of the United States, but all over the world. People will lose their rendition of seed just because it gets contaminated by GMOs. And the next year, Monsanto can say: "Oh, you can't grow that crop," whether it is a fruit, a tree, or a vegetable, because you are violating their patent. So it's a complete control of the food supply through the seed supply. And seed supply is worth billions of dollars throughout the world.

All you have to ask is, why has Monsanto in recent years spent over $8 billion (U.S.) buying up seed companies all over the world? They are a chemical company, and now the second largest seed company in the world. That tells you exactly what they are after. When they have control of the seed, they can tell farmers they have to pay $15 an acre each year technology charge, they have to buy the seed from Monsanto, and they have to buy chemicals from Monsanto.

This is important because their patent rights on their chemicals have run out in the United States and Canada, so they have to find a new way to be able to sell their Roundup Ready herbicide to farmers. They will achieve this by controlling the seed supply. If you don't buy their chemical, you don't get their seed.

WW: You talked about losing your canola variety that you've bred for 53 years; how is this corporate consolidation going to affect other indigenous seed supplies?

Schmeiser: We have two principal diseases that can occur in canola. One is stem rot and the other is blackleg, and I have developed a variety of canola that was resistant to those diseases. Now Monsanto will tell farmers, you can only grow canola in a field once every four years, otherwise the disease will take over. I was able to grow canola in a field every year up to 10 years without a problem from disease. I lost all of that.

You have to remember that all the seeds and plants that have been developed in North America, in both the United States and Canada--it doesn't matter if it is corn, soy beans, canola, wheat, or barley--had been developed by farmers. They are best at breeding varieties, because they adapt plants to the region they live in. If I developed canola or wheat in my area, it might not be good 50 or 100 miles away due to climatic and soil conditions. Monsanto only recently got into the seed business and received regulatory approval in 1996. We didn't need Monsanto to show us how to grow canola. They wanted to show us what to do in order to control us and to be able to sell us more chemicals.

Right now it would be very difficult to find a field in western Canada that is not contaminated with Monsanto's Roundup Ready canola. It doesn't matter if you never grew it and you are a straight wheat farmer or a barley farmer, you've got it. Some canola seed can lie dormant with no problem in the soil for five and ten years. So you think you have rid your field of it, and then it pops up again five years from now. And one tiny little seed can grow a plant that can produce up to 10,000 seeds every year. One little seed blowing in the wind can contaminate a field in two years. We will never ever get rid of genetically altered canola in Canada now.

WW: So, if the current court ruling stands, that means that Monsanto can probably go after any farmer in Canada.

Schmeiser: Or in the world. And that's why they are going after farmers in North Dakota, on soybeans, and are suing for the same reasons. The seed companies have said, "No farmer should ever be allowed to use his own seeds." That's the basis of this lawsuit. It's all about the freedom of farmers. The freedom to be able to use our own seeds. Because if you give up that freedom and you don't fight for it, you've lost control of your whole farming operation and you've just become a serf on the land.

I am 70 years of age. I would rather be fishing with my grandchildren instead of fighting a multinational corporation. I know who I am up against, and I know they have deep pockets, and that's why I hope that I can continue getting help from people, because, as people have said to me, this is no longer Percy Schmeiser's case. It's a case for farmers all over the world, whether they will be able to maintain their rights and freedom of being able to use their own seeds.