Crop Busters

Self-righteous vandals lead a desperate, ill-informed campaign against genetically modified foods.

Michael Fumento from the January 2000 issue

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American groups have adapted the British euphemisms. Reclaim the Seeds speaks of its "nonviolent direct action," while the BAN Web site refers to "direct actionists." The U.S. groups also make similar claims of heroism. "We are risking jail and injury, as well as sacrificing time, energy and sleep," declare the Reclaimers. It's certainly conceivable that an overenthusiastic Reclaimer brandishing what they call "California Corn Cutters" could slice the Achilles tendon of another Reclaimer. But it hasn't happened yet. As for jail, not a single American crop vandal has been arrested so far.

Biotech crop trials are "backdoor commercialization of GM crops that nobody wants," says Doug Parr, campaigns director for Greenpeace U.K. "Sadly," he says, "when democracy fails, direct action is the only recourse. The authorities are not taking the correct action and unfortunately it has fallen to Greenpeace to protect everyone's interests."

While Greenpeace International's latest annual report, released in August, is titled "In the Name of the People," the eco-warriors insist they are "the people." Melchett calls his group's actions a "direct expression of `people's power.'" One Genetix Snowball representative declared, "The public has made it clear they don't want [genetically modified] crops, and there is no need for these tests." Another insisted, "If the government isn't going to get involved, then it's up to us."

Never mind that the government did get involved when it approved the test plots--you can't grow genetically modified crops without regulatory permission--and stays involved as it continues to grant approvals. Never mind that this government was elected by the people and that the electorate's numbers swamp the combined membership of all the green groups.

This contempt for democracy has crossed the Atlantic. Brock Ohlee of the American crop vandalization group Future Farmers declares, "Direct action against corporate greed is both a political necessity and a moral imperative." Thus "the people have the right and the responsibility to fight back." Yet the Future Farmers give hints that they and the nation are at odds, as when they spell the name of the country as "U$A" or "Amerikkka."

After a corn crushing in Minnesota last September, the Bolt Weevils declared "a WARNING to the entire `life-sciences' industry that opposition to its sinister plan is far more widespread than they think, and growing exponentially." That same month, Reclaim the Seeds ripped up a sugar beet field at the University of California at Davis, proclaiming "these acts as self-defensive measures on behalf of all beings against Monsanto, UC-D and the university system's corporate boot-licking, and the global GE [genetic engineering] takeover!" (Emphasis added). So it's not just "the people" any more. This group claims to speak for every living thing, right down to the lowliest amoeba. After crunching a corn crop at the same university, the group stated, "Modern agri-business and genetic mutilation is a capitalist machine that must be dismantled," adding that vandalism "is a direct action that destroys corporate power and authority."

Sometimes it seems the groups can't decide whether they want to be revolutionaries or professional wrestlers. "Seeing their profits as a slap in the face of the earth and all its occupants, we took the liberty of paying them back," Seeds of Resistance said of its attack on the Eau Claire building. "We, Seeds of Resistance, smashed all the windows on one side of their disgusting building. Wisconsin is now another state that cannot hide from this growing resistance against GE culture."

Not to be outdone rhetorically, the Weevils declared, "We see what the corporations give back to the public." They give back "houses we cannot afford to live in" (notwithstanding that home ownership is at an all-time high) and "jobs our bodies cannot do for long without breaking" (notwithstanding that fewer jobs than ever consist of manual labor and occupational accident rates are at an historic low). "Corporations," warned the Weevils, "give back to the people death."

Bio-engineering of food has become symbolic of every evil any corporation has perpetrated (or, more precisely, everything corporations have done that members of these groups don't like). Attacking biotech is therefore just another way of attacking capitalism and technology. The Luddite analogy is one that critics of environmentalism have overused, but here it fits almost too well.

We can always argue over politics, but whenever the crop busters venture into scientific territory, they trip over their shears. When Reclaim the Seeds "decontaminated approximately 7 acres of a `Frankenfood' corn" in its third attack on the University of California at Davis, they invoked their "profound sense of the sacredness of life." Said the Seeds, "We believe that protecting the result of more than three billion years of evolution is a duty to ourselves, all living beings, and the generations to come."

They might be shocked to hear that probably every ear of corn that's been sold in the United States was created by man, using the forerunner of bio-engineering called "cross-breeding." Instead of isolating a single gene or a few genes from one strain of corn and injecting it into the DNA of another, people crossed whole strains, hoping that the desired traits would be expressed. (It reportedly took Orville Redenbacher 30,000 attempts to make the ideal popcorn.)

This process apparently began over 5,000 years ago, when American Indians essentially created corn by combining two types of wild grasses. Modern hybrids were first commercialized in the 1930s. Humans have been doing such "tampering" with livestock for thousands of years as well. Ever see a wild cow or chicken? There are related creatures, but strictly speaking there's no such animal. Indeed, almost nothing we eat, aside from nonfarm fish and things whose names include the word wild (such as Ewell Gibbons' "wild hickory nuts"), is a product merely of undirected evolution.

The groups that attacked the Woodland, California, sites claimed to be part of "the growing movement to protect the fabric of life." If anything could be labeled "the fabric of life," it's simple DNA. There is no inherent difference between the DNA of "natural" plants and those created through selective gene transfer.

Reclaim the Seeds has also said its actions are necessary to "stop the massive destruction of biodiversity." But crop biodiversity began declining long ago, simply because farmers want the best strains, not the most strains. If anything, biotech may improve diversity by developing strains especially suited to a given area's temperature, rainfall, soil type, and pest threats.

Likewise, Reclaim the Seeds is exactly wrong when it says, "If you care about social justice and don't want to poison farm workers with pesticides and herbicides, you should resist genetic engineering." Actually, if you're worried about farm workers' exposure to pesticides, you should resist such propaganda. Probably the main p.r. problem biotech crops have right now is that almost all those currently grown do nothing but allow less use of pesticides (of which herbicides are a subcategory). There's nothing, therefore, to please consumers. Though the situation will soon change, as biotech foods that stay fresh longer and have more nutrients come to market, currently only farm workers and owners, along with the seed developers, benefit from transgenic crops.