Crop Busters

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

Michael Fumento from the January 2000 issue

(Page 3 of 3)

The anti-biotech groups pay lip service to environmentalism, as with the Future Farmers' claim to "stand for environmental sustainability" and "community stewardship of resources." But it is the environmentalists who have been demanding reduced use of pesticides, and are now getting it thanks to biotech crops. They are the ones who (rightly) pushed the nation's farmers toward no-till agriculture to prevent topsoil erosion, a goal that is hardly served by destroying corn designed to reduce erosion, as Seeds of Resistance did in Maine. Likewise, it is hard to see the environmental rationale for destroying a plot of poplar trees developed to reduce the use of chlorine and energy during the pulping process, an act of sabotage carried out by an anonymous British group in July.

Despite the ways in which attacks on biotech crops work against the environment, I was able to identify only three environmentalist groups, two British and one American (the Environmental Defense Fund), that have decried such vandalism, and all the criticism has been mild. Many other groups have kept mum.

As for the mainstream British press, it has "uncritically embraced this phenomenon," says Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury. "The activists [say sympathizers in the media] are the good guys," who, "unlike sleazy politicians," are "untainted by corruption or self-interest" and are "portrayed as altruistic and idealistic souls whose motives are beyond reproach." Indeed, many British columnists have lauded the destruction of modified crops, while reporters routinely refer to the crop killers as "protesters," a mild term, or even an accolade.

In the U.S., by contrast, the news media have shown no support for crop busting. News stories routinely refer to the attacks as "vandalism," and opinion pieces on the topic have been critical. "There's nothing wrong with peaceful protest or with insisting that troubling eco-questions be answered," declared a Boston Globe editorial. "But slashing an experiment and attempting to stop science is the height of ignorance." The Sacramento Bee editorialized, "A technological revolution like this can't be kept on course by masked fools with scythes." The problem is that, aside from a few sentences in The Washington Post and Newsweek and a 150-word item in The New York Times, the national press has acted as if the problem doesn't exist.

Still, there are at least a couple of reasons to believe that the crop busters will be defeated.

First, it may not take much for crop growers to resist cowardly groups like Seeds of Resistance. When a call went out over the Internet for a "Day of Action" on October 27, the would-be Transgenic Tet Offensive resulted in but a single act of vandalism. Apparently a little heightened security was enough to keep the self-styled "guerrilla gardeners" at bay. The American vandals know that, unlike their European counterparts, if they're arrested they'll go to jail, not Tanzania.

Second, to use the groups' own analogy, history shows that terrorism is a desperation tactic of guerrillas who've abandoned hope of winning the "hearts and minds" of the people. As a Portland Press Herald put it, "Seeds of Resistance has unilaterally decided that there is `absolutely no benefit to humanity' from the corn its members destroyed. How do they know? By turning to vandalism, they destroyed the chance to learn."

That's the whole point. The eco-terrorists know that just around the corner is the second wave of biotech foods, from which consumers as well as farmers and the environment will benefit. They know that pressure will build in the Third World for crops to relieve malnutrition problems that lead to crippling, blindness, and early death. They know that when that happens, they will not be able to win the ensuing war of ideas.