Organic Law

Should biotech farmers pay for "contamination"?

Ronald Bailey | October 2, 2002

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Another possibility is that biotechnology itself may come to the aid of organic farmers. Already researchers have developed a way to make genetically enhanced crops sterile, which would limit the spread of transgenes. Other researchers have spliced transgenes into chloroplasts, which are cellular organelles that do not occur in pollen and so cannot spread. It might turn out that technical fixes like these make biotech farmers the low cost avoiders in this case and thus shift the balance in favor of organic farmers' claims. You'd think organic farmers would be clamoring for such technical fixes, but so far as I know they have remained silent on this issue.

Kershen suggests that organic farmers could be viewed as another special interest group asking the government to shield it from competition. "Organic farmers are afraid that their markets and their high profit margins will disappear in the next 15 years," he says. Transgenic farming is already matching or beating what can be achieved environmentally by organic farming. Today's transgenic crops use less pesticide, cause less fertilizer runoff into waterways, and reduce soil erosion. And researchers are planning to give biotech crops a nutritional content superior to those of conventional or organic varieties. "Once consumers realize that transgenic crops are as good or better nutritionally, and are as environmentally friendly as or even more environmentally friendly than organic crops," predicts Kershen, "they'll stop buying organic."

According to this view, when organic farmers demand protection of their property, they are really demanding protection of their profits. I hope that is not what the very pleasant and earnest Robert Quinn is up to.