Man Bites Company … Or Tries To

By Zarina Geloo

One conventional farmer is fighting a huge multimillion-dollar company, in a typical David versus Goliath story, only this one does not have the biblical triumphant ending -- at least not yet.

Percy Schmeiser, a farmer from Saskatchewan, Canada, has been sued by chemical seed giant Monsanto, for patent infringement on its herbicide-resistant canola, a seed from which oil is extracted. The farmer says he never used Monsanto seed, which could have contaminated his fields from neighbouring farms, and that in fact he had developed his own seed type over 50 years.

The first round went to Monsanto when the Federal Court of Appeals found Schmeiser guilty and ordered him to pay 19,000 dollars in damages for unlawfully using the seed and another 153,000 dollars to cover Monsanto's court costs. In round two, Schmeiser is counter-suing the conglomerate, saying its genetically engineered Round-Up Ready Canola caused environmental harm in western Canada and contaminated his conventional canola crops.

In an interview, Schmeiser accused Monsanto of duping farmers into believing that its genetically modified (GM) seeds would produce higher yields and healthier crops. But the opposite happened, he charged. He said the seed company had farmers sign complicated technical agreement contracts couched in ambiguous terms, which basically reduced them to serfs on their own land.

Schmeiser says the contracts also stipulate that should things go wrong the company cannot be sued and there is a non-disclosure clause that takes away the farmer’s right to speech and expression. He never signed such an agreement, he said, adding that the lawsuit filed against him is Monsanto’s way of punishing him for not doing so.

"I have taken this cause beyond what happened to me, which is just punitive, to the global picture, which is GM seed is contaminating conventional seed and contributing to the death of the small farmer and jeopardising food security," he said.

Schmeiser says the Canadian organic farmer has been wiped off the map because such crops have been contaminated. European markets will not accept Canadian produce.

The 72-year-old farmer says, contrary to what GM seed lobbyists assert, there is no such thing as "coexistence" with conventional seeds, because mutant genes are always dominant. GM crops cannot be "contained" because of the nature of pollination process.

"I have not come to tell people what to do,” Schmeiser said. "All I can do is urge them to learn from our experience in Canada. We had no warning that we would lose our biodiversity and pure seed. We do not have any organic seed anymore and are destroyed."

Schmeiser has taken out a second mortgage on his farm to pay his legal costs and those of other farmers who like him who have challenged multinationals.

Monsanto sources say there are around 22 similar lawsuits pending in the U.S. courts, although the corporation seeks to resolve the alleged patent infringements without litigation. Protection of the corporation’s patents is an attempt to ensure it can recoup its investments in research “to bring new and innovative products into the marketplace.”

Meanwhile, the energetic Schmeiser has become something of a folk hero among anti-transgenics activists and farmers affected by companies like Monsanto, they contribute to his "fight genetically modified food fund". He won the Mahatma Ghandi award in October 2000 in India, for working for the betterment and good of humankind.

"I have been fighting this battle for five years, I will go down fighting, the stone I throw will be one of the millions they will get until they fall."