Super Seeds Sweeping Major Markets, and Brazil May Be Next
By Anthony DePalma with Simon Romero
He was dazzled by the vast fields of soybeans in Brazil, and the efficiency of the farms in Argentina frankly frightened him. But nothing that Harold H. Dyer, an Iowa farmer, saw on his working vacation in South America last year surprised him more than finding out that his competitors freely used genetically modified soybeans in ways that would have landed him in a heap of trouble.
He knew most farmers in Argentina planted modified soybean seeds, but he did not know they saved seeds from one year to plant the next, a practice that is legal in Argentina but not in North America. The Argentinians told him they never pay a technology fee for the seeds, which cost American farmers an extra $6.50 a bag.
And in Brazil, where such seeds are still outlawed, no one came right out and said so, but Dyer was convinced that the seeds were being smuggled in. The Brazilian government insists that no genetically altered soybeans are grown there, but Dyer said he saw soybean fields that were as free of weeds as the parts of his own 2,500-acre farm in Iowa and Missouri where he sows the super seeds.
"They have to live by their rules, of which there aren't any, and we have to live by ours, which are numerous," said Dyer, 75, who also runs several grain elevators in Iowa and Missouri. "It's not fair, and I would like for it to be changed, but that's the way it is."
Brazil is in the process of deciding whether to make the new technology legal. And there is a growing sense that what happens in Brazil -- the world's No. 2 soybean producer, after the United States -- could tip the balance on genetically altered crops around the world.
Should Brazil officially reject biotechnology's lure, it would be a big setback for American companies that have already been hurt financially by fierce resistance in Europe from consumers and large companies that refuse to buy modified produce. But if Brazil's huge agricultural sector joins the biotech fold, experts say, it may someday be difficult for consumers anywhere to find any food free of genetically modified material.
That is because the United States, Brazil and Argentina, the No. 3 producer, together grow 80 percent of the world's 157 million metric tons of soybeans, an extraordinarily versatile crop that is pressed into oil, processed into food, and added to countless foods.
"Once Brazil starts harvesting transgenic soybeans, there will be no turning back," said Joao Carlos Carvalho, president of Agropecuaria Basso, a Brazilian company licensed to sell the seeds if they are approved.
The situation in Brazil also shows how difficult it is to control this new technology in the absence of any global regulatory mechanism. The Brazilian government approved the use of modified seeds developed by Monsanto in 1998, but a consumer group challenged the approval in federal court in Brazil. Delmiro Silva, a spokesman for Monsanto in Brazil, expects a ruling sometime this year.
Technically, it is still illegal to plant high-tech seeds in Brazil. This is such a sensitive issue that the minister of agriculture, Marcus Vinicius Pratini de Moraes, would respond only to a written question. "The commercial planting of genetically modified soybeans in Brazil is not permitted," he wrote. Frequent government testing, he added, has confirmed that the harvest is free of genetically modified organisms.
Still, many agricultural experts, Brazilian and American alike, suspect that modified seeds are being smuggled in from Argentina. Dwain L. Ford, chairman for international affairs at the American Soybean Association, estimated that up to 30 percent of Brazil's soy crop could already be genetically modified. South American farmers are thus using the new technology without paying for it or necessarily understanding how to control it.
"There are no strict controls on highways or in warehouses, so no one really knows how many seeds have been smuggled in," said David Brew, a partner at Brasoja Corretora de Cereais, a grain trading company in Porto Alegre, Brazil. "Now the concern is that the smuggling has resulted in the trafficking of second-generation seeds as well."
While suspicious consumers stopped such farming in its tracks in Europe, the rush to biotech on this side of the Atlantic appears to be picking up steam. The big biotech companies, led by Monsanto, have made the Western hemisphere a vast proving ground for farmer acceptance of the seeds, government regulation of the crops and the limits to which intellectual property rights can be claimed.
The companies' progress has been formidable. In 1996, altered crops were planted on little more than 4 million acres worldwide. Today, altered soy, corn, cotton, canola and other crops are grown on nearly 100 million acres, 99 percent of it in just three countries: the United States, Argentina and Canada.
Although American consumers generally have been less upset than Europeans by the new crops, the Clinton administration plans to tighten regulations on the development and marketing of genetically modified plants and foods.
The reason farmers in many countries, even a few in Spain, France and Portugal, embrace the new technology despite consumer fears is simple: lower costs. With declining prices and an oversupply of soy, farmers look for every advantage.
By altering the seeds, Monsanto enables plants to withstand the widely used weed killer Roundup, which Monsanto also manufactures. Farmers who use Roundup Ready seed save on chemicals and labor because they can apply a single herbicide without harming the soy plants.
A study by Auburn University has found that farmers who use the seeds can cut costs 4 percent, reduce the need for pesticides, and save time as well. For someone like Dyer, this is incentive enough to switch entirely this year.
But he will have to live by several conditions imposed by Monsanto, at least in North America. Farmers must pay a fee for each bag of seed. They must agree not to save seed for the following year, a practice farmers have used for years. And they must agree that if they ever stop using the seed, Monsanto investigators -- farmers call them "gene police" -- can walk their fields to take plant samples.
Monsanto has fought hard to define its intellectual property rights broadly, and to defend them vigorously. Thousands of calls have come in to its informers' hot line about farmers who planted saved seed. Monsanto has brought charges against "a fraction of a fraction" of the roughly 250,000 farmers who have ever used Roundup Ready seed, a spokesman said, declining to be more specific. Nearly all quietly pay their fines.
But in Saskatchewan, Monsanto is bringing a farmer to court for illegally growing genetically altered canola. The farmer, Percy Schmeiser, acknowledged that Monsanto investigators found altered plants on his land, but he insisted that he did not plant them. They were grown, he said, from seed that had blown off passing grain trucks or drifted in on the wind.
"I never had anything to do with Monsanto," Schmeiser said. "They were simply trying to see how far they could exercise property rights over farmers, even those who hadn't planted their seed."
When he refused to pay the fines, Schmeiser was brought to court by Monsanto. The case, scheduled to be heard before summer, is widely seen as a test of Monsanto's intellectual property rights.
"If I lose my case," Schmeiser said, "every farmer in North America will become a serf." Monsanto declined to discuss the case.
In South America, Monsanto has been far less vigilant. In 1995, its application for a patent on Roundup Ready seed in Argentina was rejected. It appealed, but went ahead anyway with plans to introduce the seed. Without a patent, Monsanto had no legal right to charge a fee or inspect farms to see if unauthorized seed was being planted.
With no patent, a black market flourished, forcing Monsanto to lower prices to less than half its American price.
Today, as much as 90 percent of Argentina's soy crop may be genetically altered, the highest percentage in the world.
Monsanto's decision to enter this market without patent protection puzzled many people, including its fiercest critics.
Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, which is suing Monsanto in federal court for alleged antitrust violations, said Monsanto had long argued that it could not make money unless it controlled intellectual property rights. But its decision to sell the seeds in Argentina anyway, he said, shows "they don't have to do that."
Monsanto says it will eventually have adequate patent protection in Brazil. Executives insist that despite the experience in Argentina, patent protection remains essential.
"But we have to deal with realities as well," said Robert L. Harness, director of international government affairs at Monsanto. "The consideration entering Argentina was that we wanted to obtain patent protection. We also wanted to provide our new technology to this market. We wish the situation were different, but it's not."
In Brazil, police have raided fields in the states of Rio Grande do Sul and Mato Grosso do Sul, where officials have said they intend to declare their states free of modified seeds.
The attraction is clear. European customers have reportedly already started asking for Brazilian soybeans because modified seeds are illegal there.
But segregating vast quantities of a commodity produced at thousands of farms would be daunting even in the United States. The ability of a developing country like Brazil to pull off such a task is questioned, even by Brazilians.
"Is someone going to sift through each truck of soybeans that arrives at port for export?" said Carvalho, president of Agropecuaria Basso.
Linda Thrane, a spokeswoman for Cargill, the large American commodities company, said the company "certainly wouldn't represent soybean shipments from Brazil as being 100 percent non-genetically enhanced."
Opinion about the future is deeply divided in South America, as elsewhere. While some see salvation in keeping the seeds out, many farmers are eager to enjoy an edge in a tight global market.
"How can we compete against the Americans and the Argentinians if they're allowed access to this technology and we're not?" said Armando Carlos Roos, a soybean farmer in Rio Grande do Sul. "Everyone knows transgenic soybeans have been smuggled in from Argentina," he said, and the pressure to use the new technology, legally or not, is intense. "I will go broke if I don't get to use transgenic beans. It's as simple as that."
[end]
Carl
________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com