Vancouver Sun | August 14, 1999
Saskatchewan farmer battles agro-chemical giant: Percy Schmeiser is being sued for having patented canola seeds growing on his land. He says he's done nothing wrong, and is fighting back
by Dave Margoshes
Regina -- Percy Schmeiser was mad as hell, and decided he wasn't going to take it.
Schmeiser has been growing canola -- the yellow-blossomed oilseed that used to be known as rapeseed -- for 40 years, and he knows his stuff. He's been experimenting, developing his own varieties, using his own seed and generally prospering with canola, reaping the benefits derived from growing an increasingly popular crop. So when Monsanto, the giant multinational agro-chemical company that is at the forefront of developing genetically modified foods, accused him of patent infringement and demanded restitution for its seeds, his pride was hurt. He chose to fight rather than roll over and take it.
This week, following a failed mediation effort and fed up with Monsanto's "high-handed and arrogant actions," Schmeiser had his lawyer launch a $10-million plus countersuit against the company, claiming defamation of character, trespass and ecological havoc.
Schmeiser's not convinced the seed in his fields last year was Monsanto's, and argues that, if it was, it got there through courtesy of wind or cross-pollination, forces of nature farmers know lots about but, he complains, Monsanto seems to have forgotten.
No way, says Monsanto, and it has filed an affidavit from an independent agricultural expert to back up its claim that Schmeiser was in unlawful possession of its seeds. Craig Evans, Monsanto canada's general manager for biotechnology and seeds, defended the company's actions this week, saying, "what it boils down to is, can farmers protect their investment? If one farmer's getting a significant break over others -- no matter how he comes by it -- well, you can imagine how that makes the others feel."
Evans said Monsanto is convinced Schmeiser is not an innocent victim. "If we thought that, we wouldn't have taken this as far as we have." The david and goliath case, which surfaced a year ago, was set to go to court last fall, but goliath blinked and, instead, Schmeiser and Monsanto attended a one-day court-appointed mediation session earlier this week. Neither side will say exactly what happened, but the case is headed back to court and, barring any further blinking, will be before a judge sometime next spring -- probably around the time Schmeiser is seeding his fields with canola.
He farms about 570 hectares at Bruno, about 90 kilometres east of Saskatoon -- with about two thirds of it planted to canola -- and also runs a farm implement business. He planted canola again this year -- but from brand new seed, and definitely not Monsanto's. Schmeiser, a 68-year-old former reeve and councillor of the local rural municipality, and a liberal MLA in the government of Ross Thatcher in the late '60s, is a respected member of the community, not the sort of fellow one would expect to steal someone else's seeds -- especially when he's had so much success with his own.
But that's exactly what Monsanto has accused him of.
Monsanto, headquartered in St. Louis, makes the popular herbicide roundup. Farmers all over the prairies -- Schmeiser among them -- spray it on their fields, whereupon it kills everything growing there. Then they plant. Using the controversial alchemy of genetic engineering, which has alarmed environmentalists and consumers, Monsanto has developed a canola seed completely immune to roundup. That means a farmer can spray the herbicide over a planted field, kill all the weeds growing there, but not hurt the crop -- as long as it comes from Monsanto's seed. The company sells the seed -- about half the canola planted in Saskatchewan this year comes from it -- but keeps the rights to the DNA itself. It means that, rather than save seeds from last year's crop to use this year, as many do -- and as Schmeiser traditionally does -- farmers have to buy new seed from Monsanto every year.
In order to protect its investment, Monsanto has been vigilant in rooting out frugal farmers who might be cheating and saving seed, or borrowing a bit of seed from neighbours. Farmers buying Monsanto's seed must sign a contract promising to buy fresh seed every year. And they must let Monsanto inspect their fields. The company also employs snitch lines and encourages farmers who are loyal customers to rat on their neighbours who might be cheating -- which, apparently, is how Schmeiser came to its attention.
If this sounds heavy-handed, or overly big brotherish, lend an ear to Monsanto official Randy Christenson.
"We've put years, years and years of research and time into developing this technology," says Christenson, a former regional director for Monsanto in western Canada. "So for us to be able to recoup our investment, we have to be able to be paid for that." Monsanto claims its investigators found the company's patented dna in Schmeiser's crops.
Since Schmeiser never bought any Monsanto seed, the company sued him.
The farmer was annoyed, to put it mildly.
"I've been farming for 50 years, and all of the sudden I have this," he told the Vancouver Sun. "It's very upsetting and nerve-wracking to have a multi-giant corporation come after you. I don't have the resources to fight this." Monsanto uses private investigators to check out tips it receives on its snitch lines.
Investigators patrolling grid roads took crop samples from Schmeiser's fields to check for hijacked dna.
Schmeiser calls these methods "completely unethical" and accuses Monsanto of trespassing. "You can just imagine what would happen if I went onto one of their fields and took some of their seed." Monsanto, he said, "wants control of everything."
His countersuit against the company "is going to set a lot of precedents," he predicted this week. He figures Monsanto sued him in the first place when "they saw a farmer in western Canada developing his own seed; that must have upset their apple cart." Now, he believes, he's going "to make them sit up and take notice. A message has to be sent to Monsanto that they can't keep on treating farmers this way.
"Once you let these altered genes into the environment, you can't take them back, they're there forever." Monsanto doesn't apologize for its methods, which it refers to as "audits." But it denies trespassing or infringing anyone's rights in the process.
"Yes, we do have a group that do audits, they do make farm visits, but they do it in a way that is extremely respectful to the farmers," Christenson says. "We never, never, go on their property, never, without their permission."
Proving to the satisfaction of a judge that Schmeiser stole Monsanto's seed may be difficult -- but it could be hard for the farmer to prove his innocence too. The problem is, mother nature has been moving dna around for millions of years. It's called evolution.
"It will blow in the wind," Schmeiser says. "You can't control it, you can't just say, 'put a fence around it and say that's where it stops.'"
He also argues seeds or pollen could have been blown into his fields off farm equipment or from uncovered trucks passing by.
But Keith Downey, an agriculture Canada scientist, says the evidence contained in an affidavit he produced on Monsanto's behalf indicates the seed in Schmeiser's fields last year could only have been purloined. "I can't say exactly how it got there, but it's not the result of trucks passing, and there are no other Monsanto-seeded fields within five miles, so wind action and cross-pollination didn't do it."
Could Schmeiser be an innocent victim of other forces of nature? "That's for the courts to decide," said Downey, who also runs a private consulting company. But he doubts it. The presence of the Monsanto gene in Schmeiser's canola was "too consistent to have been accidental."
The Schmeiser case is not an isolated one.
The company is aware of 16 violations in Canada, and has settled eight of them out of court, according to Evans. The Schmeiser case has gone the furthest, Downey said in a telephone interview from his Winnipeg office, "because he's challenging us. But we need to stick to our principles. We're fulfilling our promise to other farmers." The Krams are another Saskatchewan farm family that have butted heads with the giant company.
Elizabeth Kram complains that planes and a helicopter have buzzed the fields she and her husband farm near Raymore.
"We are honestly disgusted with the way things are going," Kram says. "Who put the canola in? It is the farmer. It doesn't belong to Monsanto or anybody else, and i don't see anybody else's name on the titles of all the land we own. It's my husband and myself. Nobody else."
As for Schmeiser, he vows to continue fighting. "I believe what is happening to farmers is wrong. And i'm fighting this not just for myself, but for my children and my grandchildren. And for my farmer friends.
"My grandfather and my father homesteaded here. There was no such thing as chemical companies, or even seed companies. They were free and independent."
