NYT article about "Super (soybean) seeds," and possible Brazilian use of them.
May 16, 2000
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."
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |
