Following on several years of well-publicized debacles, from genetically engineered milk additives to a plethora of useless and hazardous foods, the new management at Monsanto has been working to portray the biotech giant as a kinder and gentler behemoth. Earlier this year, however, Monsanto reverted to form in its dogged prosecution of a fifth-generation Canadian farm family.

Septuagenarian Percy Schmeiser is a fifth-generation Canadian farmer. At the end of March, a Canadian judge ordered Schmeiser to pay Monsanto $85,000as a penalty for growing Monsanto’s herbicide resistant canola without the company’s permission. On top of the $200,000 he has already spent on his court battle, the cost of the inevitable appeal, and his counter suit against Monsanto, Schmeiser is facing financial ruin.

The case revolves around Monsanto’s claim of ownership of the genetically engineered seeds that grew into the plants in Percy Schmeiser’s Saskatchewan fields. No one disputed that trespassing Monsanto Pinkertons found seeds from Monsanto’s herbicide resistant canola (rapeseed) growing in Schmeiser’s fields. And the judge ruled that Schmeiser had not purchased nor stolen the genetically engineered seeds, nor had he taken advantage of the seeds’ herbicide resistant traits. Essentially Monsanto was awarded payment for its contamination of the farmer’s crops, whether by dropped seeds or pollen drifting in the wind. While no one knows exactly how the judge arrived at his decision, presumably the mere presence of genetic material that Monsanto claims to own in some of Schmeiser’s plants was enough to show that he was using something that didn’t belong to him.

This extraordinary finding by the Canadian judge could have significant implications for our bio-commerce future if higher courts uphold this ruling. It is as if a judge held people who had been contaminated by Monsanto’s PCBs liable for the cost of the chemicals, or if a soft drink company tried to charge for its product, having found an empty container on a front lawn.

Beyond the outrageousness of the legal decision, there is a deeper message here, one that perhaps helps us to understand why Monsanto has been willing to show its fangs at a time when it is laboring to clean up its image. The 1.4 billion small farmers in the world’s poorest countries rely on seed saving for their lives and livelihoods. Agribusiness companies and trade reps from the US and other northern countries have long wanted to find ways to jostle subsistence farmers off their delicate balance of self-sufficiency, in order to create a dependence on imported seeds, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, petroleum products to pump water, and other accoutrements of “modern” agriculture.

This concerted effort to create dependency, which the outside “experts” describe in terms of increasing crop yield, alleviating starvation and “harmonizing” laws, has been tried before. The Green Revolution managed to increase both crop yields and starvation by pushing high-input hybrid monocultures. At its core was an effort to get farmers out of the traditional barter and subsistence system into mainstream commerce and the international agricultural commodities trade.

The new push for biotech crops in the third world follows a very similar pattern. It attempts to disrupt traditional means of obtaining food in favor of creating dependencies on imported seeds and chemicals. Central in this scheme is the enforcement of prohibitions on seed saving, the fundamental threat to agricultural bio-colonialism.

This larger struggle for global agricultural hegemony might well be the underlying motive behind Monsanto’s suit against Schmeiser, and the scores of similar actions still in court. While the immediate victim of this unjust decision is a gentle farmer from Canada, the real target might well be far poorer and vulnerable small farmers in Zimbabwe, Colombia, and other countries around the third world.

Contributions to help Percy Schmeiser can be sent to:

Schmeiser Defense Fund
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
603 Main Street
Humbolt, Saskatchewan
Canada S0K 2AO