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Central Alberta | It changed a lot of things. A lot of my friends who were chem reps were put out of a job because RR crops displaced the demand for a lot of other crop chemistry.
There was a small company that released some glyphosate-tolerant varieties of canola in 1996, but the seed was all recalled because of contamination. That cleared the way for Monsanto to become the dominant player in 1997. Funny how that happens.
I had customers ask me: "You can spray any chemical on RR canola and it won't die, right?" Wrong.
We had to sell each grower a "technology agreement" of $15 per acre with the seed. Nobody liked that and most people fudged the acres a bit; it was the honor system. But Monsanto did the numbers and began clamping down by sending their agents around to the farms. There was a rumor going around at the time that Monsanto was going to drop the license fee, but I couldn't see them losing their main source of revenue.
They made an example of one guy, Percy Schmeiser, who sprayed out his field with Roundup, and found volunteer canola that survived. He harvested the surviving RR seeds, which he used to plant 1000 acres or unregistered RR canola the following year. The facts of the court case were clear at the time; he knowingly planted RR seeds without a grower license, and he was found guilty. The court had no choice but to convict.
But history has been rewritten since then, and Mr. Schmeiser has been immortalized as a great hero; "David vs. Goliath" and portrayed by Christopher Walken in a recent film. Oh well, I guess it's part of the bitter fruits that Monsanto must now reap. | |
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25 Years of GM Crops
