Conventional agriculture is fighting back in the public relations battle against the disciples of organic and non-genetically modified agriculture.
Unfortunately, it is likely too little, too late.
Rob Saik, founder of the Agri-Trend Group of Companies, is spearheading an effort to raise $1 million to produce a movie to set the record straight about the safety of GM crops.
Rob Wager, a long-standing faculty member at Vancouver Island University’s biology department, methodically destroyed all the anti-GMO arguments perpetrated on an unsuspecting public during a recent speech at a farm conference in Saskatoon.
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Wager implored farmers to become active in the debate. The public, he argued, wants to hear from actual farmers, and farmers have a great deal of credibility.
I admire warriors like Saik and Wager. I hope they can make a difference. I hope grassroots producers mobilize to counteract the nonsense propagated by those who are either scientifically illiterate or hopelessly dogmatic, or both.
Trouble is, anyone who supports genetic modification is accused of being a shill for Monsanto. Wager gets that all the time, even though he claims to have never accepted anything from the company.
In reality, the new public relations initiatives from conventional agriculture are like a popgun against a cannon. Celebrities with millions of Twitter followers and daytime television hosts with even more millions of viewers are exponentially more powerful in the war of public opinion.
The battle to explain genetic modification is being lost and so is the battle to preserve the use of crop protection products. How many new GMO traits are being launched? How many new herbicides are being registered? Precious few, because we’ve made the process so time consuming and expensive.
Science may be on our side, but there will always be rogue studies and scientists with an agenda to muddy the picture. And some people truly believe that they feel better or have regained health because they have switched to organics. No amount of arguing will change their minds.
Just go into your local supermarket or an upscale restaurant. You can scarcely avoid organic products anymore.
Look what happened in Ontario with the debate over neonic seed treatments. Beekeepers, aided by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, won the public relations battle. Ontario corn and soybean growers thought science was on their side, but in the end it didn’t matter. The Ontario government has decided that neonics will be dramatically curtailed.
Look at how many jurisdictions now prohibit the sale and use of lawn chemicals. Last year, Manitoba followed in the footsteps of Nova Scotia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec. Some municipalities have declared themselves GMO-free zones.
Agriculture is being forced to adjust. Non-GM canola is seeing increased demand. Clearfield canola was not the result of gene splicing, so it isn’t technically a GM crop. It doesn’t make it any safer, but it does impart special status.
And organic agriculture continues to advance. Organic producers are responding to the increased consumer demand, which is how the marketplace is supposed to work.
Herbicides and GM crops will be around for the foreseeable future, but anti-GMO and organic advocates have fear on their side. At best, a concerted communications effort by conventional farmers will only slow the tide.
Where this all ends up is anyone’s guess, but long term it may be a battle that isn’t winnable. It may be prudent to incorporate that into our farm business planning.
