MOST of us value having lots of options and the freedom to choose among them.
Whether we’re shopping for a car, voting in an election or scanning the dessert menu, it’s just good to know that we have a range of choices. Having choices is a key part of being free.
The quality of our freedom is not only measured by the number of choices open to us, of course, but also by the importance of those choices.
Facing the choice between dozens of flavours of ice cream on a hot day is a delight. But your choice is unlikely to change your life. Furthermore, although you know you have to choose one today, you fully expect that whatever you didn’t choose today will likely be on offer again the next time the ice cream urge hits you. The options can continue to happily co-exist.
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But what if a choice you make permanently eliminates the other options for everyone? That changes the moral weight of the choice, especially if those other options are valued by many.
What if benign co-existence between the options is not possible?
That’s the urgent question farmers are facing with genetically modified crops.
Initially, genetically engineered crops, such as Roundup Ready canola, were presented to farmers as a new management tool with great agronomic advantages.
The new GMO (genetically modified organisms) technologies opened the way for a wealth of new varieties designed to express desired characteristics. The promise of these many new varieties along with new weed control methods added up to more choices.
So farmers now enjoy a lot more options and more freedom, right?
Wrong. The choice to grow GM canola on the Prairies has virtually eliminated the possibility of growing non GM canola here.
It turns out that nature does not respect gene patents. The birds, bees and wind that carry seeds and pollen from GM canola show an utter disregard for technology use agreements and court rulings.
Only six years after the commercial introduction of Roundup Ready canola, an Agriculture Canada study found that nearly half of the certified canola seed tested was contaminated with the Roundup Ready gene.
And unless someone finds a way to reverse this genetic change, the options of GM-free canola, either conventional or organic, in the Canadian Prairies is a thing of the past.
Our GM canola experience is a valuable guide to the discussion on Roundup Ready wheat.
Far from offering farmers an increased choice of seeds, RR wheat would eliminate many of our current choices.
Co-existence might be possible for post-harvest seeds, provided strict protocols of segregation and labelling are implemented. But in the field, co-existence spells the co-mingling of genetic materials.
And once the fields are contaminated, the GM-free option is gone.
So when it comes to GM wheat, the question is not ‘do we want to add this variety to our list of options?’
Rather it is ‘do we want to replace our current options with GM wheat?’
Nettie Wiebe is a farmer in the Delisle, Sask., region and a professor of Church and Society at St. Andrews College in Saskatoon. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Western Producer.
