The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

224 the world according to monsantoconsumer pressure, the European Commission, which had at first unhesitatinglyauthorized the importation of transgenic soybeans, corn, and canolafrom the United States and Canada, had had to backtrack and declare a fiveyearmoratorium on GM crops on June 25, 1999, followed by required labelingof GM products on October 21. 63 These two decisions, which werevigorously challenged on the other side of the Atlantic, created confusion inthe American prairies, where grain dealers asked farmers to deliver theirtransgenic and conventional crops separately, with a bonus for the conventionalcrops.According to the Washington Post, there was growing anger, especially inexporting states such as Iowa and Illinois, where farmers had a persistentsense of having been bamboozled: “American farmers planted [gene-alteredcrops] in good faith, with the belief that the product is safe and that theywould be rewarded for their efforts. Instead they find themselves misled bymultinational seed and chemical companies and other commodities associationswho only encouraged them to plant increased acres of [these crops]without any warning to farmers of the dangers associated with a crop thatdidn’t have consumer acceptance.” 64In the meantime, the harm had already been done: according to theDepartment of Agriculture, corn exports to Europe fell by 99.4 percentbetween 1996 and 2001, amounting to an annual loss of $300 million.Likewise, while Europe had absorbed 27 percent of soybean exports in1998, the figure fell to 7 percent in 1999. And Canada, the world’s largestexporter of canola, lost its entire European market, not only for canola, butalso for honey. 65As a consequence, to save its farmers’ earnings, the American governmenthad to provide special subsidies, estimated at $12 billion between 1999 and2002. 66 In May 2002, the Senate passed a new farm bill providing $180 billionin subsidies for the following ten years, a way “to mask the economic failureof GM crops from farmers,” in the killing words of the Soil Association.This context lay behind the conflict early in the new century betweenCanadian and U.S. farmers and Monsanto, which for once suffered a serioussetback in its strategy to spread GMOs when it had to give up its transgenicwheat.