The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

226 the world according to monsantothe economic failure of transgenic crops. It was especially symbolic becauseit had been won in North America, where GMOs were born, and thanks tothe decisive support of the people who grew them.”And yet, when the company announced right before Christmas in 2002that it had filed simultaneous requests in Ottawa and Washington for authorizationto market a Roundup-resistant spring wheat variety, it seemedlike a done deal, because it was operating in conquered territory. WhenMonsanto filed the requests it forgot a detail that would be fatal: until then,all its GMOs involved crops used primarily as fodder or for the manufactureof oils and clothing (soybeans, canola, cotton), less frequently for direct humanconsumption (corn). But with wheat, a mythic plant if there ever wasone, it was another story: in altering the golden grain that covers nearly 20percent of the cultivated land on the planet and is the basic nourishment forone person in three, it was touching on a symbol—cultural, religious, andeconomic—that was born with agriculture ten thousand years ago somewherein Mesopotamia. 3And this symbol was also the daily bread—literally and figuratively—ofthe powerful grain farmers of North America, who cultivated the red springwheat into which Monsanto had inserted its Roundup Ready gene. Knownas the “king of wheats” because of its exceptional protein and gluten content,it is grown in four northern U.S. states—North and South Dakota,Montana, and Minnesota—and across the border in the plains of Saskatchewanin western Canada, where 15 million of Canada’s 25 million acres ofwheat are grown, and which is also the home of Percy Schmeiser, the heraldof resistance to GMOs. Obviously, these great wheat growers also producedtransgenic soybeans, corn, and canola, but when they opposed the latestmanifestation from the tinkerers in Missouri, they did so primarily for economicreasons. “Canada exports 75 percent of its annual wheat production,which on average amounts to 20 million tons,” I was told by Ian McCreary,vice president of the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), run by producers,which controls the marketing of all grain produced in the prairies, by authorityof a 1935 federal law. “That represents around g2 billion in revenuesevery year. And all our foreign customers, led by Japan and Europe, haveclearly stated they did not want transgenic wheat. If Monsanto’s wheat hadbeen marketed, the 85,000 grain framers in western Canada could havegone out of business.”