The world according to Monsanto : pollution, corruption, and

228 the world according to monsantoCouncils had found that 100 percent of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean importerscontacted would refuse to buy transgenic wheat.)In the United States, half of whose wheat is exported, for an annual revenueof approximately $5 billion, the message was heard loud and clear byall grain growers, including those who did not grow spring wheat. “The impacton the market concerns all producers,” explained Alan Tracy, presidentof U.S. Wheat Associates, who had been shaken by a study published in October2003 by Robert Wisner, a University of Iowa economist. 7 Wisner hadexamined the impact the marketing of the new GMO would have on thewheat economy, and his conclusions were very dark: a decline of 30 to 50percent in red spring wheat exportations and even more for other hard wheatvarieties, a two-thirds fall in prices, loss of jobs throughout the sector, and awave of repercussions throughout rural life. “A large majority of foreign consumersand buyers do not want transgenic wheat,” Wisner said. “Whetherthey are right or wrong, consumers are the driving force in counties wherelabeling permits choice.” 8Hundreds of farmers, who had applauded the arrival of GMOs less thanten years earlier, were seen traveling around the northern Great Plains to“fight against biotechnology.” In North Dakota and Montana, the resistancehad “solidified into a political movement,” which demanded a moratoriumon Monsanto wheat. 9 The company moved heaven and earth to block theseinitiatives. To bring the wandering sheep back into the fold, it went so far asto charter a plane to bring a delegation of North Dakota rebels to its Missouriheadquarters, where they were received by Robert Fraley, one of theinventors of RR soybeans, who had been promoted to a position as vice president.He “seemed to imply that farmers opposing Monsanto might be advancingthe agenda of radical environmental groups.” “At that point,” saidLouis Kuster, one of the farmers who had been at the meeting, “I . . . was alittle bit angry and I looked right straight at him . . . and I said, ‘You’re nottalking to the Greens here today. ...We need to make money, too.’” 10The Attack on Bt Plants:The Misfortunes of the Monarch ButterflyTo fully understand the 2003 revolt of North American farmers, it has to beset in the context of the time, which was not very favorable for Monsanto.