STEPHEN Marsh mightn't be happy, but the contamination of his organic farm in WA by genetically modified canola is no bad thing for the farming community in general.
Mr Marsh has had his organic certification withdrawn as a result of the presence of GM canola on 220 ha of his 325 ha farm. The nearest GM canola crop is 1.5 km away.
His predicament is the test case we have to have, early on in the GM experiment, before GM crops become the norm and not the exception. Now is the time to properly draw up the rules of GM engagement.
The early State policy barriers to growing GM crops have fallen, or are falling, for good reason: expert report after expert report can find no good economic grounds for being GM-free. (That's not to say the experts are right, just what they reported.)
But if the economics of keeping GM crops out of a whole State don't stack up—Tasmania may be an exception—the economics for individual farms of choosing not to carry GM material is very important indeed.
There are plenty of reasons for a farmer not wanting anything to do with GM crops. Higher cost and higher risks; loss of independence over chemical selection; the potential of volunteer GM seeds to be still appearing years later; reluctance to accept a simplistic "silver bullet" approach to crop management; but above all, consumer suspicion of foods with GM content.
The global success of crop biotechnology as been driven by economics, and farmers' desire to get a step or two ahead of the cost-price squeeze. But not growing GM can be also economically advantageous. ABARE last year reported US data that showed organic grains on average commanded a premium of more than 100 per cent over their conventional counterparts.
Farmers must be allowed to not grow GM, and to be fairly compensated if unwanted GM material compromises their returns—just as in the 1990s, the cotton industry had to deal with endosulphan contamination of beef cattle through spray drift.
It's a simple principle, and it cuts both ways across the boundary fence.
For farmers who choose to go down the GM path, it must be a reversible decision. Chemical after chemical has proven to be less benign than was thought when the molecule was released; most recently atrazine. Certain biotech gene combinations may prove to have unpredictably fatal flaws in years to come.
If that happens, farmers will not be well served if their roadsides and fencelines are thick with the flawed plant.
(One solution might be to demand that all GM seed must carry something like Monsanto's infamous "Terminator" technology, which prevents the seed from germinating. If all GM seed was unviable, Steve Marsh wouldn't have a problem.)
It is in the interests of even the most pro-GM farmer to have these principles of choice, and the costs of violating that choice, firmly established in law before the GM experiment goes further.
No-one knows where consumer sentiment will swing, what biotech scares might flare up, what farming system they might want to be using in a decade's time.
Farmers' best insurance against the unknown is to preserve the choice not to use biotech. As with an electorate of swinging voters, preserving choice is guaranteed to keep biotech's evolution firmly focused on the needs of farmers, rather than the needs of corporate shareholders.
There is nothing about choice that's not to like; and as Mr Marsh has discovered, a lot to dislike about the alternative.
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