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  Fighting in the Field: Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany

Fighting in the Field Monsanto's Uphill Battle in Germany

By Uwe Buse

Part 2: 'No Tangible Benefits for the People'

About 60 men, women and children live there. Three years ago, they formed a cooperative and purchased the castle, which was empty at the time. Now an alternative cultural center is taking shape there, including an ecological Ark. For Grolm, this demonstrates that old ways have a right to exist, and that they do not have to be watered down to make way for something new. There is probably no other place that suits him as well as this castle community. Grolm has been living here since the project began, and he plans to stay forever. He has even picked out his gravesite -- in a back meadow filled with scattered fruit trees.

"Over there," says Grolm, pointing from the tower to a spot outside the castle walls. "There is still some neglected grassland over there, extremely rich in species that are hard to find nowadays. All you have to do is throw some chemical fertilizer on it and it's finished." The meadow orchards are adjacent to the grassland and in the summer, Grolm places a few beehives among the trees.

Grolm, like Karl Heinz Bablok, is a beekeeper. But it's more than a hobby for him -- it' his profession. The fruits of his labor can be inspected on a table in the castle, where Grolm discusses the individual varieties the way a vintner talks about his wine. "Here we have white pine honey from the Black Forest, which is malty and delicately aromatic. And this is sweet chestnut honey from the Palatinate, tart, slightly bitter."

Grolm loves his profession. He also loves nature, the way God created it, and he devotes a great deal of energy to fighting the version of nature developed by Monsanto.

Grolm is the spokesman, co-founder and front man of Gendreck Weg! (Chuck Out Genetic Muck!), an initiative, founded five years ago at his kitchen table, for opponents of genetic engineering who want to do more than argue and stage protests. The group gives ordinary citizens the chance to get involved in activism, filling a gap in the network of non-profit organizations. Lüttmer-Ouazane rolls her eyes when she hears Grolm's name.

Grolm and his friends organize events they call "field liberations." They travel to fields where MON 810 or GM research plants are growing, and pull them out of the ground. The events are public and are announced ahead of time on the Internet. The arrival of the police is expected and is not perceived as being overly disruptive to the event.

Grolm can be counted as one of the fundamentalists when it comes to adversaries of Monsanto. He wants to transform Germany into a genetic engineering-free zone and goes further advocating the abandonment of all industrial agriculture, or agro-business. Grolm is a romantic: "We certainly still have farmers who work their fields with horses and plows," he says.

Fighting a Demon

In the dining room of the castle, Grolm and a fellow combatant describe a vision of a future in which an inhuman corporation controls the world food supply. They talk about residual risks, patents on life (or bio-patents) and the release and irretrievability of manmade organisms. They paint a picture of a ghastly world in which living is no longer worthwhile. Their concept of the enemy is so all-encompassing that after listening to them for a while one begins to feel that they are not talking about a company that is fighting, albeit with morally dubious methods, for what it believes to be its rights, but about a demon.

Grolm is fighting against this demon and for a better world. He is a known entity among the opponents of genetic engineering, and has become the poster child of the movement. Indeed, many opponents of Monsanto idolize Grolm. In the fall of 2008, the readers of the left-leaning newspaper Die Tageszeitung awarded him their "Panther Prize," an honor for civil courage.

The field liberations usually begin by setting up a tent camp near the GM field, followed by a demonstration and, at some point, the culmination of the event -- a sprint into the field. The field liberators lead the charge and the police are usually not far behind, rapidly closing in on the activists. Sometimes helicopters circle overhead, creating scenes reminiscent of the protests at the construction site of Germany's Brokdorf nuclear power plant in the mid-1970s -- and of the exciting, heady days of the anti-nuclear power movement.

Grolm has based his group's actions on that movement and its strategies, once again employing the concept of peer groups whose members keep an eye out for each other, and providing nonviolent resistance training before every field liberation. However, a new element in the modern-day campaign is the activists' well-organized cooperation with the media. Gendreck Weg! cameramen run alongside the field liberators, documenting the liberation of each field. The most experienced of the activists can even look at the camera and deliver what amount to lectures while running in a crouched position from plant to plant. The videos are then broadcast on the Internet, on sites such as cinerebelde.org, a hub in the network of anti-globalization activists that provides "images of a world in struggle."

The field liberations usually end in arrests. If the cases go to trial, the judges usually sentence the offenders to nothing more than a fine. The fines, and court costs, are paid with the proceeds from a donations account.

The field liberators are doing well, both financially and morally. They see themselves on the morally superior side of the argument, and they are not deterred by convictions. In fact, they see them as badges of honor. Grolm expects to spend a few days in jail soon because he refused to pay a fine. He says he is looking forward to it, pointing out that it will turn into yet another happening, complete with scores of tractors, banners, food provided by local supporters and inspiring tales of recent coups. Grolm's group has much to celebrate.

'True Heroes'

Last year, the Nürtingen-Geislingen University of Economics and Environment discontinued its field trials of GM corn after its fields were destroyed. Other organizations, such as the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, based in Potsdam near Berlin, and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics in Gatersleben in central Germany, are not risking field trials at the moment. In 2008, the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety's site register listed 39 field trials. This year, only one has been listed to date.

For Lüttmer-Ouazane at Monsanto, Grolm and his cohorts pose as much of a problem as the members of parliament in Berlin. The politicians have forced her and Monsanto, she claims, into a narrow legal framework and robbed them of their freedom of movement, while Grolm's campaigns deprive Monsanto of its customer base and its key argument in the struggle with its opponents: that a growing number of German farmers want, need and use GM corn. Lüttmer-Ouazane describes the few farmers who buy her corn, in the face of all opposition, as "true heroes."

There are not many of them. One is Reinhard Dennerlein, a man with a sturdy build and a defiant attitude. Standing on his farm in the Bavarian town of Kitzingen, between his house and farm buildings, Dennerlein says he doesn't like to be called a hero, though he isn't overly fond of the term "farmer," either.

"Farmers," says Dennerlein, wrinkling his brow, "have always been at the very bottom of society, trampled on for centuries by everyone else." He is not a farmer, he says, but an agricultural entrepreneur who specializes in fattening hogs. Dennerlein, who has 2,000 hogs in his stalls, agrees with Lüttmer-Ouazane's definition of agriculture as being mainly applied chemistry. The equation that makes sense to him is that the right substance, applied at the right time and in correct amounts, guarantees the desired hog. Dennerlein has little patience for romantics like Grolm, or for consumers who complain about factory farming but are unwilling to pay more than €1.99 ($2.50) for a pork cutlet.

"Sustainability," says Dennerlein, "is when a company operates in the black." And turning a profit, he says, requires strict cost control and the best and most consistent starting material possible. This is why he buys his piglets from a factory farm in the Netherlands instead of from regional suppliers. They arrive on trucks, 620 piglets per shipment, and Dennerlein fattens them with his own corn.

It was a moth which led him to grow MON 810 for the first time last year. Like many farmers in the area around Kitzingen, Dennerlein has been waging a longstanding war against the European corn borer moth. In 2006, the moths descended upon the cornfields and laid their eggs. The resulting larvae ate their way into the plants and destroyed about 40 percent of the harvest, despite the use of pesticides. 2007 was a better year, but still not a good one, prompting Dennerlein to sow MON 810 seed in 2008.

As required by law, Dennerlein had his planned use of the GM seed recorded in the site register of the Federal Office of Consumer Protection, which is open to the public and viewable online. A short time later, activist Michael Grolm appeared on Dennerlein's farm, wearing his beekeeper's outfit.

After a friendly greeting, Grolm introduced himself and informed Dennerlein that he was about to receive a visit -- by Gendreck Weg! -- and that the group planned to liberate his fields. It was nothing personal, Grolm said, and no one would be harmed.

Dennerlein disagreed, noting that he would most certainly be harmed, economically speaking. "But what can you do against these people?" he says, shrugging his shoulders, pointing that he cannot exactly transform his farm into a high-security zone.

The field liberators came at night. Dennerlein says that they uprooted the wrong plants, not the genetically modified ones, and that he harvested his GM corn in October: "10 tons per hectare -- flawless." Dennerlein also knows exactly how much money he saves by using MON 810. It is an important number, perhaps even the most important number of all for him. It appears at the bottom of his balance sheet, and it describes the direct benefit that MON 810 provides, perhaps its only real benefit. It is a number that should correspond to the scope and intensity of the conflict, a number meant to impress.

The number is 43. Dennerlein saves €43 ($54) per hectare. That is the amount he saves on pesticides because MON 810 is a more reliable killer. Dennerlein calls this number his palpable savings: €43. It may seem like a lot of money for Dennerlein, but it is not exactly a strong argument for green genetic engineering.

A New Adversary

Dennerlein is a tenacious man. He refuses to allow a handful of environmental activists to dictate to him what he can and cannot grow on his land. This is why he intends to sow MON 810 once again this year, but it's now highly uncertain if he will actually be able to go ahead with his plan. In fact, it is quite possible that Dennerlein will plant nothing and that Lüttmer-Ouazane will have to write "not a single hectare planted with MON 810" in her report to Monsanto's US headquarters. A few weeks ago, the farmer and the executive acquired a new adversary.

Germany's Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner recently told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper that the government was looking into banning Monsanto's GM corn. She noted that green genetic engineering "has so far not yielded tangible benefits for the people," and that consumers are opposed to genetically modified plants and farmers don't want them.

Aigner is having staff in her ministry look into whether the government can revoke the license for the cultivation of MON 810, because the GM corn not only decimates the European corn borer moth, but other, beneficial, insects as well.

If Aigner prevails against opposition from German Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan, the outcome of her staff's efforts could look something like this: Monsanto would be subject to new requirements, and the license for MON 810 would be temporarily revoked prior to this year's seeding and not renewed until after elections to the European Parliament in June. This could provide a boost to Aigner's party, the CSU, if she could portray it as a success ahead of the elections.

For now Dennerlein, the hog farmer and MON 810 fan, is not taking such reports seriously. He has a low opinion of politicians, noting: "They suffer from the constant pressure to raise their profile. What can you do?"

Bablok, the amateur beekeeper, hopes for the best: for himself, for his bees and for his lawsuit. Michael Grolm, the field liberator, says that he will not believe the minister until she has actually announced a ban.

And Monsanto? It says that it wants to have a conversation, for now.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan