I’ve always been told that California is on the cutting edge of everything. Sometimes I’ve even believed it.
But now I’m starting to wonder. While growing numbers of farmers are rushing to adopt agricultural biotechnology all over the world, three counties in California have passed bans on it. Now Sonoma County, in the heart of the Golden State’s wine country, may approve a 10-year moratorium on biotech plantings later this year.
Nothing turns back the clock like opposing biotechnology, which is already transforming our lives for the better in too many ways to count. One of the most important benefits, of course, is in the area of food production. Agricultural biotechnology is helping farmers feed a growing world, as the Green Revolution transforms into a Gene Revolution.
And now some misguided activists want to outlaw our progress. They know their radical plans can’t possibly succeed at the federal or state level, so they’ve devoted their efforts to a few counties in California. They’ve failed as often as they’ve succeeded. Last November, voters in the counties of Butte, Humboldt, and San Luis Obispo had the common sense to reject anti-biotech initiatives. They understood the practical problems of a ban, including the important question of who pays the expensive cost of enforcing it.
But the enemies of biotechnology have experienced some success as well. In the last 12 months, three California counties have banned biotech crops: Marin, Mendocino, and Trinity. Sonoma now threatens to become the fourth county to deny freedom of choice to farmers.
That would be unfortunate, because biotechnology eventually may have much to offer the grape farmers of Sonoma County. Although there’s no such thing as a commercial biotech grape right now--there probably won’t be such a thing for at least a decade--the promise of biotechnology is considerable. Imagine a grape vine that naturally defends against Pierce’s disease, a bacterial infection that certain leaf hopping insects spread from plant to plant. How about protection in the form of nematode resistant rootstock or the ability to fight fungal diseases like bunch rot? This would be a tremendous boon to Sonoma’s farmers. And yet the county’s anti-activists would preemptively remove it from their reach.
Anybody who understands grapes knows that farmers have improved them. They are one of mankind’s oldest crops--the Bible says they were grown at the time of Noah. They’ve also been altered over the millennia. One of the most important developments came in 1872, when William Thompson introduced seedless grapes to California.
The Sonoma activists like to say that biotechnology is somehow “unnatural.” But what could be more unnatural than a seedless grape?
The enemies of biotechnology are simply on the wrong side of history. Every year, more farmers plant more biotech crops than they did the year before. This year, a farmer somewhere on earth will plant the one-billionth acre of biotech crops.
Supporters of the Sonoma ban say that they aren’t extremists, and point to the fact that their moratorium “supposedly” carves out a limited exception for research--i.e., under certain excessively stringent conditions, plant breeders would be able to study genetically enhanced plants in Sonoma. I can’t imagine why the R&D division of any company or university would want to invest a single penny in a jurisdiction that is so hostile to biotechnology.
Biotechnology belongs to everybody, including farmers. For people who work the land, it simply is one of many tools they have at their disposal, like tractors and seeds. All farmers, including Sonoma’s vinters, should have the freedom to decide on their own whether biotechnology is right for them.
I look forward to the day when we can all take biotechnology for granted. At the same time, I’m concerned that some people are taking it for granted prematurely. I just returned from the World Ag Expo in Tulare, Calif., and the folks out there were much more interested in talking about water, pollution and irrigation equipment than county politics.
I can’t blame them, but I also worry they’ll become victims of complacency. We’re constantly reminded of how much damage the anti-biotech crowd has done in Europe. If their influence in the United States becomes even a small fraction of what it’s been in Europe, then we’re all in trouble.
In the meantime, I hope the voters of Sonoma County will keep California on the cutting edge of technology, rather than force it into the dull hinterlands of fearfulness.
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I’ve always been told that California is on the cutting edge of everything. Sometimes I’ve even believed it. 
