5 May 2002

A QUIET HERO FROM THE FIELDS

EXCERPTS: One by one students at St. Francis Xavier Secondary School approached Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser with packets of seeds, each in a cloth bag carefully tied with ribbon. The students represented just a fraction of the 90 countries at the Mississauga Catholic school. They came from North and South Korea, China, the Philippines and India. Each bag seemed to be a surprise to the unassuming man as he looked around in wonder at the crowd of students who had come out to visit him. He cradled the bags gently in his arms until another student offered to help, and again seemed surprised at this simple gesture of affection.

..."I really liked his message that one person can make a difference. It's inspiring for young people," said Gapinska, a Grade 11 student and a member of the school's Saints club, which organized most of the morning's events. During the assembly, she read the David and Goliath story. At 71, Schmeiser knows he may not live to see the end of his fight, which he expects to go to the Supreme Court of Canada, but on Tuesday he promised the students he would not give up. He and his wife of 50 years (he's only missed one anniversary, his 48th when he was in India receiving the Mahatma Gandhi Award) have had many long talks about a battle that has already cost them their retirement savings. She believes in this battle, too, even if they will never benefit from it personally, and says only one thing to him: "Make sure there's enough money left to bury us."

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A quiet hero from the fields

by Stuart Laidlaw
Toronto Star, May 3, 2002

One by one students at St. Francis Xavier Secondary School approached Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser with packets of seeds, each in a cloth bag carefully tied with ribbon. The students represented just a fraction of the 90 countries at the Mississauga Catholic school. They came from North and South Korea, China, the Philippines and India. Each bag seemed to be a surprise to the unassuming man as he looked around in wonder at the crowd of students who had come out to visit him. He cradled the bags gently in his arms until another student offered to help, and again seemed surprised at this simple gesture of affection. For the visiting Schmeiser, whose long-running court battle against biotech giant Monsanto reaches the Federal Court of Appeal in Saskatoon later this month, the sharing of seeds was the best possible gift. That's because farmers have saved their best seeds and shared them with friends and neighbours for as long as man has tilled the earth. But by taking out patents on plants and forcing farmers to pay them licensing fees for the right to grow those plants, the biotech companies are taking away farmers' traditional rights, Schmeiser told the students during a visit Tuesday. "This is a fight between patent rights and the rights of the farmer," he said. "So far, the patent rights have won out."

 Last March, Judge W. Andrew MacKay of Saskatoon's Federal Court of Canada ruled that Schmeiser had violated Monsanto's patent rights by growing canola that contained a gene patented by Monsanto to make the plant resistant to the company's powerful herbicide Roundup. Schmeiser never disputed that the gene was present in some of his plants, which he developed on his own farm by saving and sharing seeds for more than 50 years. Instead, he has argued that the gene must have got into his fields through crossbreeding with neighbours' crops, or that Monsanto seeds could have blown into his field, been carried there by birds or deer or simply fallen off a truck. MacKay ruled, however, that it didn't matter how the gene came to be in Schmeiser's field. Once it was there, the entire crop became the property of Monsanto even breeds that Schmeiser had developed on his own over five decades. He now owes Monsanto more than $19,000 in licence fees. And on Monday, MacKay ruled in Monsanto's favour again, awarding the multinational $153,000 in court costs to be paid by Schmeiser. Together, the two rulings could cost Schmeiser $175 an acre for a patent the company charges $15 an acre to license. His own court costs have come to more than $200,000. Monsanto's have topped $750,000. Since the ruling last year, Schmeiser has become something of a folk hero in the international struggle against genetically modified foods. He has toured the world to give deputations to government commissions on the issue, meet other farmers and speak at biotechnology conferences. He was already a folk hero at St. Francis before he arrived Tuesday morning. The school's chaplain, Brian Finamore, had been keeping the students informed of Schmeiser's case in the morning announcements in preparation for the visit. One class wrote a play about him. Another wrote a song. A female student painted a stained glass window inspired by his fight, and a male student painted a mural that hung in the school auditorium during a general assembly to welcome him to the school. Underneath the watercolour mural of a farmer tilling his field at sunrise the caption read, "The seeds of life belong to us all."

 Schmeiser arrived at the school to find the halls lined with uniformed students holding candles and the lights dimmed. This man, who has been feted around the world for standing up to Monsanto, was clearly moved by this simple gesture and the entire morning's activities of assemblies, workshops and a lunch in his honour. A few times, when he thought no one was looking, he wiped his eyes. Others saw it, too, and were moved. Schmeiser, it must be said, is no zealot. He is, as my colleague Thomas Walkom said to me Tuesday afternoon, simply a Saskatchewan farmer. He's quietly determined, as you need to be to coax a harvest from Canadian soil. He's spent his life in the open prairies, tending to his crops in vast fields with no other people in sight and anonymously developing canola plants that match the soil and climate of his farm. He is uncomfortable in crowds, but takes them on for a cause he believes in. "I don't know how many years we've got left, my wife and I, but in the years we've got we'll go down fighting for the rights of farmers," he said to a standing ovation. Throughout the morning, the students, heeding Finamore's call that they "shake hands with a Canadian hero," pursued Schmeiser. At each event in his honour, Schmeiser inevitably retreated to a back corner, only to have the crowds follow him. "I just can't believe he's actually here," said Greenpeace campaigner Patrick Venditti, who was in Mississauga at 7 a.m. to meet Schmeiser for the first time. "I just couldn't pass up this chance."

 For Agata Gapinska, 16, it wasn't just what Schmeiser was saying about farmers' rights and genetically modified foods that moved her to come out to his welcoming, but just the fact that he was saying it. "I really liked his message that one person can make a difference. It's inspiring for young people," said Gapinska, a Grade 11 student and a member of the school's Saints club, which organized most of the morning's events. During the assembly, she read the
David and Goliath story. At 71, Schmeiser knows he may not live to see the end of his fight, which he expects to go to the Supreme Court of Canada, but on Tuesday he promised the students he would not give up. He and his wife of 50 years (he's only missed one anniversary, his 48th when he was in India receiving the Mahatma Gandhi Award) have had many long talks about a battle that has already cost them their retirement savings. She believes in this battle, too, even if they will never benefit from it personally, and says only one thing to him: "Make sure there's enough money left to bury us."

Stuart Laidlaw is a member of The Star's editorial board.