Alex Pulaski
The Oregonian via Checkbiotech.org

Five years ago, Madras farmer Ron Olson searched for a name for his new grass-seed company.

Borrowing from a nearby one-room schoolhouse founded 100 years earlier, Olson settled on New Era Seed. The name captured a fresh century's promise, Olson thought -- fitting for a venture to cultivate genetically modified grass seed on a commercial scale for the first time.

Seed giants Monsanto and Scotts had contracted with Olson and other growers, who foresaw picture-perfect golf course tee and greens, and sunny profits from grass designed to be immune to Roundup, Monsanto's leading herbicide.

Instead, their dreams are on hold. They have foundered on two fronts: fears in the divided grass-seed industry that genetically altered seed could contaminate a signature Oregon crop and dry up exports, and environmentalists' objections that the new product could morph into an unconquerable weed.

A year ago, New Era's seven growers brought in their first harvest. Now they await an uncertain federal approval process that could stretch another year or more. The delay, and resulting corporate orders, has left bare dirt where most of their promising grass acreage once grew.

The inability of Monsanto, Scotts and the Madras growers to get their new product off the ground highlights the complex scientific, regulatory and market hurdles agricultural producers face in developing new, genetically modified, or GM, crops even in a country that grows more bioengineered corn, soybean and cotton than anyplace else in the world.

To the naked eye, the Madras fields planted two years ago appeared just like any other in Oregon, the country's top grass-seed producer for decades. With $300 million in annual sales, Oregon's grass-seed industry ranks only behind nurseries and livestock in agricultural production.

But the Madras acreage was unique among the half-million acres of grass seed grown in this state. The creeping bentgrass plants were modified to resist Roundup. The world's most widely used herbicide, Roundup kills most weeds and grasses, including annual bluegrass -- a common weed on courses.

Scotts, the lawn and garden care company with annual revenues of $2 billion, and Monsanto, the agricultural chemical and seed corporation with annual revenues of $4.9 billion, are betting that their Roundup Ready bentgrass seed will first take root in the lucrative golf-course market.

Commercial success there could one day revolutionize the $40 billion home lawn and garden industry with next-generation genetically modified grasses requiring less watering and mowing.

At 66, Olson is old enough to have sprayed DDT and toxaphene -- and to remember how the chemical industry assured users and consumers of the safety of those insecticides. Both were later banned because of their long-lasting toxic effects on wildlife.

Environmentalists contend that the next generation will discover the folly in re-engineering the genetic makeup of plants.

"I know there are people who are concerned that we are creating some kind of monster plant," countered Olson. "I think there's going to be a point in time where that could be an important issue. But the horror-story scenario . . . that's pretty far-fetched.

"We're dealing in areas in which we don't have that much experience. We have the same concerns ourselves."

For all Olson's hope, many of the state's grass-seed growers remain convinced that the Scotts-Monsanto experiment will backfire. European nations -- fueled by organized consumer resistance -- have refused to allow imports of genetically modified crops from the United States, clouding trade relations.

If buyers in Asia and Europe stop purchasing conventional Oregon grass seed because they fear that altered seed has crept in, the state's exports -- 15 percent of sales -- could disappear.

"Farmers will lose export markets and the gene will soon contaminate the Willamette Valley, making my work and livelihood very difficult and unprofitable," Hubbard grass farmer Frank Bronec wrote to federal officials last year.

Federal land managers, too, have made clear their opposition. A Forest Service official wrote federal rule-makers this year to say the new seed could damage all 175 national forests and grasslands. Similarly, the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 260 million acres, said it lacks the money to dislodge the new, genetically modified bentgrass if it becomes established on public lands.

Hurdle had to be cleared

To begin planting and harvesting on a commercial scale, Monsanto, Scotts and the Madras farmers first had to overcome opposition from other Oregon grass-seed growers.

In spring 2001, Scotts approached the Oregon Department of Agriculture with an unusual request. The company wanted to establish an 11,000-acre quarantine area near Madras; no conventional bentgrass could be cultivated in the area to prevent cross-breeding from Roundup Ready test plots it wanted to establish.

Bill Rose, a farmer and seed-company owner in Hubbard, took the forefront in fighting the quarantine area.

He and other Willamette Valley growers, and the university researchers allied with them, argued that the state's grass-seed industry was being placed in peril.

"I don't think enough safeguards can be enforced to keep the Roundup Ready bentgrass from eventually entering the Willamette Valley," Sublimity grower Kent Doerfler wrote the state. "If GMO (genetically modified) bent is found in any of our grass seeds, we will not be able to export."

Most Madras-area farmers lined up in favor of the quarantine area. They were joined by golf course superintendents and the U.S. Golf Association, which for decades has sought an effective means of ridding its bentgrass fairways of invasive annual bluegrass. Roundup would kill the bluegrass, while the new bentgrass strain would survive. Golf course superintendents say the new seed would allow them to use fewer chemicals to control weeds.

In the end, a state hearings officer concluded that the risks to Oregon agriculture were greater than the potential benefit to Scotts and Jefferson County farmers such as Olson.

Scotts weighed taking its plans to Idaho. But Kevin Turner, director of grass seed procurement and sales for Scotts in Oregon, said the company asked Phil Ward, then-director of the state Department of Agriculture, to reconsider. In turn, Scotts agreed to beef up protections against cross-contamination, such as including wider buffer areas around fields.

A new hearings officer recommended approving the quarantine area in July 2002, and the Madras farmers started planting a month later.

Opposition continues

Opposition from environmentalists and many Oregon growers of conventional seed has continued -- led by Rose.

Rose said he isn't afraid of genetically modified crops. His experience with them dwarfs that of practically every other Oregon grower. His company's test farm near Hubbard bears the scars.

In June 2000, eco-saboteurs calling themselves the Anarchist Golfing Association broke into Pure Seed Testing's greenhouses, scattered and destroyed test plants and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. They left behind golf balls, figurines and spray paint.

It was here, in the late 1990s, that Pure Seed researchers conducted the first tests of how far pollen from genetically modified grasses would travel -- 1,000 feet and more, posing fertilization risks with conventional plants.

At about the same time, Rose founded HybriGene, a research firm attempting to create grass strains resistant to weedkillers such as glufosinate, sold under the Liberty and other brand names. HybriGene was also experimenting with male-sterile technology, so that the GM plants could not cross-pollinate.

In 1999, Scotts representatives and Rose discussed developing a Roundup Ready grass strain.

"I told them it was suicide," Rose recalls.

Suicide, because the GM strains would soon intermix with conventional bentgrass on golf courses and lawns. Over time, the Roundup Ready strain would overtake everything else, Rose told them. So Scotts started looking elsewhere for Oregon growers willing to experiment with Roundup Ready bentgrass.

Rose, whose roots in the industry stretch back to the first pound of Merion Bluegrass seed he bought in 1951, is also a fractional owner of Tee-2-Green.

Tee-2-Green markets about 65 percent of the bentgrass used on golf courses worldwide. All of that conventional bentgrass seed is grown in the Willamette Valley.

After Rose's test plots and greenhouses were vandalized, the Scotts sign came down at the company's Gervais research facility. A sign simply proclaims "Office." Now, Turner, of Scotts, characterizes opposition by Rose and other Willamette Valley farmers as profit-driven.

"He sees that this technology is going to eat his lunch and it's not," Turner said. "But it is going to take a bite out of his sandwich."

Biotech plantings grow

During the 1990s, Monsanto spent billions of dollars acquiring suppliers of seed for corn, soy, cotton and other crops. The company says plantings of its biotech seed grew from 3 million acres in 1996 to 172 million acres this year.

Consumer opposition, though not as high in this country as in Europe and Asia, remains a hurdle.

Monsanto was forced to drop development of its NewLeaf potato after an incident in which a competitor's genetically modified StarLink tainted millions of bushels of conventional corn. Some reached consumers in such products as tortilla shells. The strain was suspected of producing allergic reactions.

Growers in Oregon, Idaho and Washington had been prepared to introduce large-scale production of the virus- and insect-resistant NewLeaf potatoes in 2000. Then McDonald's, the world's largest potato-buyer, said it would take no genetically altered potatoes. Overnight, the NewLeaf potato was dead.

A significant issue in the Scotts-Monsanto bentgrass experiment is how to prevent cross-pollination with wild plants. The Sierra Club, Center for Food Safety and others have written the federal government in opposition, saying the companies are creating a widespread and hardy weed.

The answer, according to Scotts, is that golf course managers keep their fairways trimmed shorter than a carpet. Grass will not grow tall enough to release pollen, the company argues.

But could a robin swoop down on a newly planted fairway, skim a beakful of genetically altered seed and drop it in tall grasses nearby?

"That is a possibility," said Bob Harriman, Scotts' vice president for biotechnology.

There is evidence that genetically modified plants can propagate in the wild.

In March 2001, a federal court in Saskatchewan ruled that a Canadian farmer owed Monsanto thousands of dollars because the company's genetically engineered canola plants were found growing in his field.

The plants had apparently germinated after pollen from the altered plants had blown onto Percy Schmeiser's property from nearby farms.

Although Canada's Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto for his 1998 crop, it did conclude that the company had an enforceable patent. Thus Monsanto can continue to charge farmers licensing fees, sell them new seed every year and inspect fields looking for cheaters.

After 50 years of growing canola and a six-year legal battle that Schmeiser figures cost more than $400,000, the 73-year-old farmer has planted his acreage in oats and peas.

"I can't grow canola any more because if I go to a seed house it's all contaminated by Monsanto's (genetically modified) seed," Schmeiser said.

"The same will happen with grass seed. You'll have grass cross-pollinating into wheat. Any farmer with experience will tell you: There's absolutely no way to keep this from spreading."

Deregulation sought

To begin selling the new grass seed, Scotts in May 2002 petitioned the federal government to deregulate Roundup Ready bentgrass.

By that September, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service issued Scotts a letter of deficiency on the application. The inspection service, citing rules protecting proprietary information, would not say what the application lacked.

Scotts resubmitted its application last year. It could take a year before a deregulation decision is reached, opening the door to sales.

Neil Hoffman, who oversees the agency's biotechnology deregulation process, says the bentgrass application presents complex issues that the agency has never faced before.

"This particular plant has a tendency to pollinate other plants," he said. "It can spread very easily."

As the regulatory process has drawn on, Scotts and Monsanto reached a decision that Olson and the other Madras farmers found hard to swallow: All but a few acres of their Roundup Ready bentgrass fields would be taken out of production.

This June, before the plants pollinated, they were sprayed with a herbicide other than Roundup. They were later burned and the acreage tilled.

Jim King, a Scotts spokesman, said the company remains optimistic that its new grass will be deregulated. But with last year's seed crop sitting in a warehouse, he said, it didn't make sense to add to it.

Olson says the new era he envisioned in 1999 might one day be realized.

But for now, he is unsure what will be planted on the bare land. Maybe alfalfa. Or carrots for seed.

"We are trying to keep this program alive," he said. "It has been a blow to the farmers that were involved."

Oregonian researcher Kathleen Blythe contributed to this report.

Alex Pulaski
Copyright © 2004 The Oregonian