Memories of Peter Melchett

c. Press Association

RIP Peter Mond, 4th Baron Melchett, and the only Peer of the Realm I’ve ever shared a police cell with.

The occasion was in July 1999. Peter, Executive Director of Greenpeace UK, had led a dawn raid on a field trial of  Genetically Modified maize growing near Lyng, in Norfolk. We’d destroyed a portion of the herbicide-resistant crop, but the arrival of the two farmers hosting the test site, one atop a large mechanical loader, had reduced Greenpeace’s own mechanical mower to scrap metal and led to tactical retreat by the activists. The subsequent arrival of the Norfolk Constabulary then ended our fun and led to Peter, myself, and 26 other Greenpeace staff and volunteers spending a night in the cells.

Refused bail by the police, we were taken the next day to Norwich magistrates court, where myself, actions coordinator Tim Hewke, and Peter briefly ended up in the same cell. Peter was first one of us to appear before the bench. When he returned to the cell we found out the verdict: he was being sent to Norwich prison. Exit one dis-chuffed ED.

c. Greenpeace

In the end it all worked out well. Fourteen months and two trials later we were all outside Norwich
Crown Court having been found not guilty of criminal damage by a unanimous jury in a verdict that put the boot into the government’s already faltering plans for introducing GM crops to the UK. The field trials would continue for another four years, but no commercial planting would follow. There would be no ‘green concrete’ in this country.

Peter’s tenure at Greenpeace UK came after one of the most acrimonious episodes in the organisation’s history. Greenpeace UK had been formed in 1977, and had shortly afterwards acquired what was to become Greenpeace’s most famous ship, the Rainbow Warrior. Seven years of piratical adventures followed. But although the group was effective, it took risks. In 1984 a hard-hitting press campaign against the fur industry went down very badly with Greenpeace International, who had a lot of allies who were Indigenous fur trappers. What exactly happened next is disputed by those involved, but the outcome was that Peter and three other people, who could all be considered cooler heads, were drafted onto the Greenpeace UK board, and the all existing board members all resigned.

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By 1989 Peter was Executive Director, and under his regime some sort of order was established in the chaotic Greenpeace office. Campaigns now proceeded in a planned way, with direct action complementing other methods. Old timers complained and initially it seemed Greenpeace UK was receiving less publicity than it had in its buccaneering early days, but the payoff came in 1995 with the occupation of the Brent Spar. 

Although the action was planned in a bit of a hurry, and led at sea by Jon Castle, a veteran of the early days of the Rainbow Warrior, it was also the culmination of more than a decade of campaigning to end the dumping at sea of first nuclear, then toxic chemical waste. The UK government publicly called on Shell to continue with plans to sink the rig at sea, offering the use of the Special Boat Service to evict the Greenpeace campaigners. When they caved in Prime Minister John Major was left red faced. It was a major victory for Peter and the Greenpeace UK team. More campaigns against the oil industry followed, but it was another issue, nearer to home, that really captured Peter’s imagination.

Peter had grown up in Norfolk, on his father’s farm at Ringstead, near Hunstanton. He told me about
shoots that had happened when he was a child, when up to 5000 pairs of partridges would be shot in one day. However as time went by the numbers diminished, although nobody knew why. Peter remembered finding a nest of dead partridge chicks. He was told they had drowned in heavy rain, but this wasn’t the real reason they died. In 1966 Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring came out, and was available in the UK the next year. The book alerted the world to the dangers of pesticides on wildlife. Once he had read it Peter knew what had killed the chicks, and why his father's shoots now yielded far fewer victims.

But before Peter could wager his war against industrial agriculture, he had a brief career in conventional politics with the Labour Party. He served in the Northern Ireland Office during the dark times of The Troubles, an experience which left him with an aversion to whiskey and a love of the Belfast punk band Stiff Little Fingers. His time in politics also showed him where the real power in government was. Whilst sitting on a committee discussing energy Jack Cunningham MP breezed into the room, announced that any talk about nuclear power was off limits, and breezed out again. Peter left politics shortly after Labour lost power, moving first to the Ramblers Association and then Greenpeace.

Peter's time with Greenpeace UK had many highlights, but it is ironic that whilst it was mainly characterised by giving the organisation order and stability, he is most likely to be remembered for one of its most reckless adventures, the raid on that field in Lyng.

c. Greenpeace

Greenpeace started campaigning against Genetically Modified crops shortly after the dust settled on the Brent Spar affair, but it was after New Labour's election that the campaign really hotted up. Greenpeace was up against giant biotech companies and their champions in government, led by none other than 'GM' Jack Cunningham MP. A successful campaign followed, much of it planned in collaboration with Friends of the Earth. One that wasn't though was the Lyng raid.

I don't know exactly what Friends of the Earth Executive Director Charles Secrett thought when he opened his papers on 28 July 1999 and found that Peter had been sent to prison for attempting to destroy 6 acres of GM maize. The gist of it I believe was that this was a reckless and unnecessary move in a campaign that they thought was, at that point, almost won.

Those of us who'd volunteered for the action had no doubts about it, although we were very surprised when we got to the field to see the Executive Director there fixing the Greenpeace mower to the tractor. However even within the organisation, which was renowned for more extreme actions than your average NGO, there were doubts about the destruction of private property as a tactic. 

The five weeks we spent in court gave Peter the platform he wanted to lay into the

c. Greenpeace

government's support for even more intensive farming. The jury that unanimously acquitted him - and me - dealt a critical blow to the biotech giants that they have still not recovered from. Even Friends of the Earth agreed it all worked out well in the end.

So why did he do it? Undoubtedly those poor, dead partridge chicks played their part. As did his father's farm at Ringstead, just a few miles from Lyng, which Peter had inherited and made organic. This was personal. 

As a lowly local groups volunteer I'd never met Peter before I unloaded from the van in that field in Norfolk. However during the time we spent in Norwich I got some idea of the type of person he was. Greenpeace people work hard and play hard. Whilst involuntary guests in Norwich we all drank plenty and engaged in increasingly silly pastimes to relieve the boredom. Except Peter. His contribution to the entertainment was a lecture on the history of his farm, plus a field trip out there meet his organic cows. 

To say he never switched off though would be completely wrong. His farm was clearly his escape from work at Canonbury Villas. There were no aristocratic pretensions about Peter. He was usually scruffy and his house was a mess, with books taking up almost every available space. In some of the pictures from the Lyng action you can see he's the only one of us who didn't put his boiler suit on properly before we started. However in his sense of duty he was the equal of any knight of the realm. At the office, on the farm or just with his fellow accused, he always had the gravitas of the one in charge. 

Or almost always. One night during the trial we had a quiz night which we called Have I Got Evidence For You. Peter's team won easily, and Peter himself proved unbeatable at the Greenpeace version of Just A Minute. Then there was his retirement party. To say the teetotal Peter was 'as giddy as a schoolboy' would be the understate of the year. It was a great evening.

Peter never wanted his peerage. Although he couldn't actually get rid of it, he made sure the title died with him. Instead he wanted to earn respect, and I think he did. After the Lyng trial was over he sent us all a postcard of Courtyard Farm with the words "Proud to stand with you".  We were all proud to stand with him too. He will be missed.

Links

Pagan, Peer and Priest in GM Crops Raid!

Courtyard Farm

GMOs: How The Greens Went Anti-Science

Me in the maize (from a recent Newsnight)

For environmental campaigners, it's often our victories we have to apologise for, rather than our defeats.

Greenpeace has never, as far as I'm aware, had to explain its attempt in 1995 to stop the M65 motorway being built by sending a rainbow coloured digger to disrupt the construction work.

However it is still apologising for the mistake by its PR team - actually a guy called Hans with a radio - sending out a wrong estimate of the amount of oil on the Brent Spar, a claim almost nobody printed.

That's because whilst the M65 was eventually built and still spans Stanworth Valley, the Brent Spar wasn't dumped at sea but was towed back to port to be eventually sawn up into giant hula hoops after a humiliating climbdown by Shell that instead helped sink John Major's government.

Similarly if those of us who'd campaigned against Genetically Modified Organisms had failed miserably we'd now be totally forgotten.

Instead we won and the clip of me being nicked is still being used by the BBC to illustrate every news item it ever runs on GMOs. Even my mum is tired of seeing it.

As a result we've been accused of causing mass starvation in the Third World and compared to Climate Change deniers and those who dispute the link between HIV and AIDS.

Things came to a head in May this year with the Take Back The Flour action against a field of wheat Genetically Modified to ward off pests with its a pheromone laden pong. The protesters were fewer in number and easily held back by the security, whilst a phalanx of scientists with laptops were on hand to push the independence of their science. So has the anti-GMO campaign finally hit the buffers?

It's a long time ago now, but I remember being quite amazed at how the whole thing panned out. I was at Liverpool docks in February 1996 when Greenpeace targeted the first shipload of GM soya coming into the country. We carried out a public engagement at a nearby supermarket and the usual question was "what's a GMO when it's at home like?" - and that was from the local group volunteers.

A couple of years later, when Greenpeace had moved on to trying to stop oil drilling in the Atlantic Frontier - a campaign that failed miserably thanks to a spy in the German office telling BP their plans - I started to hear story from from friends in Earth First! that their anti-GMO supermarket actions were getting good public support.

This was remarkable news. EF! had a healthy disregard for PR so anyone caught up in one of its actions usually had absolutely no idea what was going on. Never-the-less some shoppers, caught up in the chaos as EF! activists jammed the checkouts with trolley loads of potentially GM contaminated food which they refused to pay for, had expressed an interest in what it was all about.

This was only a few short years since John Gummer has failed to persuade his daughter to eat a potentially BSE contaminated beef burger and had so sparked a massive food scare. In the end this was a lucky escape as the death toll looks like being in the low hundred, rather than the hundreds of thousands that was once feared.

The country was ripe for another good food scare, and all that was needed was a right leaning tabloid to steam in with some nonsense about Frankenfoods and we were away. Not that we can blame the Daily Mail entirely for eclipsing serious campaigning with Mad Scientists and so on, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth jumped on the band wagon too.

All this meant that by the time Lord Melchett and the rest of us steamed into the field of T20 maize in July 1999 it was all over bar the shouting.

And you can see why the scientists were spooked. From their point of view a bunch of technophobes had teamed up with the forces of reaction and progress had been stopped in its tracks.

What the Daily Mail's agenda was I don't know, but whilst most environmentalists have mixed views of technology, we don't generally hate science. When the ice caps melt and or the oil tanker sinks, its to the science that we look to measure the problem.

So what were we doing helping a right wing rag scare the Great British public?

There was a time that you could find almost as many reasons to oppose GMOs as there were groups opposing them. Indeed it seemed if we could only eradicate these pesky plants we'd have paradise on earth.

For some this was about corporate control of the food chain. Having one giant company controlling every stage of food production seemed like the sort of protectionism Adam Smith was supposed to have saved us from, but funnily enough it was only anti-capitalists who were telling people this.

Then and there were those concerned about the developing world who saw GMOs as the Green Revolution Part Two.

Both these views are valid, but in a sense the actual technology was of only minor relevance to the argument. Certainly it was hard to see how a University loosing its trial crop of blight-resistant spuds in the night was going to seriously impede global capitalism.

For others though, including me, it was a sudden realisation that most of or countryside was not disappearing under roads or airports, but under monolithic fields of intensively grown crops. The destruction caused by a road might be rather more obvious, but the battery of chemical weaponry deployed by the modern farmer could be just as damaging. Most of the GM crops that were due to be planted were resistant to a broad spectrum herbicide, meaning it killed everything that wasn't genetically modified to resist it.

There were concerns that these artificially introduced traits could escape into the wild either by the esoteric method of horizontal gene transfer, or just by cross pollinating related species. These superweeds now seem to have arrived.

However whilst that is a problem of GMOs going wrong, the problem of them going right may well be worse.

Monsanto claimed that the new crops introduced the concept of 'Total Weed Control'. Farmers might like the idea, but wildlife wasn't too keen.

If Organic farming is what we want and conventional farming a step too far, then GMOs were two steps too far. 'Green Concrete' was my favourite phrase about GMOs, but it just didn't have the same appeal as 'Frankenfoods'.

The problem with all these issues though is that to get any traction, they required people to think of someone, or something, other than themselves. Not very easy in the consumerist nineties.

So we took the line of least resistance and spun an anti-science, food scare story.

Was it worth it?

Well it now seems that sixteen years of growing GMOs in the USA has increased, rather than decreased, the amount of herbicides and pesticides being sprayed on the fields.

On the other hand nobody has actually been shown to have died from eating a GMO, so a cynic might say that both sides were wrong and that GMOs have proved to be neither dangerous nor useful.

The answer is surely that the technology that allows us to transplant genes, that is now so simple you can pretty much do it yourself in your bedroom, is essentially neutral, and its what we use it for and why that counts.

Pretty obvious really, but it seems to have been forgotten.

Winning a campaign is important. If you don't it's just gesture politics. But victory can't come at any cost. What you say has to mean something and you are still accountable for your words. More importantly what you say needs to be consistent.

You can't tell the public to trust the science on Climate Change, but not on GMOs. You can't complain that the technology is in the grip of the evil multi-nationals and then attack independent scientists when they do the work instead.

So I don't regret my actions with Greenpeace; it's good ridence to T20 maize and its like, but I do regret some of the words we used. GM tampons could give you toxic shock - did I really say that? (I can't actually remember if I did - but it was in the script for the Greenpeace supermarket tours I used to lead.)

However there may have been another angle on GMOs that we should have used, but totally failed to spot.

Peak Oil is the end of cheap oil. People usually imagine that it will mean more expensive fuel and fewer cheap holidays, but that may be missing the main point.

The way our food gets to our plate depends at every stage on cheap oil. From the manufacture of the herbicides and fertiliser, to the red diesel in the tractors to the fuel that ships the end result up and down the motorway network. Peak oil will change the game completely.

The alternative to GMOs that campaigners plugged was Organic farming. It might not make you (much) healthier and you might not be bothered about whether its better for the birds and bees, but when the cheap oil runs out at least your organic veg box will still turn up.

Pagan, Peer and Priest in GM Crops Raid!

My good self (left) and Jo Melzack are taken into custody

It is 5:05AM on 26th July 1999, a bright clear morning and at Walnut Tree Farm, Lyng, Norfolk a farmer is about to go to work in a field. An everyday rural scene except that the farmer is Peter Lord Melchett, Fourth Baron Melchett, ex-Labour minister and Executive Director of Greenpeace, and the field is a crop of T25 maize, genetically modified to resist a powerful weed killer.

A carefully planned Greenpeace operation had begun the previous night with five convoys converging on Lyng from around Britain. Shortly after 5AM Iain McSeveny, Greenpeace’s dour Scottish accountant cut the lock to the field and began a chain of events that would eventually see twenty-eight people, including Lord Melchett and myself, on trial in Norwich Crown Court and the whole future of GM foods thrown into doubt.

The Heavy Metal arrives

The crop is head high, six acres of ‘green concrete’, and a toxic desert in which nothing else lives. The tassels on the crop are just beginning to descend prior to pollination, at which point each head of maize will release 25 million grains of GM pollen. Greenpeace intends to stop this happening, and has brought a powerful tractor and mower for the purpose.

Melchett makes the final adjustments and the machine sets off, cutting through the crop at a good pace; the whole operation should be over in less than an hour. Nothing is being left to chance and a lorry is waiting to return the crop to its owner, the German multi-national corporation AgrEvo. There was however one factor that hadn’t been considered – the Brigham brothers, whose family has farmed this land since the 17th century.

First on the scene is a very angry William Brigham. He is treated cordially; after all it is his land even if it’s not his crop. There had been a meeting in the village hall the previous week, Melchett tells him, when over a hundred of the villagers had called for the crop to be destroyed. Mr Brigham had not attended, under the orders of the chemical company he explains. He storms off in a foul mood, his expletives recorded verbatim by John Vidal, a Guardian journalist invited along by Greenpeace to ensure fair play.

“running like Penelope Pitstop”

Next on the scene is younger brother Eddie, a man of few words. He is sitting on top of an industrial loader fitted with a huge bucket. His brother removes the gate from the hinges and Eddie rams the Greenpeace lorry out of the way.

He then drives straight through the field – and the crowd of people on the other side. Adrian O’Neill, a campaigner from Beverley, later described John Vidal and myself as both “running like Penelope Pitstop” to escape. Fortunately no one is hurt and Eddie heads for the mower, bringing the bucket down and stopping it dead. I decide to check that the driver is all right, but as I make my way to the immobilized tractor I suddenly find Eddie heading back towards me, leading to another rapid dash to safety. His mission accomplished, Eddie then leaves the field to cause some more havoc on the road, squashing the Guardian press car on the way.

GM maize; bag it, bin it

Undeterred by this setback, the Greenpeace team stop bagging and begin trampling the crop, whilst strimmers are unloaded and started up. By now the local police are arriving and over the next half-hour they very politely round up the protesters, some of who are now a long way into the maize. There is a feeling of anti-climax as we all stand in a line waiting to have our details taken. Perhaps two thirds of the crop is still standing, ready to pollinate.

We are loaded into various police vehicles and driven away. Arriving in Norwich the station staff are a bit surprised by their new arrivals especially Lord Melchett. “Is that Lord as in House of Lords?” asks the desk Sergeant. I find myself in a cell with Mick Waldrum, a Forester by trade and our tractor driver, who I’ve known since we were both part of the successful campaign to save the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada. Mick had been driving the tractor for most of the previous day to get it to the rendezvous. None of the windows opened and the cab's previous occupant appeared to have been an incontinent dog.

You're under arrest my Lord

The police do their best to make us comfortable, and we are cheered by gifts of food and newspapers from local well wishers. Rather ironically the headline in the local paper is “GM Crop to Stay”. However as time passes it becomes clear that we’re going to be staying too. The unfortunately named Sergeant Frame eventually tells us that we are being refused police bail and will have to spend the night in the cells.

Next day we appeared in Norwich magistrate court charged with the Criminal Damage ‘without lawful excuse’ of the crop, and more bizarrely with theft of it as well! Twenty-seven of us were freed on bail, but orders had come up from London that an example is to be made of Melchett and he is marched off to Norwich jail. Next morning he too is freed, but not before he receives a cake with a file in it, courtesy of the GM-free Iceland supermarket chain.

The Lyng 28 wedding photo

The wheels of justice turn slowly, and our story now moves forward to April of the following year and to the city of Norwich, where the Medieval Anchoress Mother Julian had created a bit of a stir by suggesting God was both male and female. Perhaps the issues today aren’t quite as profound, but the swarm of journalists suggests that the world is certainly taking note of the case.

In the Crown Court the twenty-eight defendants spill out of the dock and into the public gallery. The jovial Judge David Mellor opens the proceedings and the prosecuting barrister, the appropriately named Mr Farmer, tries to make his case.

He claims we are merely publicity seekers who have destroyed a vital scientific experiment, but unfortunately his witnesses keep letting him down. First Judith Jordan, representing AgrEvo (now renamed Aventis) admits that no studies had been done on the escape of GM pollen, then William Brigham admits that his crop was indeed imminently about to pollinate and that the nearest non-GM crop was only 400m away. Finally Sergeant Chipalfield, chief arresting officer, says that we were polite and determined and apparently not after publicity.

Next day Owen Davies Q.C. starts the defence case. “This isn’t a question of who did what but why they did it. AgrEvo has not sought damages; instead these people are on trial as common criminals.” A ‘lawful excuse’ for Criminal Damage is to prevent damage to other property, as in the case of a fireman who breaks down the door of a burning building. In relation to the charge of Theft he asks, “Did they want the crop to put in their sandwiches or freezers?”

First in to bat for Greenpeace is Peter Melchett. He talks about his fears of the escape of GM crops, which the Government’s own research has said, is inevitable. Greenpeace, he says, has no problems with medical use of GM or laboratory experiments. Instead of field trials of herbicide-resistant GM crops, the government should be investing in chemical free Organic agriculture. He is aggressively cross-examined by Mr Farmer, but manages to keep a straight bat.

Rev Carroll

Next it is the Reverend Malcolm Carol’s turn. A Baptist Minister, Malcolm travelled down to Lyng from Yorkshire with myself. Having only been told at the last moment of the plan he had come equipped for anything, and had even brought his flippers with him in case we were going to sea! (Described in court as ‘clothes for when it is wet’). His subsequent campaigning has seen GM crops banned from all Church of England land.

One by one the other defendants gave their evidence. About half work for Greenpeace in some capacity or other, including Paul Belotti, a grandfather and the Caretaker at Canonbury Villas. The rest are volunteers from around the country and include a Beauty Therapist and a volunteer for the Woodcraft Folk. None had ever been accused of dishonesty before, with the exception of local Oxfam campaigner Michael Unwins, shamefully convicted of stealing a cabbage in the early nineteen sixties.

Other witnesses are also called including Dr Mark Avery of the RSPB. Dr Avery sat on the committee set up to oversee the Government’s GM field trials. He tells the court that this committee first met to plan the trials in October 1999 – after the Lyng crop had been planted. This rather undermined the charge of disrupting vital scientific work.

Greenpeace had prepared a dossier of scientific opinion on the dangers of GM technology, later published in a book. In the event this never came before the jury and the job of explaining what our concerns were fell to one of the defendants, Chris Holden, a recent graduate of Cardiff University. Alone of all the people involved with the trial; Chris had actually done some genetic engineering and could explain what it was. The term ‘engineering’ he explained, was misleading. Genetic Modification proceeded by trial and error and the results were always unpredictable.

Eventually it was my turn at the crease. I explained how as part of the Greenpeace local groups network I had led tours round supermarkets pointing out GM products to shoppers. Two days after a tour round my local Marks and Spencers the entire chain had gone GM free! Under cross-examination Mr Farmer tries to bowl me a few googlies, but I manage to fend them off.

From the Greenpeace website

Martin told the jury that "science advances in various ways and that in terms of the methodology of a scientific experiment, you need to know your methodology before you start the experiment - the Committee that was going to decide how they were going to run the field-scale experiments didn't meet until July 1999 and didn't publish their guidelines until late 1999." Martin said of the GM trial at Lyng, which had been planted in spring 1999, "I don't think it had scientific value or monetary value - perhaps it had some political value."
He told the jury that the GM maize at Lyng couldn't be sold, swapped or exchanged for anything else, and was scientifically non-viable, adding, "unless the farmer grows ornamental maize, I can't see what value it had."

Eventually, at the end of two and a half weeks of evidence Judge Mellor sums up, describing the Greenpeace team as having the mindset of “an elite military unit”. The experience had certainly been a testing one for the group. Sitting silently in court whilst the prosecution attacked us one by one was probably more nerve racking than the action itself. Some relief was provided by an evening spent on Peter Melchett’s Organic farm meeting his herd of Red Pole cattle (causing two to give birth), which reminded us that it was the green fields of England that we were fighting for.

Eventually the jury retires and for two anxious days we waited for the verdict, leaving the court only to take lunch under the Green Men of the Norwich Cathedral cloisters. Eventually the jury return, having dismissed the Theft charge but unable to agree about the Criminal Damage. Rather downcast we return to our homes to await the retrial.

Meanwhile, back in the real world there had been significant events. On 12th April, in the middle of our trial, the boss of Aventis had received a letter from rival company Advanta. There was worrying news from Canada. Kept secret until our trial was over the story broke on 17th May, the same day Prince Charles spoke of wanting a more spiritual view of Nature.

A batch of oil seed rape from Canada had been contaminated with GM seed, possibly from a nearby field. The contaminated seed had then been sown across thousands of acres of the British countryside. Initially the government said nothing needed to be done, but when Greenpeace threatened legal action the order went out for the contaminated crops to be destroyed.

Front page of every broadsheet

The central plank of our defence was that if GM crops were grown in the open, the pollen would escape: on the wind, on the backs of bees and deer and on farm machinery. If GM pollen reached a conventional crop that field would become partly GM. If cross-contaminated crops have to be destroyed then they have clearly been damaged. And, as long as the danger is immediate and the means reasonable, causing damage to prevent greater damage counts as ‘lawful excuse’ in law.

So in September we returned to court for the second innings, and ran through all of the evidence again. But this time the jury was unanimous. We were innocent.



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Well, it will soon be ten years since that happened. Bizarrely the BBC is still showing the clip of me being nicked whenever it covers a story on Greenpeace activists getting acquitted. Even my mum is sick of seeing it.


As a campaigner you can choose the battles you fight, but not the ones you win. In the last decade Greenpeace has won other victories, but we've yet to save the Amazon rainforest, switch the country to renewable energy or cap carbon dioxide emission. But we did stop GM crops in this country.

In the last decade GM food has slipped off the radar a bit. The verdict so far appears to be that whilst it may not be as dangerous as was feared, it isn't as useful as was hoped. However I'm still proud of what I did. We certainly didn't win the battle against GM food single handed - that fight was won before Melchett and co even entered that field. However we kicked the GM industry so hard whilst it was down that it still hasn't got up. And whilst GM crops are stalled in the starting blocks organic agriculture has had a decade to prove itself.

Maybe the jury is out on that too, but I know which way want farming to go.