GRIDLEY, Calif. — Like gigantic lawnmowers, three agricultural combines cut the final swaths through Ryan Schohr's rice fields the other day. The harvest was complete. It was time to take a breath and set aside perennial concerns over pests and weeds and weather.
But as the Nov. 2 election approaches, folks in Butte County's sprawling farm industry are fretting over a ballot measure that aims to ban genetically modified crops in this corner of the California breadbasket.
Butte is one of four counties -- Marin, Humboldt and San Luis Obispo are the others -- trying to follow Mendocino County, which in March approved the nation's first ban on cultivation of bioengineered crops.
The electoral assault -- dubbed Measure D in Butte -- worries farmers like Schohr.
Never mind that nothing he plants is genetically engineered. Never mind that Butte County has virtually no crops borne of DNA spliced in the biotechnology lab. His worries are long term -- about staying competitive, about being shut out of agriculture's next big thing, whenever it rolls down the gravelly farm roads.
"There's benefits on the horizon from biotech," Schohr said, peering out of his mud-splattered pickup truck. "We don't want to be excluded."
A different sort of future worries bioengineering foes.
They say genetically engineered food could harm the environment and blow on the winds to contaminate organic crops. As for the potential health impacts, nothing short of the fate of the world's food supply is at stake, they contend.
"Without their consent, consumers are being forced to participate in the largest uncontrolled biological experiment in the history of humankind," said Scott Wolf, a leader of Citizens for a GE-Free Butte.
First introduced to the world's farm fields in the mid-1990s, agricultural bioengineering is still in its infancy. But genetically altered crops have found a significant place on America's grocery shelves.
The biggest foray has been into four major crops -- corn, soybeans, rapeseed and cottonseed -- that have been engineered to resist pests or withstand potent commercial weed killers. With soy and corn a staple in myriad products, as much as 70% of the nation's processed foods contain bioengineered ingredients.
Opponents say government has shirked its duty to test and regulate the rising tide of genetically altered foods.
Opposition in Europe
