The transformation of agriculture from the hybridized conventional
food crops to types that are now genetically engineered literally happened
overnight. Before the mid-1990s, virtually no acreage was
planted with genetically altered plants. In 1996, there were suddenly
500,000 acres planted. By the end of 2001, there were nearly 100 million
acres planted globally.
According to the environmental community, we were witnessing a
complete revolution in farming. To the industry creating genetically
modified crops, the scale and rate of conversion merely represented the
switch of a “tool.” Just as hybrid seeds, the tractor, and chemical inputs
were considered tools, so too was the tweaking of seed genetics. The
biotech industry had been hard at work for more than a decade developing
plants that would permit technological advances in weed control
and pest protection. First onto the market were herbicide-tolerant
plants (plants made to withstand the company’s weed-killing brew) and
plants with built-in insecticides. For industry, the resulting products
were barely worth regulatory hubbub, and certainly did not require the
heat of worldwide debate they kindled. But to consumers and environmentalists,
debate, battle, and counterrevolution were precisely what
was demanded by the new technology