Opinion

Did a Monsanto-Hosted Dinner Kill the Montana Farmer Protection Bill?

By Courtney Lowery, 3-25-09

The opposition that lined up against House Bill 445, or the Farmer Protection Bill, last week wasn’t exactly unexpected.

Whether the bill would make Montana “unfriendly to business” was one topic of conversation. Another line of questioning involved whether the bill would scare off big bio-tech companies, such as Monsanto, from investing research dollars in the state’s university system.

These arguments are commonplace in the halls of the Montana Capitol, especially on legislation that offers any kind of regulation on any kind of business. But, considering the simplicity of the bill, and considering that Monsanto in particular was not there to tell legislators what signals the bill would send to the company and others like it, it seemed just a little out of place.

Then, Kahrin Deines of the Associated Press found out that Monsanto did in fact offer input on the bill. It just did so via a private hosted dinner—rather than through customary channels like, you know, registering as a lobbyist or testifying before the committee along with the rest of the public.

From Deines’ story:
Instead of offering public testimony at the committee hearing for the bill, Monsanto shared its opposition to the measure during a private dinner with the Senate committee at the Montana Club...

The bill in question is House Bill 445, sponsored by Rep. Betsy Hands, D-Missoula. The legislation aimed to establish rules on how providers of expensive, proprietary seeds (often for genetically modified crops) can go about policing their patents. Farm country is full of horror stories about legally-purchased patented plants pollinating the next farm, or last year’s seeds sprouting this year, leaving innocent farmers subject to aggressive legal action.

House Bill 445, which was patterned partly after similar bills in North Dakota, South Dakota, Maine, Indiana and California, had a simple objective: protect the rights of farmers while still allowing the company to enforce its patents. The bill would have done that by regulating the seed sampling process (allowing farmers to have 3rd party testing done, making the company get permission from farmers before coming on to the land, etc), eliminating liability for farmers that unknowingly grow patented seed, and by mandating that the cases be tried in the farmer’s home state, rather than the company’s home state.

The bill passed the House earlier in the session on a 57-43 vote. Before that, it flew through the House committee 13-7. But on Tuesday, the Senate Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation committee voted 6-3 to table the bill.

Donald Steinbeisser, R-Sidney; Terry Murphy, R-Cardwell; Taylor Brown, R-Huntley; Ken Hansen; D-Harlem, Rick Ripley, R-Wolf Creek and Verdell Jackson R-Kalispell, all voted to table the bill.

Steinbeisser, the chairman of the committee told Deines regarding the private dinner: “I doubt if anything we talked about that night affected anybody’s position on the bill.”

According to the story, six of the nine Senate committee members, along with many of the bill’s opponents—including the Montana Grain Growers, the Montana Farm Bureau, and the Montana Agribusiness Association—attended the Monsanto dinner.

I should note that I’m not exactly an objective observer of this bill. I liked the bill. My husband, a farmer, and several of our friends and colleagues were among the growers and researchers who testified in support of the legislation. The Montana Farmers Union, the Alternative Energy Resources Organization and the Montana Organics Association also supported the bill.

The bill isn’t anti-biotech or anti-patent. And it certainly would not make it easier for seed “pirates,” as some have suggested. It’s quite simply a way to protect a farmers’ rights (including private property rights) in these cases.  A seed company has every right to investigate patent infringements and that right should be protected, but there need to be some simple rules to play by.

Interestingly enough, most of the opposition wasn’t even about the substance of the bill. A lot of the questioning at the hearing revolved around whether we actually need this bill, since there have been no recent cases in Montana and since patented seed is not as mainstream here as it is in say, the corn and soybean-rich Midwest. Many of the questions—and the responses of opponents—implied that the bill might send the wrong message to biotech companies, whose products might someday save Montana wheat farmers from pestilence and drought.

Consider this exchange between Sen. Bradley Hamlett, D-Cascade, who voted against tabling the bill, and Douglas Jones of Growers for Biotechnology:

Sen. Hamlett: “You made the point that patent cases have to go to federal court and we have federal courts here in Montana and I think I heard you say, if we tried cases in Montana and the farmer prevailed, Montana would have a black eye. Now did I hear that correct?”

Jones: “I believe you did hear me use the word black eye, only because—and it would have nothing to do where the court case was decided, it would have to do with having the case brought at all and a decision made.

But, having said that, the reason I mentioned the term black eye is because if it is decided in Montana against a seed company—one company in particular has been used today, they’re not the only ones out there with proprietary seed varieties—but, I think the the net result of that could be that they would then make a business decision to stop doing business in the state of Montana and thereby deprive other growers of that technology that they might choose to use or any future technology that company might develop—drought tolerance, better nitrogen utilization, phosphate utilization ... frost resistance—that would be a benefit to other growers as well. If that company has made that decision to not sell that seed legally in your state, then your growers, your producers do not have access to it...”

Hamlett: “So you’re saying that a company can decide, we’re not selling any of our seed in Montana, nobody can buy any seed and plant it in Montana? They can make that determination?’

Jones: “I believe they can. It’s a pure business decision. You’re not required to farm in any particular state. You’re not required to do business in any particular state. You make a decision as a company, as a business person where you’re going to go to do business in the most business friendly environment, the most profitable environment for you as a business.”

Many of the opponents seemed to suggest that instead of creating regulations now, we should just trust that when Montana does start growing more patented crops, companies like Monsanto will be fair and play by the rules.

But if the way the company handled lobbying against this bill is any indication, playing fair and following the rules may not be Monsanto’s strong suit.

The committee did vote on Tuesday to write a letter to both proponents and opponents of the bill inviting them to begin working on a compromise bill for the next legislative session. It’s a commendable move, but let’s just hope that this time, the committee will listen to—and put—Montana farmers first.

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