For fifty years, the Canadian farmer Percy Schleuser has produced and developed seeds for growing rapeseed. But one day he discovered that genetically engineered rapeseed from Monsanto had landed on his fields, probably via a neighbor's passing harvesting machine. This rapeseed is resistant to herbicides and is very hard to get rid of.

Mr. Schleuser saw the fruits of his years of work destroyed, and sued Monsanto for damages. At first the conglomerate tried to intimidate the little farmer, then it sued him, because he supposedly had grown Monsante-rapeseed illegally, without paying the license fees.

At this first instance, Schleuser was found guilty, for something that he had not even ordered, but that on the contrary, had only brought him damages, namely the gene-seeds. He has filed an appeal.

However, meanwhile a large movement of farmers has formed, who, like Schleuser, do not want to be swallowed up by the seed conglomerates. Because the one who buys their seeds is also forced to use the various pesticides and herbicides that go along with it. And he cannot reproduce the seeds, because it has a built-in "terminator gene" that prevents this.

In the film "Dead Harvest," shown on German television on Nov. 26, 2001, Percy Schleuser, who meanwhile even holds lectures in India for small farmers, said that this terminator gene not only makes the Monsanto harvest a biologically dead harvest, but that this gene can also be transmitted to other rapeseed fields, which then likewise become sterilized.

A resistance movement has also formed among the farmers in Germany. Many refuse to fill out questionnaires of the "seed trust," or, when they propagate seeds themselves, to give information about their customers to this newly formed institution. In Europe, too, the conditions are thus being created for making farmers dependent on conglomerates - a "new kind of serfdom."

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