But nothing that Harold H. Dyer, an Iowa farmer, saw on his working vacation in South America last year surprised him more than finding out that his competitors freely used genetically modified soybeans in ways that would have landed him in a heap of trouble. He knew most farmers in Argentina planted modified soybean seeds, but he did not know they saved seeds from one year to plant the next, a practice that is legal in Argentina but not in North America. And in Brazil, where such seeds are still outlawed, no one came right out and said so, but Dyer was convinced that the seeds were being smuggled in. The Brazilian government insists that no genetically altered soybeans are grown there, but Dyer said he saw soybean fields that were as free of weeds as the parts of his own 2,500-acre farm in Iowa and Missouri where he sows the super seeds. It's not fair, and I would like for it to be changed, but that's the way it is.
Brazil is in the process of deciding whether to make the new technology legal.
Should Brazil officially reject biotechnology's lure, it would be a big setback for American companies that have already been hurt financially by fierce resistance in Europe from consumers and large companies that refuse to buy modified produce. But if Brazil's huge agricultural sector joins the biotech fold, experts say, it may someday be difficult for consumers anywhere to find any food free of genetically modified material. That is because the United States, Brazil and Argentina, the No. 3 producer, together grow 80 percent of the world's 157 million metric tons of soybeans, an extraordinarily versatile crop that is pressed into oil, processed into food, and added to countless foods. The situation in Brazil also shows how difficult it is to control this new technology in the absence of any global regulatory mechanism. The Brazilian government approved the use of modified seeds developed by Monsanto in 1998, but a consumer group challenged the approval in federal court in Brazil.