Draft version: all comments gratefully received. I'll send it over the weekend. Thanks for all the feedback so far...

Dear Taketheflourback,

I’ve decided Microsoft’s corporate control over the computer world has gone too far. So I’m coming to destroy your computers with a baseball bat. You’re using open source software, you say? No matter: you’re still using computers, and Microsoft make operating systems for computers.

That’s your own logic for the proposed destruction of the Rothamsted wheat trial on 27th May. You – and every single letter of support you have on your website – have woefully muddled GM technology with corporate control of the food system. They are not the same thing – any more than all computers are built by Microsoft. What should you do if you wanted to challenge Microsoft? What millions of others do: not destroying, but creating open source code, and even open source manufacturing.

If you want ‘open source’, publicly owned plant science, you should be supporting publicly funded projects like Rothamsted's – not destroying them. If you don’t like plant science, fair enough – that doesn’t give you the right to destroy someone else’s experiment.

Through actions like this, GM has been turned into a symbol of corporate power. But this fails to distinguish between a technology (like programming code) and its use and control (like Microsoft versus Ubuntu). GM is one technology among many others being used in plant labs around the world. All of the results have the potential to be made publicly available. People like Professor John Witcombe are showing how they can support participatory breeding; he uses marker-assisted selection in his Asian programmes.

While you are organising attacks on GM research projects, global agribusiness is carrying on regardless, able to patent both GM and non-GM varieties equally. Control of our food system has indeed become dangerously centralised. Many scientists and researchers completely agree there is too much private control. This huge issue needs to be met head-on. But by attacking a publicly funded trial, all you will do is push the research further into private hands, making it less likely this vital work will lead to public benefit.

University departments are under pressure to seek patents - this is not something restricted to plant science. If you have an issue with this, fight against it. But this planned protest is going to achieve exactly the opposite of what you claim you want. Rothamsted have said: the resulting crop “will not be patented and it will not be owned by any private companies”.

Your website, and the supporting letters, mostly attack corporate control, not GM. When they’re not doing that, they are arguing that the trial is pointless anyway. That may be so – but that’s why the science is being done. It is certainly no basis for destroying an experiment, is it?

The only possible reason you could have for this destruction is ‘contamination’. But if you go ahead, you are increasing that risk. The systems put in place will be pointless if you destroy the crop in an uncontrolled way. A publicly-funded project at Leeds University nearly suffered the same fate when their first crop was destroyed. They were attempting to make nematode-resistant strains, which would be donated to publicly funded African science. Over 50% of African banana yields are lost to nematodes. The team organised very careful clearing of the site, post-experiment – in stark contrast to the crude attack of anti-GM protestors.

Rothamsted have done everything in their power to meet you half way. You asked for debate – they organised and paid for a room, and George Monbiot agreed to chair. Yet – despite having time to appear on Newsnight, as well as organise the protest itself – you apparently don’t have the ‘capacity’ to attend.

This level of scientific befuddlement and unwillingness to listen exists elsewhere – among so-called “climate skeptics”. You are managing to make it seem like the same level of ignorance exists in the environmental movement. Is that what you want?

It looks a lot like you’re unwilling to back down. But one last time: please reconsider. Do not destroy this experiment, and tell other people to stay away. Join in a debate about the future of our food system. Fight for public research: for open access to research, code and scientific discoveries. Help work out how plant scientists, UK growers and organisations like the Transition movement can work together to find new, innovative ways to develop and produce food.

R. Buckminster Fuller said: 'you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.'

Help build a new model – don’t destroy.