Dear Taketheflourback,

We’ve decided Microsoft’s corporate control over the computer world has gone too far. So we’re 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 software for computers.

That’s your own logic for proposing to destroy 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.

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). What should you do if you want to challenge Microsoft? What millions of others do: create and support open source code, and even open source manufacturing.

If you want ‘open source’, publicly owned plant science, you should support publicly funded projects like Rothamsted's – not destroy them. Rothamsted have said: the resulting crop “will not be patented and it will not be owned by any private companies”.

While you are organising this attack, global agribusiness is carrying on regardless, able to patent both GM and non-GM varieties alike. Control of our food system has indeed become dangerously centralised. Many scientists and researchers agree there is too much private control and that the nature of the global patent system stifles innovation. 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 to want.

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.

GM is one technology among many that build on our knowledge of genetics. These are used in plant labs around the world - and they all have the potential to benefit society. To take just two examples, people like Professor John Witcombe are pursuing new participatory breeding techniques in Asia. Marker-assisted selection is being used to create varieties that meet the needs of growers and their communities. A project at Leeds University is working to produce nematode-resistant strains of plant, which would be donated to African plant scientists. Over 50% of African banana yields are lost to nematodes. Their first crop was destroyed by anti-GM protestors.

Rothamsted are working on Aphid resistance. This is an issue of global importance: currently India, China and others use Endosulfan, a highly toxic chemical banned in the West, and hopefully heading towards a global ban. GM is one technology among many - including agro-ecological methods - that may help get us to a pesticide-free future.

Your website makes many claims about the uselessness of GM - but we can’t know what will succeed without trying. Predicting the failure of an experiment is clearly no basis for destroying it. This brand of selectivity and unwillingness to listen exists elsewhere – among so-called 'climate skeptics'. You are making it seem like the same level of ignorance exists in the environmental movement. Is that what you want?

You claim you are carrying out this action to prevent ‘contamination’. The likelihood of any genetic material from the experiment getting out into the wider ecosystem is vanishingly small. Wheat plants pollinate themselves. Their pollen is heavy and cannot carry far on the wind. Traditional varieties of wheat grown in the UK - over 40 of them - stay stable even without the kinds of stringent controls Rothamsted have put in place. The experiment has several buffer zones around it, one of conventional wheat to capture any stray pollen and a further buffer zone of 20 meters (nearly a swimming pool’s length) around the crop will also be kept free of any plants that could (theoretically) cross with wheat. Is this not enough?

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.

It looks a lot like you’re unwilling to back down. Sadly, someone has already taken your website’s advice and carried out their own attack. 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 results, 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.

The challenges we face staying within our planetary boundaries are colossal, and we should be working together to meet them. 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.

Dan Olner
Dr. Susannah Bird
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Thanks for all the suggestions, either in comments on the draft or via Twitter.