By STEVE SHERMAN
Country meets corporate in Jeanne Prevett Sable's novel "Seed Keepers of Crescentville," her shuddering story of corporate marketeers bent on swapping DNA for dough-re-me.
Sable writes cool, calm interweaving scenes of rural life growing increasingly entangled with "pharm" experiments. Then she brings us to a rousing climax in her story of secret plant gene modification operations in an unsuspecting small Vermont town.
If private biotech companies conjure up genetically modified organisms, do they own corn, beans, rice and whatever other foods billions of people eat? Should designer seeds be genetically enhanced to not produce seeds for next year? Must consumers buy patented corn because unpatented seeds no longer exist?
After Consumma Corporation moves into rural New England, and proves to be the hardest nut to crack for its plant products, Herb Lundsted, slick marketing agent, is sent to little Cres-centville to break the back of regional resistance to genetically modified organisms. He maneuvers to eliminate competition from seed-saving consumers.
One way to eliminate this competition is to train members of congress to introduce legislation allowing patented biotech seeds to be protected by federal law. Now each patented seed packet carries a WARNING: "It is illegal to plant, sell, use or trade any seed, flower, root, or plant part produced by this product for the purpose of propagation." Violations "will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law under FEADSUS regulations."
What is FEADSUS? Lundsted explains to Crescentville citizens — "Food, Environment, Agriculture, and Drug Supervisory of the United States."
How are plant patents enforced? By fear of prosecution of garden growers and farmers alike, establishment of uniformed plant police, legalized inspection of growing fields using any Consumma patented gene-splicing seeds. The new war is plant police hunting down seed pirates.
A side benefit for Consumma is to settle court action by awarding the transfer of land ownership to the corporation in lieu of money. This increases Consumma's land total to expand experiments and production of more GMOs.
Consumma sets the traps in Crescentville. A resident plants a patented sunflower and, Lundsted says, "Come fall, those beauties are as good as giant billboards for our company! And I'll wager your next paycheck we catch those Old McDonalds swapping seeds from those very plants next spring."
Above the ground of these spidery tactics, life in Crescentville has its appeal. Children grow up learning that the essence of tomorrow lies in seeds of all sorts. They and their adults spend time hunting fiddlehead ferns, having home schooled friends, abiding by "a farmer's promise" and playing seed-saving games. Then a 3rd-grader named Tiana and her brothers get washed away on a raft down Blue Ribbon Brook. They end up on the fenced-in edge of an isolated experimental Consumma pharm for genetically modified pharmaceutical crops. Tiana ends up sick and is rushed to the local hospital where she falls into a long-term coma.
All wrath breaks forth as one discovery after another brings Consumma into the headline spotlight. Seven top secret "pharms were soon common knowledge, four on farms taken in settlement for patent infringement lawsuits, the other three on land leased from desperate farmers on the brink of bankruptcy," Sable writes.
A town meeting is called to vote on an ordinance "to prevent genetically modified organisms from being raised within the borders of our town."
Sable has used a deft hand in avoiding a full-blown polemic against biotech. Instead, she takes readers on an absorbing tour of what could very well be a real-life future of agriculture under the cloak of shadowy techniques of corporate and government collusion. In effect, her Consumma warning of planting patented seeds is a warning to real-life seed keepers. Just who owns Earth and its gifts?
Sable has Tiana's mother Fay give Consumma back a New England warning: "No more open air planting of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in our state. Let them confine their genetic experiments to sealed-off greenhouses."
