Dr. Chris Preston of the University of Adelaide tells a story from down under:

Almost a decade ago the anti-GM groups in Australia started making noises about the organic canola industry in Australia and how it would be devastated by GM canola. Together with a colleague, he tried to track down these growers, in part because he knew organic canola would be exceptionally hard to grow.

The crop is not that competitive against weeds, is a high user of sulphur and many of our soils are sulphur deficient and has a large number of insect pests. In addition, blackleg and sclerotinia are significant fungal diseases. You simply could not grow organic canola around conventional canola crops.

After much pressure on some organic certifiers, they managed to get a list of half a dozen or so names of registered organic canola growers. When tracked down, it turned out that only one of these had ever grown organic canola and had done so opportunistically on a lake bed that had been flooded.

Dr. Preston has continued to put this information to the organic industry and a regular grower of organic canola has yet to come forward to disprove his statements that there is no significant organic canola industry in Australia. You can find organic canola oil in shops occasionally (it is easier to get through ordering from the internet), so he assumes that some organic canola is grown. It has just proved really hard to identify it in the field.

The final point of the story is that when organic canola is grown in Australia, it is normally grown well away from conventional canola crops to reduce the impacts of insects and diseases. This means it would also be grown well away from GM canola crops.

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