Jonathon Harrington

Jonathon Harrington is a director of the "specialist consultancy for progressive agriculture" Optima Excel Ltd., which is based in Wales. Among the company's services are "advice on all aspects of crop biotechnology" as well as sourcing and supplying "a range of commonly-used agrochemicals". The company also claims to be "the sole UK distributors" for "The Truth about Organic Food" - a book by Alex Avery, a fierce critic of organic farming and a well known supporter of GMOs. Harrington is the only named contact for Optima Excel.

The demand for Optima Excel's "advice on all aspects of crop biotechnology" is likely to be highly limited amongst its customers in Wales, given the declared policy of the Welsh Assembly government of keeping Wales entirely GM-free. But Harrington hit the headlines in January 2009 when a Guardian article reported that he had planted GM maize on his Welsh farm, in defiance of the Welsh Assembly .

The article states:

An unrepentant Harrington said he had resorted to the secret planting after the Welsh Assembly, which voted unanimously for GM-free status in 2000, refused to have any meaningful discussions over its policy.

Harrington is quoted as saying he wanted "to facilitate the introduction of a new and valuable technology [GM] into Welsh agriculture". He states of GM:

It can of course be used for a variety of purposes: to give plants immunity from pest attack or resistance to disease or more recently the ability to withstand drought. There are a number of potential benefits the technology could offer Welsh farmers if the assembly government showed a more positive attitude towards it.

But just how this GM maize is supposed to save Welsh agriculture is unclear, given that even Harrington admitted it performed badly. He told The Guardian of his GM maize plants: "It was a poor summer, so they didn't do terribly well."

Harrington is described in The Guardian as an agronomist and farmer. He is a member of the biotech industry-funded lobby group CropGen.

Criticism of Harrington

Dr Paul Benham, a pioneer of modern organic farming, the director of the Centre for Sustainable Food at the Primrose Earth Awareness Trust, and a farmer neighbour of Harrington, criticised Harrington's GM maize stunt in an article in the Western Mail. Benham wrote:

The integrity of our organic and sustainable system is now being jeopardised by the actions of Mr Jonathon Harrington, who is subversively growing GM crops within one mile of Primrose and says he plans to grow GM crops with 30 other farmers this year.

Our farm has held a Soil Association organic symbol for 23 years and the SA has made it absolutely clear that no GM contamination should occur. The Primrose Transition food production model is central to the education message of the adjacent Centre for Sustainable Food and thus its important education work is being threatened.

I therefore welcome the introduction of the Welsh Assembly’s recent legislation to hold GM farmers liable for transgenic contamination to neighbouring farms.

Former TV gardener and president of the Soil Association Monty Don, whose organic farm is near Harrington's property, told the Western Mail:

The real damage of a secret stunt like this is that if repeated it could damage trust in Welsh food and farming more generally.

If Harrington did grow the GM crop, Don pointed out that he would have breached European law designed to safeguard conventional and organic crops from contamination.

Investigation into Harrington's claims

Neighbouring farmers were seriously worried by the claims made by Harrington, as were officials of Powys County Council and the Welsh Assembly Government. A long investigation ensued, with Powys CC [County Council] Trading Standards officers taking the lead. Again, Mr Harrington refused to supply evidence to back up his claims, and eventually he was forced to change his story -- leading officials to the view that this was, from the beginning, an elaborate publicity stunt.

In the Powys CC case analysis, released under FoI rules, they state:

"after protracted attempts to get answers under caution from J Harrington, we eventually received a response to our questions in which he indicated and admitted that the growing of the GM Maize crops on his premises was not part of his business or any activity connected to that business."

Mr Harrington then said: "he had received a quantity of 50 seeds of two varieties of GM maize which he had used to grow crops on his holding for his own interest as a biologist, and that the crops were destroyed on his holding following harvesting. It is impossible to prove or disprove these claims. Samples of seed supplied to the Trading Standards Service by Harrington were analysed by a Public Analyst and found not to be GM modified seed."

In a letter to Ian Panton of GM Free Cymru, Mr Lee Evans of Powys CC said: "I can confirm that during the course of the investigation, (we found) no evidence that GM crops were grown, cultivated, circulated to any farms in the Powys area or fed to any stock in the county."

Powys CC also revealed that the investigation of the false claims by Mr Harrington cost the taxpayer GBP4,200. The cost of parallel investigations (including legal advice) within the Welsh Assembly Government is not known.

Western Mail journalist Steve Dube wrote in his blog:

it appears that Mr Harrington himself may not be all he claims to be. He lives so high up a mountain that even conventional fodder maize (let alone a Mediterranean GM hybrid) would not produce a decent crop. And as he is also sadly disabled, he cannot have planted or harvested the crop himself. It makes you wonder whether the whole episode was a con by Harrington and CropGen, in order to embarrass the Welsh Government. Has Mr Harrington actually grown GM plants at all? His neighbours think not.

Affiliations

Harrington is a member of the pro-GM lobby group CropGen. On the Times Higher Education website he stated, "I am also a member of The CropGen Panel but this group does NOT (as far as I aware) receive any funding from the biotech industry." Among the reader responses was this:

This is from CropGen's home page: "CropGen receives limited support from the biotechnology industry..." It continues "but acts entirely independently." However, the 2001 version of its website stated that "while ultimately funded by industry, CropGen's panel members are free to express such views as they consider appropriate. The funding companies cannot veto the panel's position on any issue." That's good to know. There is no indication that it is now funded by anyone other than the biotech industry, and other members of the CropGen panel have in the past admitted being paid an "honorarium" for their services by the industry. The domain name for the group's website was registered by the PR company Countrywide Porter Novelli. The behind the scenes running of CropGen is now undertaken by Lexington Communications who perform the same task for the biotech industry's official lobby group the Agricultural Biotechnology Council. Curious that Mr Harrington knows so little about who he's working for.

Harrington has also said, "I do act as a consultant for various individuals and groups in the food supply industry." It has been alleged that he is a paid consultant for Syngenta and Monsanto.

Publications, Contact, Resources and Notes

Contact

Address:

Jonathon Harrington

OPTIMA EXCEL Ltd

Pen-y-Lan

Tregoyd

BRECON

POWYS

LD3 0SS

Phone: +44 (0)1497 847435 or +44 (0)7816 838563

Email: info@optimaexcel.co.uk

Website: http://www.optimaexcel.co.uk/