Three summers ago on an agricultural tour, I rode into Cambridge, England, sat down in Monsanto's European cereal seed business headquarters at Trumpington and listened to a company man explain Monsanto's cereal grain strategy for Europe. The company's plan sounded logical enough to an ear untrained in seed marketing. But then it was Europe we were talking about, which meant that logic could well be ancillary to the outcome.

Last year Monsanto pulled out of Cambridge, disassembling its European cereal grain business entirely. Popular opinion said Monsanto's goal for being in the cereals market in Europe was to have a pipeline for biotech wheat if the company could get biotech wheat through dense EU regulations. When the company announced its plan to divest of cereals in that market, there was great celebration among environmentalists and neo-Luddites. A good thing for the general population of Europe, they called it. A potent blow to the scourge of genetically modified organisms.

Whatever. These people who won't be happy unless their Wheaties are made from grain with traits obtained the old fashioned way-through forced mutations via radioactivity, exotic who-knows-what'll-happen crosses and plain old freak-of-nature mutants. Forget these people.

At least forget about them in the sense that the agricultural industry can ever change their anti-progress minds.

Instead, consider folks like Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and author of the essay in this issue on page 18. Moore represents a growing schism between old-line crusaders for the environment and today's anarchist polyglot of enviro-social complaint. While Monsanto was fighting to get biotech plots in the U.K., Moore wasn't stamping around in a grim reaper costume. He was on camera trying to deliver a videoconference address to a group of scientists in France. Had he been given the chance to deliver the speech, he would have argued in favor of biotechnology. He didn't get that chance; the conference was disrupted by Greenpeacers.

In the past I've counseled against welcoming converted environmentalists into agriculture's plight to inform consumers. Today it is needed. It is needed because there is an emerging middle ground in public opinion-a growing chasm between the well-meaning fan of recycling and the bitter and anti-social professional protester. We ought to gain that ground by the means we find at hand, be it Patrick Moore or others with non-ag credentials that resonate with consumers.

And that brings us back to the companies, universities and private labs that make food politics possible: You cannot count on proceeding with mere logic in such an emotional debate. For every Patrick Moore, there are a thousand starry-eyed 19-year-olds whose passion takes little account in cold logic. But in the face of protest, a truth still emerges. Biotechnology cropping systems work. The world sees it. Let that be laurel enough.

In his essay Moore dwells on the humanitarian benefits of golden rice. Industry ought to be congratulated for such efforts. There should be more of this kind of work, and more work to get the technology to the people who need it and can use it.

But the industry must not go wobbly on the business side. There is no shame in delivering biotech benefits to growers and consumers-at a profit.

You may get bruised a bit in the U.K. and on the Continent, but biotechnology carries potential utility to every class of humanity. Put your heads together and get on with it.