Marti Crouch knew from the age of 5 that she wanted to be a botanist. She dreamed of plants when other kids dreamed of animals. Her childhood artwork was all of plants personified with faces.

But there was no room for plants with faces in her rigorous post-Sputnik scientific education. Armed with a Ph.D. from Yale, Crouch came to Indiana in 1979 to teach at IU and research ways to clone soybean genes.

One day in her laboratory a decade later, she looked at herself dressed in double layers of protective clothing, extra gloves and a face mask, and realized how far removed she was from her original animistic interest in plants. She came to believe her mechanistic research was weakening the structure of life instead of enhancing it. She couldn't see how people would benefit from her work, either - only big agricultural companies.

So she closed her IU lab and eventually left the university to work out of Bloomington as a consultant on relationships between biotechnology, agriculture and the environment. She collaborates with people opposed to genetically modified seeds and foods and shares what she learns with people and organizations around the world.

"Most organic gardeners aren't growing organically in order to get a specific product," she told an audience at a seminar for the Indiana Organic Gardeners Association in Indianapolis on March 22. "They do it because of the relationship it represents to the soil and the Earth. They do it because of how it makes them feel." After all, she noted, "Genes have an ecology of their own. Genetically modified plants may eventually overcome their engineered traits through their own natural processes."

The deciding factor for Crouch herself was that she did not want to intervene mechanistically in the lives of plants. "I don't want that relationship with the world. It's a philosophical or religious argument and so it doesn't get discussed much, but I'm not afraid to talk about it."

As an example, Crouch pointed to the new national organic standards, enacted after years of debate. "The USDA excluded GE foods because of public pressure, and yet no reason is given for that exclusion within the standards. I think it's difficult to maintain a regulatory framework without some principle behind it."

Her philosophical position is based in part on the inability of most organic farmers and gardeners to articulate the reasons why they are concerned about genetically engineered foods. Genetically modified seeds were first introduced to commercial agriculture in the mid-1990s and are now planted on more than 100,000 acres, she said.

One audience member pointed to the loss of control that has engendered - that the technology is moving forward too fast, and that GE crops are grown too close to conventional ones. Another attendee noted his distrust of the capitalist interests behind the research and engineering. Yet another admitted that she still doesn't completely understand the way GE technology works and therefore finds it hard to trust. "I hate to be a Luddite, but ..."

"There's nothing wrong with being a Luddite," Crouch said. "The Luddites were smart because they used their everyday experience to predict the future.

"It is the intellectual fervor of organic growers that makes them the liveliest group I know. They are way more interesting to me than sequencing genes," she said.

Keynote speaker for the IOGA event was Steve Bonney, a former chemistry professor who now farms organically in Green County. Bonney, the founder and director of Sustainable Earth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of sustainable farming and food systems, encouraged attendees to "Garden Like You'll Live Forever."

Other presenters spoke on herbs, flowers, soil, compost, insects and natural landscaping. For more information on the IOGA, visit ...

Elsa F. Kramer is a freelance horticulture writer and editor in Indianapolis.