SOMEWHERE in South Australia there's a bloke standing out in the wilderness of his canola crop yelling out "Noooooooooo!" all angst-ridden and distraught that the forces seem to be ranged against his humble ambition to just grow an ordinary crop.

I could be wrong here, maybe he's a woman, but they are usually more realistic about farming and get a job in town.

This flight of fancy is inspired by the latest bit of news that with Western Australia ending its moratorium on genetically modified canola, South Australia is now the last serious bastion of GM-free crops.

To my mind the West's capitulation is so sadly inevitable you could hardly call it a surprise and the last domino will no doubt tumble on this bloke's head very soon.

Big business and government have always had this in the bag. State pollies fiddled about for a while trying to work out what they should think about this but the pressure on them has been gently and persuasively irresistible.

Industry employees, often young women I've noticed, have had the exclusive task of influencing government and massaging the media that farmers should simply "have the choice" to grow GM, a despicable euphemism that creeping contamination will prove false.

A handful of individuals running on donations or simply their own resources were never going to beat them.

Maybe it is irrelevant these days but the biggest disappointment for me is that we haven't stood up as Australians and said "Bugger this, why should we just hand the whole show over to Yankee multinationals?

Let's have a real think about running the farm our way."

But the fascination of stuff that sounds a bit whiz-bang for politicians is obvious and the desperation of our remaining croppers for anything that offers even a marginal advantage is likely to do the rest.

The truly amazing thing is that never has any survey I've seen shown anything but a majority of people against GM food.

To be honest, I don't particularly like canola in any form. It's a greedy and expensive crop to grow, and the oil's horrible. But it's the thin edge of the wedge and other crops will follow.

And farmers meanwhile, including those grasping at GM straws, will continue to fail and leave the land while the organic sector continues to grow.

"Go figure" as the Yanks say.