The final work of 84-year-old John Seymour, organic farmer and food writer - his 38th book - is to be called The Last Word. Will it feature Monsanto? "I trust they will get a mention," he replies, with a smile which exudes understatement.

The US company already features in his latest volume, a book of doggerel called Playing it for laughs; notably in a fictitious piece in which the chairman of Monsanto writes to God inviting him to join the firm and promote RoundUp-ready crops (those genetically engineered to withstand the company's best-selling herbicide) - he advises singing it to "that fine Welsh hymn Bread of Heaven".

John Seymour's serious side surfaces when it comes to his concerns about genetically modified (GM) food, which centre around his belief that their development is "blasphemous interference in God's creation". This stems from a man who has worked with the earth most of his life, and has come to farm beside the river Barrow in Co Wexford. Ireland, he insists, does not have to be forced into an inglorious descent into monoculture. It is not a question of letting the biotechnology genie out of a bottle, more to do with an irretrievable tarnishing of the earth facilitated by what he calls "anything goes farming". Once GM foods are released, it is not possible to take them back. "It may be too late already."

Thus, he believes actions to prevent the introduction of GM crops are justified. He is already before a court, charged with six others of criminal damage in the first Irish case of alleged sabotage of GM crops. "If a government does not take action to protect its citizens from serious danger, is it not reasonable that the citizens should take action to protect themselves? If an army of Normans landed again at Baginbun and started looting and destroying I should expect the Irish Army to go and try and stop them. If it did not then, I should feel it my duty to go and try and stop them myself, if not with a pike, then at least with a pitch fork - and I should do so."

When a multinational starts planting what he considers to be "untested and untried genetically mutilated plants" in the country where he has made his home, he feels he must act, particularly as he believes Government agencies failed to protect its citizens from such a threat. "And if I go to prison because of it, then I will go with a good will, and make the best of it, and when I get out I will try to stop them again!"