Genetic engineering relates to organic farming as oil relates to water. They don't mix, conventional wisdom says.

Conventional wisdom is wrong, maintain the authors of "Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food." Author Pamela C. Ronald is a professor of plant pathology at the University of California at Davis who genetically engineers rice. Co-author Raoul W. Adamchak is an organic farmer who also teaches at UC Davis. They're married, and their 2008 book contends genetic engineering and organic farming should be married, too.

USDA proposed this marriage nine years ago when it wrote the standards for organic crops. Organics lovers objected. They shot off 275,000 letters of protest, forcing USDA to retreat and define organic as GE-free, which is the standard we live with today. That's a shame, Ronald and Adamchak say; genetic engineering and organic farming have been "unnecessarily pitted against each other."

The authors share organic farmers' environmental concerns -- they, too, dislike pesticides. They applaud organic farmers' "biological" methods of controlling pests when those methods work. But sometimes they don't. Spraying Bt -- allowed under the organic standards because it's a bacteria and thus biological -- can kill the earworms on sweet corn but can't reach the larvae that have crawled into the ear, which is why most organic sweet corn comes to market with worms. There are no organic methods for controlling nematodes at all.

As the authors see it, GE's opponents obsess about the process by which seeds are created when they should focus on whether the resulting plant harms people or the environment. After all, they point out, the plants organic farmers grow have all been genetically modified; they've just been genetically modified by older, less effective breeding methods.

Ronald, the geneticist, cites an example from her own experience. Rice is one of the few plants that can stand submergence, but even rice can usually only stand it for a week. For 50 years, plant breeders tried to create a high-yielding rice variety that could survive under water for as long as two weeks, enhancing its ability to last out Asia's flash floods. Success had eluded them.

The breeders had been trying to introduce the submergence-tolerance trait from a low-yielding Indian variety, FR13A, but "because they were not really sure which genes were needed or where in the genome they were located, the breeders accidentally introduced other genes that reduced the overall quality of the rice."

Using modern genetic engineering techniques, Ronald and her colleagues at UC Davis were able to isolate a single gene from FR13A and incorporate it into higher-yielding rice varieties. The resulting new variety, Ronald says, will "help alleviate the suffering of poor farm families in Asia." And "because our team has also created California rice varieties carrying the submergence-tolerance trait, we may be able to help our local organic rice growers and other farmers fight weeds without herbicides."

In addition to urging the marriage of genetic engineering and organic farming, the authors make powerful cases for each separately -- and for common sense in weighing alternative approaches. "The broader goals of ecologically responsible farming, and the adherence to those ideals, are more important than the methods used to develop new plant varieties," they contend.

Some commercial farmers will differ with the authors on what constitutes "ecologically responsible farming." Overall, though, they should salute the authors as allies in the effort to put genetic engineering in perspective for a skeptical public.

I was reminded of the need for such allies by the remarks of Roger Johnson when he assumed the presidency of the National Farmers Union. "The future of agriculture isn't just going to be defined by the 2 percent of us who produce the food and the fiber and the fuel," Johnson said. "It will be defined by everyone who touches agriculture and frankly there is no one who doesn't touch agriculture if they eat."

Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak are the kinds of opinion leaders who can help the 98 percent make wise decisions.