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The husband-and-wife team set up barriers of bushes, shrubs, and trees, planted the right crops in the right places, and bough corn seed guaranteed to be free of genetic engineering.

No matter. The Fitzgeralds found themselves victims of "genetic drift," a relatively new phenomenon.

When the harvest came, they tested their corn. To their surprise and dismay, genetically engineered kernels showed up in the hopper: a pesticide-producing seed known as Bt whose pollen apparently made its way from a neighbors field, swept by wind or carried by birds or insects. The had to pull 800 bushels from the organic market, a loss they put at nearly $2,000.

"Everyones wondering what you do," Susan Fitzgerald said. "One cant speak alone; your barking in the wind. Its you against Goliath."

The Fitzgeralds story highlights a problem most recently brought to light by the lingering trouble caused by contamination from StarLink corn. Across the nation, the planting of genetically engineered seed has surged since their introduction in 1996, and now accounts for as much as a quarter of all corn grown in the United States.

One effectwhose scope was unanticipated by regulators, companies, or farmers as recently as just a few years agois that insects, birds and the wind are spreading biotech pollen to fields planted with conventional or organic crops miles away.

As losses mount, the question is being asked: Who pays?

Some farmers say its the problem of their neighbors, while others accuse the seed companies. The seed companies look for help form the government in setting more flexible standards. And the government points back at the farmers as well as state courts haring a growing number of lawsuits.

"We never rally thought all this through," said Charles Hurburgh, director of the Iowa Grain Quality Initiative and an Iowa State University professor. "Who would have known 10 years ago that this would have been an issue? There was no reason for this to be on the radar screen at this time."

The most common recourse for such lossesinsuranceis one thats not yet available to the nations nearly 2 million farmers.

Insurance companies say their policies wont cover genetic drift, the term used to describe cross-pollination between biotech and non-biotech fields. That reflects not only the novelty of the problem but also a sense that studies are still lacking on he scope of drifthow far pollen can travel, for instance, and how big farmers losses might be.

On one level, those losses are already substantial. Since 1997, the European Union has effectively barred U. S. corn imports over the possibility that genetically engineered varieties unapproved in the EU have mixed with sanctioned crops. That has cost American farmers access to a $200 million-a-year market. More losses are likely as other countries restrict new biotech crops approved in the United States.

On another level, questions remain over the biological implications of genetic drift for agriculture. Organic farmers fear that, given the unpredictability of pollination, they can never guarantee a biotech-free crop. Already, experts say, virtually all commercial seeds in America have at least trace levels of genetically modified proteins, just five years after the introduction of the crops.

Federal regulations require buffer zones around genetically modified crops usually 660 feet but that has already proved too limited. Some tend pollen can drift miles before settling on another crop. Plus, theres the possibility that seed gets mixed in storage bins and even combines.

"How do you trace where it came from? How do you determine the liability? All of this is brand new and people dont know how to deal with it yet," said Joe Harrington, spokesman for the American Association of Insurance Services in Wheaton, Illinois. "Its a brand new world."

While no figures exist, anecdotal evidence suggests that cases such as that of the Fitzgarlds are becoming far more common.

A judge last month ruled in favor of Monsanto, Company, the St. Louis-based producer to biotech seeds, in its demand that a Canadian farmer pay for the company' genetically engineered canola plants found growing on his field. He claims his crop was contaminated after pollen blew onto his property from nearby farms. Similar lawsuits have been filed against domestic farmers, but the Canadian care was the first to go to trial.

In 1998, cross-pollination was suspected of carrying a genetically engineered variety of corn to an organic farm in Texas. The contamination was not discovered until the corn had been processed and shipped to Europe as organic tortilla chips under the brand name Apache. When testing revealed traced of biotech corn, the shipment of 87,000 bags was recalled, costing $150,000. The manufacturer Terra Prima of Wisconsin chose not to sue the farmer.

Aventis CropScience, meanwhile, is the target of several lawsuits over the mingling of its StarLink corn with other varieties, in the most publicized case thus far.

StarLink, engineered to produce a protein toxic to insect larvae, was approved in 1998 only for animal use out of concern it could cause allergic reaction in people. It was later detected in taco shells, forcing a recall of more than 300 corn-based product and an ongoing and costly attempt to contain StarLink still in the market.

Among the tangled legal issues prompted by its discover was a class-action federal lawsuit filed in Iowa last year. The suit argues that cross-pollination by StarLink has hurt farmers ability to export corn and to sell it to American food processors. A similar lawsuit was filed earlier in Illinois.

Aventis has declined to comment, except to say that it remains committed to diverting StarLink and corn mingled with StarLink to approved uses. But its ordeal in trying to contain the damage hints at the breadth of the problem genetic drift poses and the potential liability involved.

Different nations have set different standards for how much genetically engineered material they will permit without requiring a label on food.

The European Union put the limit last year at 1 percent, one of the worlds strictest. Japan, whose labeling requirement takes effect next month, decreed a 5 percent tolerance for products such as soybean tofu and corn flour.

No tolerance is set for organic food in the United States, although levels like those found in the Fitzgeralds corn have led to rejection of organic food processors worried what consumers might think. (Keith Jones, a USDA organic official, said the amount of biotech material allowed in organic food from genetic drift is on "completely a case-by-care basis.")

Even with some tolerance, farmers and others insist the problem will only mount in coming years with the growing use of biotech corps, whose planting is expected to jump 10 percent this spring. Still undecided is how much is too much and where consumers will draw the line.

Organic farmers, whose numbers have more than doubled since 1996, are particularly vulnerable. Aware of the threat or not, consumers buy there products with the understanding that they are free of biotech foods. Conventional farmers face similar problems: For export market, they must worry about exceeding tolerance, like those in Europe and Japan.

"Once you introduce these seeds, theyre hard to keep in one place," said Brian Leahy, executive director of California Certified Organic Farmers. "This technology does not respect property rights.

The US Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulate biotechnology along with the Food and Drug Administration, say liability for dames it not a federal issue. Rather the tow agencies argue, it should be decided by state courts.

The National Corn Growers Association says it has no policy. Traditionally, farmers growing a crop for added valueorganic, for instance are responsible for protecting that crop, said Susan Keith, a lobbyist for the association.

But, she added, biotech crops raise "interesting questions."

She said there might be a scenario in which genetic drift is treated like pesticide drift, a longstanding problem in agriculture and on e in which courts have ruled against the farmer or company spraying the pesticides.

Monsanto and Aventis, among the biggest players in agricultural biotechnology, refused to comment on liability issues.

Larry Wassell, a Monsanto spokesman, would only say: "We try to act responsibly and we encourage growers to be responsible and to communicate with their neighbors."