There are serious problems with our food system and the way its based on industrial agriculture.
Subsidies support sugar-laden and processed foods while people on low incomes have trouble affording healthy, sustainably grown produce.
Some pesticides are okayed for use on certified Organic crops, and some arent.
What does this have to do with GMOs?
Two different things, actually, which GMO opponents sometimes get confused.
One throw in of GMO plantincreasespesticide use, and another popular typedecreasesuse.
Herbicide tolerant plants can withstand sprayings of certain weed killers.
Glyphosate was popular even before GMOs, but now farmers have extra incentive to use it.
The bad news: thanks to these plants,farmers now spray massive amounts of herbicide.
The good news: at least its one of the less toxic herbicides.
So is this bad news?
Mostly yes, but from an environmental rather than a health point of view.
More glyphosate is being used, but its not showing up on our food in unsafe amounts.
However, theres another kind of GMO plant: crops that produce their own insecticide.
Theyre calledBtcrops because they produce the same natural toxin as the bacterium calledBacillus thuringiensis.
Like glyphosate, this was a popular pesticide long before GMOs came on the scene.
Now youll find people claimingBttoxin is dangerous to humans (it isnt) and confusing it with glyphosate.
So do GMOs increase pesticide use?
Yes and no, depending on which GMO youre talking about.
You cant lump them together and say theyre good or bad as a group.
What you might do: We discussed pesticides on food inour article about the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables.
Pesticides arent onanyconventionally-grown food in dangerous quantities: the Dirty Dozen is actually very clean.
Meanwhile, buying organic means youll still have pesticides on your foodjust different ones.
And, we dont have data on whether those are used in dangerous levels or not.
Its unnatural and could have unintended consequences.
The facts: We have been messing with plants DNA for as long as humans have been growing plants.
Archaeologists know that Native Americansbred the scrawny weed teosinte into the plump-kerneled corn plants we eat today.
So the question isnt whether we should mess with plant DNA, but how.
Plants have a different set of recipes, which is why they end up as plants and not people.
They dont have to bioengineer each individual seed.
Compare it to other ways we mess with plant DNA.
Mutation breedinginvolvesirradiating plants or their seeds, essentially vandalizing random recipes in an attempt to create a mutant super-plant.
Its a technique straight out of 1950s comic books, and it actually works.
This technique is becoming more common as GMOs are falling out of favor in some countries.
The extensive testing and regulation that apply to GMOs dont apply to these plants.
Hybridsare more common, but still weird.
Some are even sterile,like seedless watermelonsand other freaks of nature that people occasionally assume are GMOs.
If you want to grow a hybrid plant year after year, you oughta keep buying hybrid seeds.
Backcross breedingis also used as an alternative to GMOs.
(Grist has done some excellent, unbiased reporting on GMOs.
For starters,here is the articlethat went along with that chart.)
What you might do: Its just about impossible to avoid plants that have been genetically altered somehow.
If mutation breeding or backcrossing honestly bother you, you might consider starting efforts to getthoselabeled.
The facts: Agreed: Monsanto and companies like it are bad for agriculture.
The big companies use market leverage and patent law to bully farmers into doing things their way.
I really dont like that these companies own so much of American agriculture.
But genetically modified cropsonly date back to the 1990s, and weve had industrial agriculture long before that.
Banning or embracing GMOs is just rearranging deck chairs.
Who wins in this scenario?
Pesticide manufacturers, for sure (with or without GMOs).
Seed breeders (likewise).
The companies that make the processed food win out.
Consumers like you and me?
We get cheap food (yay!)
but its the least healthy kind of food (boo.)
Without insect-resistant crops, farmers spray more broad-spectrum insecticides, which do some collateral damage to surrounding food webs.
Plant scientists will have increased their use of mutagenesis and epigenetic manipulation, perhaps.
We no longer have biotech patents, but we still have traditional seed-breeding patents.
In other words,GMOs were a red herring all along.
If were fighting over-industrialization of agriculture, GMOs are the wrong battleground.
What you’re able to do: This isnt an easy one.
Shopping from those local farms, like we mentioned above, is a tactic that works here too.
(But dont worrytheres more available than you think, even in temperate climates.)
(Since you pay up front, youre reducing her financial risk at the beginning of the season.)
Sometimes you might work a few shifts on the farm in exchange for free or discounted produce.
(Dont forget to look around you forcommunity gardens, too.)
I grow a garden myself, and heres my full disclosure: Its 99% organic.
I dont bother looking for organic seeds, although I prefer non-hybrid, heirloom varieties.
Id probably be all for them.
Photos byMDGLillehammer,CIAT,Steven Depolo,Die Grunen Karnten.
