Genetically Modified Crops Threaten Traditional Farming

Every school child learns that agriculture was the key to civilization. A society that could feed itself developed culture. Since the beginning of cultivation, certain practices allowed populations to maintain healthy crops and abundant food supplies. Yet today, despite our understanding of history, science, politics and technology, we are entering a dangerous time when our very sustenance is threatened on a worldwide scale.

Many traditional farming practices are in danger of being obliterated due to greed and hubris by large-scale agricultural corporations.

Traditional farming practices include the saving of seed for next year’s crop. This ensures the possibility of a future crop as well as eliminates the need for a farmer to sink into debt.

A variety of cultivated plants increases nutritional food sources. Plant diversity prevents famine. If one type of plant is lost to disease, a population can depend on the healthy, remaining crops for food.

People in traditional societies depended on certain plant combinations for nutritional needs. Small farms incorporated crops suitable to the weather patterns of the local environment such as drought resistant plants and often employed such practices as crop rotation and the planting of legumes to fix nitrogen in the soil off-season.

Crop uniformity is a recipe for disaster. An epidemic of a plant disease can devastate a harvest and if a community is solely reliant on one crop, can cause famine. In 1984, a citrus disease in Florida forced the destruction of 18 million citrus trees and seedlings. Starvation occurred during the tragic Irish Potato Famine when a fungus attacked genetically similar potatoes. The Mayan civilization is thought to have collapsed due to their reliance on a restricted variety of maize, which was destroyed by a virus.

Farmers have traditionally saved seed and developed new crop varieties ensuring sustainability, plant diversity and fiscal responsibility. Yet these time-honored practices are being threatened by a small group of powerful corporations.

Hybrid and genetically modified crops are replacing diversification through large-scale operations. In 2008, 80% of American corn, 86% of its cotton and 92% of soybean products were genetically modified varieties.

      In the early 1980’s, the Supreme Court of the United States of America granted seed companies the right to patent genetically modified seeds and restricted the rights of farmers to save seeds for future use. So, if a farmer purchases genetically modified seed, it is illegal to save some of this year’s crop for the next year as that would be an infringement on the patent rights of the genetically modified seed producer. Meanwhile, the monster companies bought up and eliminated smaller seed companies that produced and sold ‘regular,’ unmodified products thus reducing the availability of ‘normal’ seeds.

      As many as 400 American farmers have received threats of legal action due to patent infringement. Small farmers who can not afford legal fees and the ensuing protracted court battles back down in the face of corporate power and corporate unlimited financial resources. Monsanto, for example, funds a department of licensing and patent enforcement with a 10 million dollar annual budget, a force the individual farmer can not face.

      Compliant farmers as well as farmers who do not use the patented products are threatened too. Cross-pollination due to wind factors can effect regular crops miles away. Seed blown from trucks can infiltrate a field or normal crops. Yet these innocent bystanders are also threatened with patent infringement. Organic farms contaminated by wind blown genetically modified pollinators loose their right to be classified as organic. The very presence of genetically modified products in an area is capable of ruining a farming business.

      The Union for the Protection of New Verities of Plants is a worldwide organization of wealthy, industrialized countries created to enforce the property rights of genetically modified seed companies and restrict the practice of seed saving by farmers around the globe.

      As agricultural mega-farms and cash crops replace sustainable farming, the power of corporate enterprise is reducing biodiversity. Wind blown pollination results in the burning of contaminated fields and ruination of small farmers. Such small time operations have been devastated by debt incurred by their dependence on having to purchase the patented seed, forbidden to save seed.

      The philosophy that larger is better and might makes right, the greed of huge agricultural businesses and the complicity of governments who regulate with favoritism has resulted in a type of food fascism and a tyranny of corporate power over individual rights and the safety of people around the world.

Zambia. A series of droughts caused a decrease in corn production. Corn or maize became a staple of Zambian diet when colonial rulers decreed large-scale production to feed workers. Maize came to supply one half the caloric intake of the Zambian diet. The dependence on that single crop caused a hunger problem when the corn failed. Yet, some sections of the country were spared famine. There, traditional Zambian small farmers still planted and depended on millet, sorghum, and cassava, all drought resistant crops.

Single crop cultivation and the use of herbicides and pesticides added to the hunger problem as well. Weed killers obliterated plants the people ate as greens. Genetically modified crops killed the caterpillars that were a staple of the Zambian diet.