GM crops do more harm to ecological systems than we can even comprehend
By Kristina Charania
Photos by Andy Rogers
It’s likely you have heard this out of every larynx that has come within five feet of you: we need to feed nine billion people by 2050. And, I will kindly tell you for the hundredth and fifty-fourth time: genetically modified vegetables are not the way to pass go, collect 200, and feed every hungry hand in the safest way possible.
Yeah, sure, remodeled crops are wonderful little innovations that grow in arid conditions and extreme temperatures. Farmers maximize their crop yield and feed a greater number of people by harvesting on otherwise unusable land, which sounds fantastic until you realize that the plants are durable enough to grow anywhere. This includes the places where you don’t want the little buggers to be — namely the quarantined areas that traditionally produce organic vegetables. Modified seeds blossom into superior organisms that will invade spaces and outcompete regular crops for the resources necessary for growth. While many scientific papers argue that present GMO crops aren’t vicious towards existing plants, natural mutations and further artificial modifications could lead to an unstoppable Weeds Gone Wild situation in your backyard. Wild girls will at least go home at 2 a.m. These crops won’t.
However, this is really exciting for big agricultural companies, who see these super plants as a way to make some serious dough. This is unfortunate for many reasons. Naturally, small farming practices are steadily put out of business by this monopoly. For example, biotech giant Monsanto imposes a similar oligopoly by producing 90 per cent of soy, 85 per cent of corn, and 95 per cent of sugar beets in the US, all of which are, unsurprisingly, genetically modified and hard to avoid if you buy foods at regular supermarkets.
Eventually, the products from companies like Monsanto will genetically converge into “the perfect crop”: one that is insect-proof and able to grow with minimal sustenance, water, and sunlight. These organisms will not only be susceptible to lethal disease that could annihilate a species, but the horizontal transfer of genes may give environmentalists a massive headache. For example, if scorpion poison-producing cabbages — which, by the way, are very efficient against pesky caterpillars — were present in the environment, a virus could transmit the gene that codes for the poison from one organism to another of a different species. Once this transmission occurs naturally in the environment, any gene could reach any organism. This could allow the aforementioned obtrusive crops to pass their DNA onto unmodified vegetables, which could cause a cull of caterpillars.
And, most importantly, if genetically modified crops are accepted in society and forcefully pushed upon the agricultural sector, the genetic engineering of humans — the scariest notion of them all — is not far off the horizon. If we can comfortably produce apples sans-worms and jumbo carrots, we will want to eventually remove genes that propagate cancer in our offspring, and then the mutation for cystic fibrosis, and then the gene coding for cri du chat syndrome . . . you get the picture.
Of course, it’s important to understand and practice the genetic modification of organisms in controlled situations. But limitations and less real-world application are crucial because we can’t observe the side effects of any altered organism until they have formed a niche in our environment and it becomes too late to reverse any potential damage done. Call me a pessimist, but have fun dealing with Greenpeace when they say “I told you so,” as your garden grows a mind of its own.
