It's easy to say no when you have the resources to live, but in countries where the main population is in poverty and their primary food source is corn, they have to do whatever is necessary for survival.

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GMO corn does not force people to plant it. In fact it cost lots of money to buy the seed. The local farners are saving seed from year to year. If GMO traits do mix in though wind-borne polination, it's easy to get rid of them through selection of corn kernels to plant next year. That's how corn was hybridized in the first place thousands of years ago.

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Sorry, Monsanto is the LAST entity I would trust with human suffering. Besides, GMO seed typically has to be repurchased each year and small, poverty stricken farmers will not be able "to save seed" because one of the patentable hallmarks to GMOs is that they do not produce seed thereby protecting intellectual property. Ask those organic farmers whose crops have been contaminated how that's working out for them. Horror stories.

Now should THAT little quirk (non reproducing) get into the existing genes, you can kiss ALL corn goodbye. Selection that has been going on since time unended will no longer be possible as we know it. Think about the ramifications more than 5 years down the road....and then there are the animals in India that are dying from lack of "something" in GMO corn that our scientists haven't identified yet. Everything seems to be the same between the two except sheep fed GMO keep dying--and that is the only difference in control groups. To the USA, if we can't identify it, it doesn't exist. Long term studies? No one in our world respects that idea any more to our species' detriment. And it's the USA that pushing these crops because ...wait for it...it is USA Companies that benefit (profits, taxes, patents, subsidiaries, etc etc etc). If that's not so, where are the EU GMO companies? Why does the EU still have GMO bans in place?

Really, read up on GMOs and not the industry supported-and-paid for studies. Really people. This is more dangerous than we are being told--especially in the USA. Don't take my or any one else's word for it. Really, it is that important.

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Hey, I used to be against GMO, but if you spend the time to do the reasearch, they can be less harmful. One BIG PLUS to GMO is that there are less or even no pesticides being used. That means there is no harm to the local ecosystem. In the end the tradeoff for GMO is much safer all around.

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mick.

"...one of the patentable hallmarks to GMOs is that they do not produce seed..." All this time I thot corn was the seed. We also eat the seeds of wheat.

"Horror stories." Really? - no examples given.

If it wasn't for that abominable Gregor Mendel we could all be eating weeds.

I'm with Villarreal on this one - the crop that keeps you alive is the good crop, we're not talking profits here.

If another ice age appears we may well be grateful for scientists who can accelerate plant adaptability.

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Organic crops are often over looked in situations like this. With proper use of organic farming techniques (which doesn't *just* mean not using agro-chemicals) yeilds are often higher in the southern hemisphere, with particular resistance to drought conditions (the roots dig deeper for nutrients and hence water in organic crops, in non-organics the roots stay near the surface which is where the fertilisers are sprayed).
I am biased towards organics, I run a coffee & tea merchants (http://www.oxfordethical.co.uk) here in the UK stocking only organic products, but my views come not only from organic research and studies carried out in projects through-out the developing world, but also anecdotally from the experiences of the farmers who supply our products.

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Rt: Patentable GMO crops don't produce fertile seeds. GMO corn produces seeds that you can eat, but you can't replant them and expect to grow the same quality crop. So farmers are forced to buy new seeds every year. Do you think farmers in Honduras can afford that?

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A quick 30 second web search reveals that genetically modified corn (and soybeans) do indeed produce seeds but that farmers are typically required to sign a technology transfer agreement that prevents them from saving, replanting, or giving aways seeds to other farmers. In South America there is even a black market trade for these seeds. So, the problem is not the GMO per se but the companies that produce them looking for a profit. In most cases GMO's are relatively harmless, they are simply another way to modify the crops genetic makeup without having to go through years of selective breeding.

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Genetically modified foods will never be a solution to the current food crisis. What we need to be saying is that they are a part of the solution. On my blog, I've always argued that every option should be put on the table in finding a permanent solution to the current food crisis. It's important that farmers who want to practice organic farming be allowed to do so. On the other hand, farmers who prefer to grow genetically modified crops must not be prevented from doing so. There is this case of Gene Ethics, an anti-technology organization in Australia which has mapped farmers who're growing genetically modified crops in the country. I find this very intimidating. It's like stalking farmers who want to grow genetically modified crops. I don't think such a thing should be happening. I've already condemned it in my latest post entitled "Extra-judicial protests on GMOs decried

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Jon: FYI, Monsanto only owns a patent on the idea of the sterile seed technology. There is absolutely _no_ basis for the claim that "Patentable GMO crops do not produce fertile seeds." There are no commercial GMO corn products on the market with the technology. You can can disagree with the way they run their business if you like, but at least get the facts straight. The fact is that you can yield a whole lot more grain from a field of weed and insect free gm corn than you can from a field full of weeds and decimated by corn borer. Would you rather eat corn out of a field full of bugs that a farmer has been dumping pesticide on all season long just to try and yield _something_ , or a clean pesticide free field having had only one or two herbicide applications which were both way before there was any real ear of corn to speak of? What about drought tolerant gm crops? Would you be against those as well?

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