A Farmer Weighs In

Well, he got after me, as he sometimes does. Had I been fair? Had I slammed Monsanto without giving the company a chance to defend itself? What if it were true that this technology not only was improving yields but also was capable of doing a host of other things? If, for example, Monsanto could breed a drought-resistant strain of wheat, how beneficial to humanity would that be?

It was in vain to tell him—my long dead father—that Monsanto was hardly likely to take my call. No, he was as persistent in death as he was in life, and so I did what I had always done: sighed and caved.

Right—so who would take my call? Cousin Marshall, I decided. He’s family and a farmer, so it was the work of a moment to call him.

Well, he confirmed what I suspected: yes, he uses Roundup-Ready seeds from Monsanto, which in this case come from a local seed dealer, Dairyland Seed. And yes, he’s seen an increase in his yields; in addition, he’s using much less pesticide / herbicide. Even better, what he’s using is far less toxic—before, he had been using pesticides / herbicides with a low LD 50 (a measure of toxicity, and the lower the LD 50 the more toxic); with Roundup, he doesn’t have to worry about applying near streams and killing fish.

Well, LD 50 was new to me, so I googled it, and discovered that it stood for the lethal dose (LD) of 50 percent of a given population. Right—so I looked that up and discovered that Roundup has an LD 50 of 5,600mg / kg for rats. In short, if you give 5,600 mg / kg to 100 rats, you will kill 50 of them.

Wow—the stuff you learn as a blogger!

All that led to the question: was Roundup really less toxic? The answer—par for the course—is that I don’t know. I can tell you that I went to Table 6 of the Pesticide Safety Fact Sheet; Roundup’s LD 50 seemed to be in the mid-range—there were others with an LD 50 of over 10,000 mg / kg. But what do I know about farming? There may be other factors to consider….

Marshall’s one problem with Roundup? Well, at one point he was farming with both Roundup-ready and with non-Roundup-ready seeds (in other words—regular seeds), and somehow he forgot which was which. So he applied Roundup to one of his fields, with the result…

You could tell it still hurt, so I didn’t tell him, though I was tempted, “typical Newhouse!”

In short, for Marshall, Monsanto has made his life easier. And guess what? Anything that makes a farmer’s life easier is—usually—something I’m all in favor of. Because a farmer’s life is seriously hard, and never more so than today. And so I assured him that I bore him no grudge for using genetically-modified seeds. After all, I well remember the howls I got from people who learned that I worked for Wal-Mart—who am I to talk?

Marshall was then good enough to write an email, in which he pointed out…wait, let him tell it:

Over 90% of the acreage in the Corn Belt is under cultivation using GMO’s (as I stated earlier).  The problem with that scenario is that it represents millions of square miles of a man-made monoculture.  That is not anything you will find in nature anywhere on this planet and not at any time in the past.  Earth’s systems will fight that and will eventually win the battle.  That is already occurring with weeds developing resistance at various places around the country.  As numbers of species of resistant weeds increase and areas infected with these resistant weeds expand, the efficiency of GMO’s (Roundup in this case) always yields to the environment.

Marshall went on to state, “Each GMO breakthrough is a short term solution designed to last a decade or two if the industry is lucky.”

Well—that’s definitely a cause for concern. In short, we’re skirting with disaster, hoping to outwit Mother Nature. Can we sustain that?

If I were a farmer, I might very well do as Marshall has done: join the crowd and grow GMO seeds. The problem? I’m not a farmer, but an eater. And which foods and products have GMO’s? At the moment, I have to assume that they all do—at least until I go onto a site that has a list of GMO-free foods.

As I said yesterday, we have taken part in an experiment without being told that we were guinea pigs. And what have been the consequences? Since I had written about the possibility of GMO foods being linked to autism, I decided to check it out. Here, from the Washington Times, is a comparison of US’ versus Britain’s—which has banned GMO foods—rates of autism:

As of 2010, their article said, autism prevalence rates for 8-year-old British boys was about four cases per 1,000, and 0.8 per 1,000 for British girls. This was essentially the same as in 2004.

By contrast, autism rates for 8-year-old U.S. boys rose from a range of 8.9. to 15.8 cases per 1,000 in 2004 to an average of 18.4 cases per 1,000 in 2008. For U.S. girls, rates went from 1.5 to 3.7 cases per 1,000 in 2004 to four cases per 1,000 in 2008.

Maybe it’s true what Mom always said: you are what you eat!