Why Not GMO? 5 Surprising Facts About Food’s Biggest Controversy

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning agronomist Norman Borlaug wrote in a 2000 essay for Plant Physiology that, “By 2025, we will have to nearly double current [food] production again. This increase cannot be accomplished unless farmers across the world have access to current high-yielding crop production methods.” He, like so many other GMO advocates, rails against “antiscience” activists, saying they’re misguided in trying to kill much-needed agriculture technologies.

As it turns out, the argument about yields appears to be faulty. The results of a 20-year study conducted at the University of Wisconsin (and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture) suggest that planting transgene corn does not categorically ensure larger harvests. Some GMO strains did have slightly higher yields, but others were beat out by their non-GMO counterparts. As Tom Philpott writes for Mother Jones, the study shows that genetically altering corn “causes unintended changes in the way it grows, causing it to be less productive.”

Photo: Monty Rakusen/Getty Images

The perceived danger of eating GMO foods is what most wary consumers put their attention on in this multifaceted debate. The science here, however, proves to be the stickiest. The most recent study to suggest there are serious health risks associated with eating transgene corn, conducted at the University of Caen in France, would, despite its critics, appear to support the anti-GMO camp: “Rats fed on a diet containing NK603—a seed variety made tolerant to dousings of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller—or given water with Roundup at levels permitted in the United States, died earlier than those on a standard diet,” Reuters reported last September.

Photo: Patti McConville/Getty Images

Bowman v. Monsanto Co., the first ever GMO patent violation case to reach the Supreme Court, was argued in front of the Justices this week. But this is far from the first time the company has taken legal action against farmers. Monsanto claims, however, that it “files suit against farmers who breach their contracts and infringe our patents—not against farmers who did not intentionally take these actions.” So don’t worry: If GMO crops drift into your fields, no one is going to sue you! (Although some claim the company is far more aggressively litigious than it claims to be.)

But what recourse do organic farmers have? Their very business model depends on their crops not having any patented genes in them. None, apparently. In a new USDA report, the government suggests that such farmers buy additional insurance to protect them from crops lost due to unintentional GMO contamination.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images