Spilling the Beans - January 2008

SIDEBAR 2: HIGH ADOPTION RATES ARE MISLEADING

 Although GMOs occupy only about 1.5% of total global crop land, the percentage of US soy, corn, and cotton farmers using GM seeds is quite high. The industry says this demonstrates that their crops perform better, but this argument is simplistic and misleading.

Biotech companies bought a large portion of the seed industry worldwide. They control the vast majority of the soy, corn, cotton, and canola seeds in North America. They not only offer incentives and quotas to their dealers for selling the GM varieties, many of the high performance non-GM varieties have been removed from the market. The US-based Center for Food Safety states that “for many farmers across the country, it has become difficult if not impossible to find high quality, conventional varieties of corn, soy, and cotton seed.”[54] Charles Benbrook also confirms that “limited supplies of [popular] conventional crop seeds” has contributed to more GM seed sales. A2007 Friends of the Earth report concludes that since farmers are forced to “buy GM in order to get higher quality seeds” the high GM adoption rates do not necessarily come from farmers’ interest in GM crops. [55] 

While Roundup Ready soybeans do not offer higher profits to farmers, the technology can reduce farm labor and give farmers “increased flexibility in the timing of herbicide applications”[56] This convenience is another reason for the high adoption.

Roundup Ready soybean fields are usually “cleaner,” meaning less weeds. Because farmers take pride in cleaner fields, this attribute turns out to be a very significant psychological motivator for GMO adoption—especially when the neighbor has cleaner GM fields. In fact, “some landlords insist on clean fields,”[57] according to Mike Duffy, an Iowa State University economist.

Duffy says that landlord pressure and advertising likely contribute to the high use of herbicide tolerant soybeans. But he points out, “The primary beneficiaries of the first generation biotechnology products are most likely the seed companies that created the products. Additionally, in the case of herbicide tolerance, the companies that supply the tolerant herbicides also benefit from the development of the biotech crops.”[58]

Some farmers admit that they use GM seeds because they fear Monsanto. “Thousands of US farmers have been investigated by Monsanto,”[59] for allegedly saving harvested GM seeds and replanting them in the next season—an age-old farm practice made illegal by GMO buyers’ contracts. Monsanto won at least US$15.2 million from nearly 200 lawsuits against farmers and organizations, plus earnings from hundreds of private settlements. Several farmers complained that they either did not purchase Monsanto’s seeds at all, or did not save them. They say Monsanto’s allegations are based on faulty GMO detection tests or on unwanted GM contamination in their fields. Unwilling to challenge Monsanto in the expensive court system, some farmers choose to buy the company’s seeds each year just to prevent the company from targeting them. 

Go to Sidebar 1: GMO Sugar Will Not be Excused