USDA official position on Genetically modified crops

If you are following the battle over genetic engineering of food crops, here is an interesting review of recent happenings.

First, the Secretary of USDA issues a softened statement stating the offricial position supporting of "co-existence" of genetic altered and  natural crops. In this letter alone is some very concerning and misguided statements that we could discuss at length. But, before we get the privilege of digging into that...

Only days later the USDA does an about face and completely deregulates genetically altered alfalfa, with other crops soon to follow. This deregulation means completely unrestricted, unsupervised, unconditional approval to plant genetically altered alfalfa at will.

Why the change in policy?  This article gives a few clues, pointing directly to the white house and the Obama Administration. Apparently this is an example of Obama desiring to appear big business friendly by removing "burdensome regulation".  While I am all for deregulation, there are some aspects of society that the government have an interest in regulating, because the actions of few can affect the lives of many in irreparable ways.

If Obama truly wanted to remove burdensome regulation, he could start with the food safety laws that are designed only to protect the public from unnatural factory food production, but in reality remove competition through unnecessarily restricting small family farms from selling healthy product. In that sense, the regulations increase danger to the public through limitation of competition and local inspections and choices.

In contract, genetically altered crops do absolutely nothing to help the public, nor increase the food supply. The only purpose in the genetic alterations of alfalfa and soybeans and most other crops, is simply to allow increased use of dangerous herbicides and thereby increase profits of a single corporation. The reality is that the increased use of herbicide can easily be shown to endanger the food supply, and the health of those eating it.  So in the food safety laws, the regulation decreases benefit to the consumer, while in genetic alterations deregulation puts the public at direct risk.

The bottom line here is.. plants depend not on the chemicals in the soil as much as they do the LIFE in the soil, the microscopic life that thrives in decaying organic material creating humus through compost.  the chemicals sprayed on the plants and ground to yield short term cosmetic benefits, destroy the life in the soil itself. This in turn leaves the crops suffering from decreased fertility of soil. The modern response is to apply even more chemicals. this depletes the LIFE further, and a vicious cycle is created. This downward spiral continues until the soil is so dead that it can not grow anything worthwhile, at which point the ground is abandoned as food producing.

Isn't it amazing that "dead" unproductive fields are a problem after only a hundred years or so of agriculture, when the earth and nature has sustained itself for thousands of years without degrading? Doesn't that tell us that we are going down the wrong path? Do we really truly believe that we would have no food without the chemist inside Monsanto to keep the earth alive? sigh...

Here again we see the legacy we are leaving for our grandchildren. If each 10 years is marked by a need to spray higher and higher concentrations of chemicals to get plants to grow, where will our grandchildren be?  Its obvious that this is the case because the ONLY genetic modifications to these crops is to make them more immune to Roundup.. the herbicide. Food plants being immune to this poison allows for spraying higher concentrations of the chemical than ever before. There you have the circle described above.

This move by the Obama administration is perhaps one of the worst moves he has made yet. It is one that has severe, lasting, irreversible implications for our grandchildren. For you and I, the consumer, this is not about money, convenience, "feeding the world" its about the ability of our grandchildren to grow food. Its more fundamental than health care, financial models, taxes, etc. This is food, one of the truly core things none of us can live without.

At Little Sprouts we are doing what we can to preserve the food that has kept us healthy for generations through heritage seed preservation. As the proliferation of genetically altered crops spreads, farms such as ours will be forced to move to more and more remote areas to prevent the spread of genetic alterations to our heritage plants.