I've never been a fan of genetically modified anything on principle. My instincts tell me to let nature run its course and propagate polycultures of heirloom crops, rather than fuel the industrial agriculture beast by buying Bigger, Better crops for a premium.
...But I was listening to the radio* the other night, and there was a guy talking about Africa, the green revolution, and ending world hunger, and he mentioned that he'd be in favor of offering small scale African farmers GM crops as long as they were beneficial to the farmers (as opposed to something that just made your corn a prettier shade of yellow for end consumers). I am leaving out the bulk of his argument, but the gist was that these guys need all the help they can get.
I am torn. On the one hand, I'm still concerned about selecting for unkillable pests, but plant diseases (as I'm learning) can be more than a handful, and I'm not sure I'd begrudge a small farmer disease resistant crops if it meant he could use fewer pesticide sprays (that a lot of these guys administer themselves by hand - chemicals on one shoulder, and a kid on the other) and possibly saved him and his family from hunger in a bum year.
Is there really such a big difference between natural evolution and human-assisted mutation? Maybe it really is a pipe dream to think we could feed the world's hungry without disease resistant varietals. At some point I should properly look into this sort of thing and weigh the pro's and con's. I'd be more willing to give GMOs a chance if you could take the big business aspect out.
In any case, I still maintain that polyculture never hurt anyone...
*(Broadcast of The Forces Behind Famine - Roger Thurlow speaking at the World Affairs Council on 8/11/2009)
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