A peck on the cheek for industrial agriculture

The US Food and Drug Administration will be spending a few million dollars to ‘inform’ consumers about genetically modified food. It may not be long before Jane Doe from Indianapolis appears on a government funded billboard proclaiming to the world, “I just ate a healthful pork chop produced with patented soybeans genetically modified to withstand at least three non selective herbicides. Mmm-mmm, GOOD!” Tax payers will foot the bill for the $3 million ad campaign after dozens of groups related mostly to corporate agribusiness lobbied for a chunk of the federal budget in the funding resolution recently passed by Congress. Defenders of the expenditure point out that’s not much money in Washington, but here in Langdon it would feed everyone for six lifetimes.Sign me up for the next one.The only resistance by consumers to genetically modified crops has been that, given a choice, a few will always opt for non-gmo or organic labeled food in the grocery store. This must be unsettling for the handful of corporations with their patented seeds that exercise so much control over farmers. But they have had an increasingly difficult time convincing consumers that sole control of the food supply should be theirs.USDA recently announced that organic agriculture, the production of crops and livestock without use of most pesticides, commercial fertilizers, or genetic modification, grew another 15% this year. Undoubtedly, part of what drives that growth is increasing negative publicity about relatively old pesticides like glyphosate or atrazine in our water supply and even in food itself.