Can Biotech Companies Provide Sustainable Food Options?

Pesticides and herbicides are poisons, no matter how a person wants to slice it. So far, biotech companies have instituted two major forms of genetically modified products: crop seed that can withstand higher doses of herbicide and crop seed that "naturally" resists pests.

Upon having a discussion with a friend, I realized that there may be a lot of misunderstanding in   regards to genetically modified food crops, so I thought it might be beneficial to explain it as best as I understand it.

For as long as man has been able to crossbreed, he has done so. In doing, he has isolated some plants to fare better under certain conditions by selection. This makes for a robust plant that can endure many situations.

Genetic modification is not crossbreeding in the sense that most people understand it. Crossbreeding is crossing Tomato 1 with Tomato 2 in effort to find Tomato 1.5.  Genetic modification is a viral or bacterial insertion of a gene into the cell of a tomato with the gene of anything that is NOT a tomato. It crosses species.

RoundUp Ready (RR) crops have a gene that allows them to be sprayed with RoundUp and not die. Every green thing around RR plants die, but not RR plants. Monsanto claims that RoundUp is safe and does not build up in the soil; even if that were true, when a crop can withstand a blanket application of pesticide, what happens to the greenery nearby? What about the toxic drift into neighboring towns?

"Pest resistant"(Bt) crops have genetic technology inserted to resist pests, reducing the need for pesticide spraying. In the case of using Bt technology in high-yielding industrial crops -- like corn and cotton -- the plant has been spliced with a soil bacterium form of botulism. That's why these plants are "pest resistant": they are, in fact, poison from the root up.

In our humanistic, self-absorbed eyes, we are not pests; therefore, one might use fallacious logic that we are unaffected by this pesticide-in-a-plant. Except when crops are sprayed with pesticides and we know about it, we do our best to wash them clean of the poisons before consuming them. Why should we treat Bt technology any differently?

The question here is whether or not biotech companies even possess the ability to provide truly sustainable solutions to a growing, hungry world. There are reports from seemingly independent farmers that believe the technology is beneficial. And with effort to be unbiased, there are also farmers who believe the technology is ultimately devastating. Of course, the differences between these farmers can be white to black, uncannily across both racial and socio-economic lines.

It seems that for extremely large North American farms (excluding Mexico), the technology is affordable. Since apparently, these farmers already depend heavily on technology to sow, raise and harvest their crops, they are conditioned to accept the technology in the interest of higher yields which can equal higher profits. Everybody's happy, right?

Except  when we think about everybody else.