The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis.
The GMO debate has been dominated by scientists, business interests, politicians, advocacy groups, and journalists—but the farmers caught in the middle of it often have a less ideological, more practical point of view, some of which we’ve published below.
Amy Hepworth is the seventh generation in her family to farm in New York’s Hudson Valley. She grows upwards of 400 varieties of fruit and vegetables on 250 acres of certified organic land near Poughkeepsie.
. . . .We have to remove the emotion and talk about GMOs on an intellectual level. What is necessary? What will benefit society as a whole? As long as the goal is healthy, delicious, safe, secure food, we shouldn’t exclude GMOs as a possibility to help us get there.
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You can focus on problems with GMOs until they get bigger than the big picture or you can focus on the potential for good.
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[Brian] Ogletree is a grassfed beef producer and conventional commodity crop grower with 2,000 acres just outside of Atlanta. . . . He practices cover cropping, crop rotation, and no-till cultivation practices. . . But he also plants GMO soybeans that have been engineered to resist glyphosate. . .A few years ago we tried some non-GMO soybeans, but easily used twice the amount of chemicals than with the GMO beans. A lot of people don’t understand the amount of chemicals and fuel that it takes to grow a non-GMO [soybean] crop. The whole reason these crops were developed is to be more efficient—to save money and fuel.
Read full, original post: Caught in the Middle: Farmers Seek a New and Improved GMO Debate
