Viewpoint: Why aren’t Canada and the United States growing sustainable, genetically modified wheat?

Credit: Himanshu Sharma/NurPhoto/Getty Images)
Credit: Himanshu Sharma/NurPhoto/Getty Images)

It’s safe. It would help farmers deal with drought, support biodiversity, protect the environment and decrease a farms carbon footprint. It would help consumers cope with inflation and pay their food bills.

So why aren’t we growing genetically modified wheat?

We’re asking this question again because of the news from South America late last year that Brazil will accept the importation of genetically modified wheat flour from Argentina.

This is an enormous step, marking the first time anywhere in the world that a regulatory agency has approved such a move. Bloomberg called it “the most critical milestone for genetically modified wheat to date.”

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It’s easy to reject something you do not understand. Sadly, we may have only ourselves to blame: We failed to communicate the big advantages of this crop to consumers.

As people learn more about these safe technologies and come to understand that these same technologies help farmers meet the sustainability goals many consumers are asking for and we share, their support for these ‘tools of sustainability’ may change. This is the story of genetically modified crop acceptance, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t come to include the acceptance of genetically modified wheat.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here.

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