Why the anti-GMO crowd can’t have it both ways
Consumers need to closely re-examine their beliefs about food, Toban Dyck argues
The negative rhetoric surrounding GMOs, Big Ag and non-organic food production is due for a reckoning. At some point, many will have to wake up to the reality that their beliefs on food are less rational than they are ideological. And that in some cases these beliefs are slowing food production worldwide.
“If we continue to make it hard for farmers to maintain production, we will have to accept a little more hunger and more food insecurity,” said food and agricultural economist Jayson Lusk, speaking at an Agvocacy Forum in Anaheim, Calif.
Many of these beliefs seem like philosophical, almost religious responses cloaked in baseless accusations to what are real, tangible and very practical and needed advancements for agriculture and food production.
“The average consumer may believe that organic is better, but that same person wants his or her tomatoes to last on the counter for an entire week,” said Juan Sabater, a tomato farmer in California. “Yeah, we give our fruits a chlorine bath before they hit the market. Otherwise they won’t look fresh the next day.”
This same farmer tosses into the trash about one-third of his harvest because those tomatoes don’t meet the esthetic demands of the same consumer who has no problem deriding him for using the synthetic pesticides or bleach solutions that make a shelf-life possible.
“Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). “At the retail level, large quantities of food are wasted due to quality standards that over-emphasize appearance.”
If you want a tomato that looks a certain way every time and for a long time, you’re implicitly consenting to a whole host of things at work to meet those demands.
“People think that just because something is organic, it’s better,” said Sabater. “I know of some very toxic organic pesticides. Ones that are very poisonous.”
At the forum, one presenter recalled showing three soybean plants to farm visitors.
One was a genetically modified variety, resistant to the weed killer Roundup. One was a conventional variety and farmed using traditional chemicals. And the other was an organic variety, which was also farmed organically.
Two of those plants had been sprayed multiple times with a variety of synthetic and organic chemicals and both showed signs of wilt and sickness. The one resistant to Roundup had been sprayed only twice and looked strong and healthy.
Whatever strides I or anyone else advocating on behalf of agriculture make in bridging this knowledge gap seems to be one meme or TV commercial away from disappearing. Our gains are fragile and the consumer is fickle.
Every action needs a reaction. And I’m more than comfortable keeping a bit of pressure applied to food production and agriculture. Big things grow too big when unchecked.
When the minds involved in agriculture, with its mission to meet the food demands of an entire world, see an opportunity to better meet those demands, what are they supposed to do? What are we asking of them? To stop? To quit using their unique expertise to determine a better more efficient course of action?
Public perception can close doors. And it has. Researchers won’t pursue projects that have no support, regardless of how beneficial the advancement could be to the global food market.
The consumer needs to look inward. The consumer needs to once and for all come to a series of intelligent conclusions regarding the various things for which they criticizes the agricultural community.
We’re not perfect. But we do care about the land we farm. We want our businesses to be sustainable and multi-generational.