Tom Philpott writes on grist.org,
Global acreage of genetically modified crops jumped 12 percent in 2007 — “the second highest increase in global biotech crop area in the last five years,” gushes a report from the pro-GMO International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).
Farmers planted an additional 30 million acres of GM crops in 2007, an area nearly equal to the land mass of Iowa (a huge swath of which itself is planted in GM crops). Overall, GM crops cover 282.4 million acres, ISAAA claims — up from zero as recently as 1994.
ISAAA hails the GM explosion as a boon to humanity, ignoring serious evidence that genetically altered food presents health risks. The group also doesn’t mention that the GM acreage is essentially limited to four massive crops: corn, soy, cotton, and canola. That means that a sizabale swath of the globe’s arable land is planted from a startlingly narrow genetic base. Nor does it mention that a single company, Monsanto, dominates this huge and growing market. (It holds the patents on 91 percent of global GM soy, 97 percent of corn, 63 percent of cotton, and 59 percent of canola).
Finally, the report ignores the cascade of Roundup (glyphosate), Monsanto’s flagship herbicide, that has accompanied the rise of GM. As the Center for Food Safety writes in a report released this week (PDF), the great bulk of GM crops — covering four out of five GM acres planted — are engineered to withstand lashings of Roundup.
Click to read the rest of the story. Click to read the ISAAA report.
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