Despite industry rhetoric, very few countries are willing to ignore public opposition and allow the commercial cultivation of GE soybeans, corn, cotton, or canola, the only four crops currently being grown on any significant scale.

While farmers in 130 nations are currently producing certified organic crops, a grand total of three nations, (the US-with 68% of the world's GE crops, Canada-6%, and Argentina-22%) are still producing 96% of the world's GE crops.

Moreover the US, Canada, and Argentina are finding that that their major overseas customers such as Europe, Japan, and South Korea no longer want to buy GE crops, even for animal feed.

In Europe, the largest agricultural market in the world, grassroots market pressure has forced all of the major supermarket chains and food companies to remove GE ingredients from their consumer products. Meanwhile, on the regulatory front, no new GE crops have been approved for commercialization in the EU since 1998.

Syngenta (formerly Novartis), the largest biotech company in the world, has removed all GE ingredients from its consumer food products. Because of increasing marketplace pressure, 25% of all animal feed in the EU is already GE-free.

Industry propaganda about feeding the world through increased productivity is no longer credible. Genetically engineered crops were created not because they are productive but because they're patentable.

Their economic value is oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers to feed themselves but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed rich.

Currently 63% of the world's GE crops are soybeans, used primarily for animal feed. Corn, again mainly for animal feed, makes up 19% of all GE crops, while rapeseed, used for animal feed and cooking oil, makes up 5%. Even cotton, which constitutes 13% of all GE crops, provides feed for cattle, in the form of cottonseed and cotton gin trash.

Government Subsidies -- Why US Farmers Plant GE Crops

American farmers are planting millions of acres of RR soybeans and other GE crops, not because there is a market demand for them, but because they are receiving taxpayer subsidies from the US government.

Although gene-altered RR seeds and Roundup herbicide are expensive, herbicide-resistant soybeans are more convenient and less time-consuming to grow than traditional varieties-enabling farmers to plant, weed, and harvest more and more acres in a limited amount of time.

Instead of having to till weeds with their tractors and spray several different toxic pesticides, farmers need only spray Monsanto's potent broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, which kills everything green-except for the GE soybean plants.

Especially for cash and time-strapped farmers earning most of their money from off-farm employment (US family farmers get about 90% of their net income from jobs off the farm), this "efficiency" makes RR soybeans seem attractive.

Far more important is the fact that in the US, the more acres a farmer plants in soybeans (or other subsidized crops like corn or cotton), the more money the farmer gets from the government farm subsidy program, which last year paid out $28 billion.

Of this $28 billion in farm subsidies, at least $7-10 billion went to farmers growing GE crops. Thus even though Cargill or ADM routinely rob farmers by paying them less for a bushel of RR soybeans or Bt corn than it took to grow them, farmers can count on recouping their losses with a subsidy payment from the USDA.

The fundamental flaw, from an economic standpoint, of planting more and more GE soybeans so as to collect more and more subsidy payments from the government, is that there is already a huge global surplus of soybeans, not to mention corn and cotton.

This massive surplus is quite profitable for the crop commodities giants like Cargill and ADM, cotton buyers, and the big factory farm cattle feedlots and hog farms, who can count on getting cheap grain and fiber from farmers desperate to sell at any price, but it's nothing less than a recipe for disaster for rural America.

Billion dollar subsidies are the driving force for GE soybeans and corn, but they are also the major destructive force flooding the market and lowering the price for soybeans paid to the farmers. This ever-declining price results in farmers planting even more soybeans or corn.

The end result of this process will likely be the elimination of most small and medium sized farms in the US who depend upon subsidies (with the notable exception of organic farms, which are selling products which consumers want). Organic farmers currently receive no US government subsidies whatsoever.

OrganicConsumers.org

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Once these plants are growing, it is physically impossible to prevent them from pollinating other plants, contaminating them with these new proteins. We have no clue of the long-term consequences. If this insanity continues, our grandchildren may not have access to any non-genetically modified food and the health of our society may continue to rapidly decline. One of the keys to health is good food. Although most of us don't choose to do so, we can still purchase real unaltered food in this country. The future does not appear to provide that option. Genetically modified foods did not exist prior to 1995. Ninety percent of the money Americans spend on food is spent on processed foods, and seventy percent of processed foods have genetically modified foods in them. There are NO STUDIES with humans, on what happens when someone consumes genetically modified foods. The FDA has ASSUMED that they are equivalent to the original and never required any studies to have them approved. This is despite the fact that this technology has never existed in the history of the world before. Especially, in light of the U.S. Federal track record on genetically engineered safety, which is terrible. Starlink corn was only approved for animal consumption, NOT human consumption. This was because of a concern that could cause allergies in humans. Well, Starlink corn would up directly in the human food supply, despite FDA precautions. There are EIGHT different agencies in the U.S. regulating biotechnology, under TWELVE different sets of laws. NONE of the laws had biotechnology in mind when they were passed, since they are 40-50 years old. Folks, this is one of the biggest disasters I could have imagined, just waiting to happen. Related Articles: Health Risks of Genetically Modified Foods Genetically Modified Crops Worry Some Scientists Genetically Altered Plants Might Alter You Americans Don't Know They are Eating Genetically Modified Food Genetically Modified Genes Jump the "Species Barrier"