Five Foods That Are Killing the Planet

[enki23]

6. Why they have to stupidly imply that non "genetically modified" corn is any better for the planet.

No. It's not better. It's worse. You use a lot *more* and a lot *nastier* herbicides and insecticides, if you want enough of a crop to pay the outrageous cash rent that gets charged in places where corn is grown. The fertilizer requirement is the same. The tillage and resulting soil erosion problems are the same. Irrigation costs, both monetary and environmental, are the same. The fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions are typically *worse*, because it often requires more trips over the field. Even when you don't end up having to pay an airplane to spray the fields with even nastier shit to save your crop from a bad insect problem that crops up late in the season.

There is literally nothing better about conventional corn farming with non GMO corn. Nothing except PR costs, and farmer autonomy (which most farm workers no longer actually have anyway).

That said, corn is fucking destroying large swaths of the planet, ecologically as well as socio-economically. It *is* going to bite us hard one day, and that day may not be that long in coming. We need agricultural diversity, and we need it badly. GMOs have very little to do with that problem, except in that it may be possible for the technology to help if properly applied.