Monsanto has succeeded in subverting virtually every mainstream news outlet and academic plant science program in the US. Those it has not bought off, it has terrorized into silence.

Of the handful of legitimate scientists who have published research questioning the safety of GMOs, more than one has had their careers ruined by pressures imposed by the company and its agents.

Add to this a choir of high-profile “useful idiots” like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Shark Tank TV star Kevin O’Leary, and celebrity physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who, despite having zero training in plant science, use their high profiles to publicly disparage anyone who questions Monsanto’s claims.

What all this adds up to is this: Instead of facts about GMOs, we receive an endless barrage of deliberate falsehoods.

But what about the increase in productivity?

The claim Monsanto trumpets – which is repeated endlessly by the news media and know-nothing celebrities – is that GMOs deliver greater yields that are necessary for “feeding a hungry planet.”

This is a pretty strong argument for Monsanto.

After all, how doctrinaire and hard-hearted would you have to be to sit well-fed and comfortable in a modern economy and take food from the mouths of hungry people by blocking technology?

There’s just one problem with this unchallenged Monsanto claim: It’s total and complete bullshit.

GMO technology has demonstrated itself to be markedly inferior in producing increased crop yields compared to millennia-old, proven, and safe forms of traditional plant breeding.

Why isn’t this basic fact of plant science well-known?

There’s nothing complicated about these facts:

GMO: unproven, potentially dangerous, backed by thuggish behavior on the part of an entity with a criminal track record – and ineffective.

Traditional plant breeding: tested over millennia and proven safe and effective in increasing crop yields.

The scientific study on this came out in 2009 to resounding news media silence.

You can read a summary of the report “Failure to Yield” here.

Or you can cut to the bottom line:

No currently available GE varieties enhance the intrinsic yield of any crops. The intrinsic yields of corn and soybeans did rise during the twentieth century, but not as a result of GE traits. Rather, they were due to successes in traditional breeding.

But there’s more

GMO is not only untested, potentially hazardous, and ineffective in increasing yields, it’s also markedly inferior in the area of creating plants that are resistant to variations in weather. You know, “climate change,” the phenomenon that has the world in a panic.

Regardless of where you stand on this “sky is falling” topic, one fact is clear: Weather is not always a friend to farmers, and climate patterns can and do change dramatically.

We need plants that can adapt to these changes.

Does the “advanced technology” of GMO help with this very real and very serious problem?

Answer: Not in the slightest.

Here’s the bottom line from the expert on this subject:

“While (traditional) plant breeding continues to meet important challenges like improving drought tolerance, improving nitrogen fertilizer efficiency, or increasing yield, genetic engineering has contributed little or nothing.”

Plant scientist Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman made this case in 2014 – again to resounding news media silence:

You can read his more detailed comments here:

Let’s get this straight

Here are the takeaways from all this.

Please share them widely because for all practical purposes they’re a State Secret:

1. GMO is markedly inferior to traditional plant breeding techniques when it comes to increasing crop yields.

2. Traditional plant breeding has repeatedly demonstrated massive effectiveness in the area of developing drought-resistant crops. GMO technology has contributed nothing in this area.

3. In spite of these realities, the vast majority of public crop research money is being spent to promote the GMO agenda of companies like Monsanto.

4. The news media does nothing to make these simple facts known to the public.

5. You’re probably getting this information for the first time – along with up to 50,000 other readers – from a blog run on a (very) part-time basis by someone who has to work to support himself in other arenas while there are literally thousands of people whose full-time job it is to make information like this available to the public.

What’s wrong with this picture?

A lot.

Note: I wish I could say that Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman’s current employer, The Center for Food Safety, helped us with the preparation of this article. Six requests for an interview – all responded to by their PR department with “we’ll get back to you” – yielded nothing.

Perversely, the most detailed study on the effectiveness of traditional plant breeding vs. GMO technology is only available to people willing and able to pay “Nature: The Weekly Journal of Science” for access to it.

If you like to eat at least once or twice a day, and like to see your fellow human beings do so as well, you should be outraged by this. I know I am.

 

– Ken McCarthy
PlantWisdom.org