Every spring on the farm, a magical day comes when the first tinge of green appears in the field, when tender shoots poke through the soil, reaching for the sun. “Wheat’s up!” my dad would say when we’d ride the ATV to scout fields. The shoots fluttered in the breeze, fragile and skinny as young grass. “Corn’s up!” he’d say a few weeks later. The corn was sturdier, thicker. He was always supremely pleased to see the little plants clinging wholeheartedly to the dirt as the South Dakota wind blew, underdogs in the fight to survive. When you think about it, the act of seeds sprouting into plants is mind-blowing. I still can’t believe it sometimes: a pebble of a seed takes in water (a process called imbibition), which hydrates enzymes and food stores and prompts the seed to produce energy. A root called a radical (I love that term) breaks through the seed coat. The shoot follows, heading toward the sun. When the shoot feels the first ray, it starts producing leaves and turning green. The whole process is called photomorphogenesis.
They look so innocent, those pale green sprouts on America’s farms. But not all is as it seems; 92 percent and 94 percent of the corn and soybeans, respectively, in our country’s fields are genetically modified.1 They are human-made creations disguised as nature’s corn and soybeans. They contain the genes of bacteria, animals, and plants placed within their DNA by scientists in laboratories. Knowing this, the spring days I spent working for the newspaper, when I admired the fledgling sprouts from the car on my way to an assignment, take on a sinister quality. I, like many others, did not know what alien plant life lurked in the fields.
How did we get here, anyway? In the late 1990s, the plastics-company-turned-agrochemical/biotech-corporation Monsanto released a new invention: seeds that its scientists had genetically modified to survive the application of Roundup, the company’s signature herbicide.2 Roundup, or glyphosate, was at the time the most effective weed and grass killer available to farmers, but, like other herbicides, spraying it would kill the crop along with the weeds. Farmers mainly used Roundup to “burn down” bare fields, or kill weeds before and after planting. When Monsanto created plants capable of surviving Roundup (“Roundup Ready” as they were dubbed), farmers were astounded. Spraying herbicide directly onto corn (1998) and soybeans (1996) achieved far better weed control. The company eventually created Roundup Ready cotton, canola, sugar beets, and alfalfa. Its patent on glyphosate expired in 2000, but it still markets its Roundup Ready seeds. Monsanto has already developed glyphosate-tolerant wheat, which will likely appear on the market in the coming years if federal regulators approve it. GM corn and soybeans became America’s most-grown crops, and they still are. More than 50 percent of U.S. cropland, or 163.5 million acres, is devoted to corn and soybeans.3 Farmers embraced Roundup Ready technology as fast as every other tool they’d been offered by the agribusiness industry. This one, though, proved dangerous in new ways.
Since GM crops could withstand glyphosate only, farmers used that same herbicide at least once a year, but usually two or three times a year. Using so much glyphosate put evolutionary pressure on weeds, and at least ten “superweeds” became resistant to the chemical.4 Farmers responded by increasing the amount they use, which caused further resistance. Higher application rates and more frequent use also means glyphosate covers the grain we eat in higher concentrations than ever before. Glyphosate residue lingers in our food, especially processed items derived from GM corn and soy.5 It also coats the feed our livestock eat, and since chemicals become more concentrated as they travel up the food chain, our meat is laced with glyphosate, too. We also encounter glyphosate in the air, surface water, and rain.
Glyphosate is even in the fuel we put in our cars thanks to the ethanol industry. If the 1990s was the era of genetic modification, then the first decade of the new millennium was the era of ethanol. The U.S. government sponsored the development of a massive ethanol industry to suck up the surplus corn caused by increased production. Ethanol plants sprang up across the Midwest in states like Iowa, eastern South Dakota, Minnesota, and Illinois. Demand for corn skyrocketed as more ethanol plants opened, causing prices to double in 2007.6 Corn farmers cashed in on record profits, which they sunk into expansion efforts to produce even more corn. Ostensibly the project was intended to create sustainable biofuel—sounds pretty good, right?—but the results have been ecologically and socially destructive. Land disappeared from conservation programs. Farmers began growing “corn on corn,” or planting corn on the same fields year after year, which increased their need for fertilizer, depleted soil, and further contributed to insect and weed resistance. Ethanol was the final nail in the coffin for farm diversification, as the lure of high profits swayed farmers to convert pastures, barnyards, and hayfields to cornfields. Edge tillage, a practice not used since before the Dust Bowl, returned almost overnight.7 Edge tillage, which means removing borders between fields, is another way of saying one is farming fencerow to fencerow.
My many miles on the back roads of Iowa, Minnesota, eastern South Dakota, and northeast Nebraska on Tri-State Neighbor assignments confirm that edge tillage is back big time. What I saw was “corn creep.” Farmers had moved their grain bins and machine sheds in tight clusters around their houses, reducing the farmyard to make way for more corn. Fields had crept closer to the farmhouses, riverbanks, and roads, closing in on the people. I even saw front yards planted to corn. The scenes now remind me of a line from Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: “Corn had pushed the animals and their feed crops off the land, and steadily expanded into their paddocks and pastures and fields. Now it proceeded to out the people.”8
Corn production continues to increase, pushed on by the ethanol industry. Less than 5 percent of the U.S. corn crop went to ethanol production in 2000; the rest went to food and livestock feed. By 2013, 40 percent of U.S. corn went to ethanol, 45 percent to livestock feed, and 15 percent to food and beverages.9 The ethanol boom meant a windfall for some farmers, but it also drove even more extreme specialization that hurts them when prices fall, as they did in 2014. Reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, the Environmental Working Group, and many others have proven that ethanol is inherently unsustainable. I doubt it will survive as an industry, especially as wind and solar power take hold. When ethanol finally dies, those farmers who invested heavily in corn—those who are no longer diverse—will suffer.
Not long after Roundup Ready seeds appeared, Monsanto invented yet another GM corn variety, this one engineered to produce insecticidal toxins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). A natural, soil-borne bacterium, Bt produces crystal-like proteins (Cry proteins) that poison certain insects that eat it. Hence Bt corn, as it is known, is actually a registered pesticide, as it can indeed kill certain pests, such as the European corn borer and the western corn rootworm. Bt corn became a commonly grown crop, as did Bt cotton—but as with Roundup Ready seeds, overuse caused problems. In the United States, the western corn rootworm is resistant to Bt corn, and many scientists expect other insects to develop resistance in the coming years.10
Today corn, soybeans, and cotton are genetically engineered to resist all kinds of other herbicides (like dicamba and 2,4–D), tolerate insects, withstand drought, and have increased yields.11 Farmers are also growing GM potatoes, apples, sugar beets, alfalfa, canola, papaya, and squash. The industry has always insisted that GM seeds are safe. Whether that’s true or not hasn’t been thoroughly tested. Scientists who question the safety of GM food are harassed by agribusiness corporations and often find themselves blacklisted in the academic community. French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, a professor at the University of Caen in France, discovered in a two-year study that rats fed GM corn and Roundup developed liver and kidney disease and mammary tumors. When his work appeared in 2012, Monsanto and scientists linked to the company lambasted the study so vigorously that the journal retracted it. Seralini republished his findings in 2014.12 Other scientists who’ve reported negative connections between GM food, glyphosate, and human health have been similarly silenced.
Around 80 percent of processed foods contain GM ingredients, and Americans eat a lot of processed food. Yet we aren’t allowed to label GM products or even examine the safety of something most of us consume every day. This frightens me not only because of the potential human health and environmental consequences, but also because of the extreme control corporations like Monsanto have over scientists, politicians, professors, journalists, all of us. The agribusiness companies that controlled the news at Tri-State Neighbor are still trying to do so there and everywhere. We’re talking about the silencing of free speech in a country that claims to value it.
In Kevin’s greenhouse, however, every plant is what it claims to be, inside and out. Sunlight sifts through the mesh enclosure onto black flats of seedlings on tables. Kevin points at the just-sprouted plants and names them: basil, purple basil, dill, red Russian kale, chard, turnips, beets, lettuce. As is the case with many small-scale organic growers, Kevin’s decision to farm organically is rooted in his ecological, spiritual, and philosophical beliefs, and those beliefs include a deep skepticism of GM crops and the processed foods made from them. “I look at GM foods as Frankenstein food because we don’t know what it is,” Kevin says. “How can you make better food than God? When people ask me, ‘What is organic?’ I go, ‘Organic is the way God intended food to be grown.’ That’s it. Period.”
Kevin is not against science. He is not a religious fanatic, and he does not advocate a return to farming with primitive tools. “The way God intended food to be grown” is his way of describing the philosophy of mimicking nature, not subduing it. Whether they call it God or Mother Nature or something else, many people who believe in regenerative agriculture agree that there is something deeply wrong, something deeply out of sync with the natural order of life on earth, when farmers replace natural processes with chemical solutions and when genetically altered food becomes part of our daily diet. Such actions threaten not only our health and planet, but also the survival of humankind in the future. Kevin also says he wants to avoid degrading resources that the next generation depends on. “I base everything on the future generations. No matter what, we have to do it the right way. If you have kids or plan on having kids, you have to look at it that way,” he says.
But can regenerative, organic agriculture provide enough food for a growing population? The most common objection from conventional farming advocates is that organic agriculture cannot “feed the world,” something American farmers now feel obligated to do, never mind that they cannot even feed their own communities or themselves. The threat of hunger is one reason we industrialized the food system in earnest after World War II. Agribusiness proponents framed industrialization as the only way to grow enough food for everyone, and they argue that organic agriculture isn’t productive enough. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. In the longest-running organic versus conventional field test in the United States conducted by the Rodale Institute, organic crops consistently show comparable or higher yields than conventional crops.13
This side-by-side evaluation, called the Farming Systems Trial (FST), was started in 1981 and continues today, and it is a reliable source of evidence in assessing the long-term potential of organic. Taking a long view like Rodale does is necessary for comparing organic and conventional systems. Other researchers conduct single- or multiple-year field tests, and these typically find that organic yields are lower than conventional yields. Why? The answer lies in the soil. Researchers often plant trial fields on land formerly used for conventional growing. Even if the land was used for other purposes, it’s safe to say most wasn’t managed organically and isn’t exceptionally rich, so test plants start off in depleted soil (just a medium to hold the plant up, as Phil put it) that doesn’t hold water and/or contain high enough levels of nitrogen, organic matter, and carbon. The conventional plants receive synthetic fertilizer that compensates for the poor soil, while the organic plants have to wait until cover crops replenish nutrients (a process which takes many years) or until organic manure or compost is applied. The conventional plants also receive chemicals to control pests and insects; resistance in an organic system, however, is built over time.
It’s no wonder conventional yields are higher in the first few years of side-by-side comparisons—but then a shift starts to occur. As soil health and pest resistance improve in the organic system, yields increase. The true potential of organic is unlocked with time, and the evidence is undeniable that organic agriculture is not only more productive, but also more resource efficient and profitable. Here are some highlights from the Rodale Institute’s thirty-year report on the experiment:
“Over the 30 years of the trial, organic corn and soybean yields were equivalent to conventional yields in the tilled systems.”
“Wheat yields were the same for organic and conventional systems.”
“Organic corn yields were 31 percent higher than conventional in years of drought.”
“Corn and soybean crops in the organic systems tolerated much higher levels of weed competition than their conventional counterparts, while producing equivalent yields.”
“Organic farming uses 45 percent less energy and is more efficient.”
“Conventional systems produce 40 percent more greenhouse gases.”
“Soil health in the organic systems has increased over time while the conventional systems remain essentially unchanged.”
“Organic fields increased groundwater recharge and reduced runoff.”
“The organic systems were nearly three times more profitable than the conventional systems.”
“Even without a price premium, the organic systems are competitive with the conventional systems.”
“After thirty years of a rigorous side-by-side comparison, the Rodale Institute confidently concludes organic methods are improving the quality of our food, improving the health of our soils and water, and improving our nation’s rural areas. Organic agriculture is creating more jobs, providing a livable income for farmers, and restoring America’s confidence in our farming community and food system.”14