Food Renegade
Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | Author: KristenM

You’ve heard of GMO crops, haven’t you? GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are crops which have been substantially altered using genetic engineering. They’re unnaturally modified foods whose safety is dubious at best. (Many European countries have banned their use completely.)

And unfortunately, they’re quite pervasive here in America. 90% of the soybeans grown in the U.S. are GMOs, as is 63% of the corn. These expensive crops were sold to farmers around the world by a handful of mammoth biotech corporations with promises of radical yield increases.

According to a recent report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, those were empty promises.

While it’s true that we’ve seen crop yield increases in the fifteen years since the use of GMOs became widespread, the report argues that other factors led to those increases. In fact, when they contrasted yields of genetically engineered soybeans to low-input, organic yields for soybeans, the low-input crop outperformed the GE crop by 13%.

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