Organic: avoiding GMOs

Genetically Modified Organisms. Just typing the phrase practically guarantees some sort of heated reaction to a blog post. I don't have the time or inclination to jump head-first into the debates over this technology, but want to make several quick notes about how the growing presence of GMOs directly affects our farm and our progress toward organic certification.

The National Organic Program bans the presence or use of GMOs on a certified organic farm, and thus we must follow that. The practical problem is that as GMOs become ever more used, and new varieties appear on the market and in the fields (often without much public notice), it becomes harder to avoid. This is particularly true for crops whose pollen drift widely, like corn.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, one of our favorite seed sources from southern Missouri, included a notice in their latest catalogue that they had been having trouble finding corn seed without GMO genes (they test all their varieties to make sure). The problem was not the growers, who were planting open-pollinated heirloom varieties. It was the cross-pollination caused by windblown pollen from other farms growing GMO varities. Unlike Baker Creek, many certified organic seed sources don't test their seed (BC is not certified), and so we often don't know. If you, as a consumer or farmer, are trying to avoid consuming or using GMOs for our own reasons, you may not be even if you buy and grow certified organic.

Other than questions of ethics, why is this a problem? Well, we save some of our seed, and anyone growing open-pollinated varieties of anything saves seed eventually (read this explanation on our website if you're unsure what O.P and hybrid varieties are). Once a variety has cross-pollinated with a GMO, it contains those genes and is no longer what we were trying to save and grow. More practically, Monsanto and other biotech companies claim patents on their GMO vareties, meaning that they claim a legal right to sue anyone who infringes their patent (by, say, growing their varieties without permission or payment). No surprise, there are many cases of Monsanto suing or otherwise harassing farmers who unknowingly save seed or grow seed containing Monsanto genes from cross-pollination (Google will give you plenty of examples). Despite being separated from the nearest conventional agriculture field by 1,000 of pasture and forest, we do not expect that we could safely ever save our corn seed from year to year, and based on others' experiences, could even be sued for saving a patented seed if the genes were contained in our saved seed.

Just to give one other example, the Willamette Valley of Oregon is a major sugar beet growing area; supposedly it produces almost all the sugar beet seed for the US supply. Sugar beets are a major source of the sugar consumed in the U.S. Growers in the region recently switched en masse to a GMO variety of sugar beet, so that now any sugar consumed in the US is virtually guaranteed to be GMO, whether or not consumers know that or want it. More importantly for vegetable farmers, it means that anything that cross-pollinates with sugar beets will start to be contaminated (just like corn above). That includes regular beets and Swiss Chard, which is in the same family. So the next time you buy fresh chard from a trustworthy local farmer, you may still be buying a variety carrying the GMO sugar beet genes if the seed came from a source exposed to Willamette Valley beets (which is reasonably likely).

Getting into the debate over whether and why GMOs are good or bad is for a separate post or novella. The observations above are intended to reflect on how difficult it is for those who choose (for whatever their reasons) not partake in GMOS. I consider it a matter of freedom as much as anything, but that freedom is rapidly vanishing. We are discussing moving more and more toward saving our own seed as much as practical, but as noted above, even that is under threat. When farmers cannot save their own seed (as they did for millenia prior to the advent of commercial seed companies), we really have changed the meaning of agriculture and taken away a fundamental human liberty.