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| Authored by: artp on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 03:59 PM EDT |
Hybrids and GMOs can pollinate open pollinated corn (maize
for the Europeans in the crowd). The crop will/may have GM
characteristics - enough to keep the crop from being sold as
organic or as seedstock. This happened close by me in Mount
Vernon, Iowa, where someone who was raising Reid's Yellow
Dent corn had their crop contaminated by GMOs. Reid's Yellow
Dent was probably the most popular corn variety in Eastern
Iowa. Now only a few people keep the variety going.
From a modern standpoint, the only reason to try to get GM
characteristics is if you are using modern factory farming
techniques designed to maximize volume, not quality or
nutrition.
GM soybeans can contribute Roundup resistance. Organic
soybeans are mechanically cultivated for weed control, and
cannot be sold as organic if sprayed with herbicides.
GM corn is mostly "bt" variety, which supposedly gives the
same benefits as bacillus thuringensis, a bacteria which
destroys worms and caterpillars which prey on corn. However,
that is the marketing version. The scientific version is
that bt corn expresses the poison produced by bacillus
thuringensis when it enters a larva. But it produces it all
the time, in every part of the plant. So when the crop dries
out, poison is being spread throughout the atmosphere,
whether it is needed or not.
There is really no driver for getting GM characteristics in
organic farming.
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Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
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