USDA and Ten Years of GMOs
The USDA has published a 10-year retrospective of genetically modified organisms. It surveys the technology from the perspectives of the seed producers, the farmers, and the consumers.
The report is generally upbeat about GMOs. American consumers are somewhat concerned about them, but the USDA cheerfully notes that virtually all are already consuming them without knowing it. I’d argue the correlation goes the other way: Few Americans care about GMOs precisely because they don’t how much they already eat.
Soybean farmers who use GE crops (virtually all of them) didn’t see an increase in returns in 1997 and 1998 but did see an increase in off-farm income, “suggesting that farmers adopt this technology because the simplicity and flexibility of the technology permit them to save management time, allowing them to benefit from additional income from off-farm activities.” Or that GE soybeans buy you nothing and more farmers have had to turn to off-farm income to survive in a farm-unfriendly environment.
Not surprisingly, seed companies have done particularly well in the GMO space. Thanks to stronger intellectual property rights, companies have submitted 11,600 applications for field testing new organisms.
The USDA is about as unbiased as I am, but the report is worth your time, even if you just read the summaries at the beginning.
