The Big GMO Lie: Genetically Modified Crops Are NOT More Productive

Dear Fellow Survivalist;

For 20 years now, Monsanto and other companies have been touting genetically modified crops (GMO) as the solution to world hunger.

According to their literature, their GMO grains and produce have been developed to increase yields, thereby making farms more productive and food more plentiful.

There’s just one thing… the last 20 years of GMO food production show that these crops aren’t producing much more than crops raised in traditional methods.

In fact, improvements in normal crop production have made it so that non-GMO crops are out-producing even the claims of GMOs.

NOTE: Take your food off the grid and back from Monsanto with this.

Recent studies of GMO crops, specifically those of soybeans and corn, the two biggest GMO crops currently in production, show only small increases in actual yields, as opposed to projected yields.

This is straight from the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists report ‘Failure to Yield’:

• Herbicide-tolerant (HT) GE (genetically engineered) soybeans and corn have not increased yields any more than conventional methods that rely on commonly available herbicides.

• Insect-resistant Bt (genetically modified resist incects) corn varieties have provided an average yield advantage of just 3–4 percent compared to typical conventional practices, including synthetic insecticide use.

• Meanwhile, non-GE plant breeding and farming methods have increased yields of major grain crops by values ranging from 13–25 percent.

So more traditional methods are far outpacing GMO methods for increasing crop yields.

This, of course, is enough to make any rational person wonder why so many GMO crops are still being grown, as opposed to returning to the heirloom varieties or even hybrid varieties that were grown before.

GMO crops aren’t magical. Nor are they what they claim to be.

If anything, the hype that Monsanto is creating about them far outstrips the reality of the seeds they are producing. To start with, there is nothing in any of the GMO “recipes” which actually increases yield. GMO crops, specifically the grains I’ve mentioned come in two varieties; one that increases their resistance to herbicides, like Roundup, and the other that increases their resistance to insects. There’s a third type too, which combines the characteristics of these two.

So, in reality, the projected increase in yield could only actually exist in cases where herbicides and insecticides are not used. That might be the case in some third-world countries, but it’s certainly not the case in our country’s massive commercial farms.

If that’s the case, why are American farms still growing GMO foods?

There are a lot of very real reasons to be uncomfortable with GMO foods.

To start with, altering anything in nature always has unexpected consequences. We’ve seen that in everything from introducing animals into an area where they are not naturally found to the development of pharmaceuticals.

Most pharmaceuticals are actually copies of chemical compounds found in nature. But since the pharmaceutical companies can’t patent something found in nature, they modify it slightly. That’s why there are so many potential side-effects, up to and including death, listed for many of those products. Many of those side-effects are caused by the difference between the artificially produced product and the natural one.

Thorough testing of new medicines is required by the FDA, to ensure that medicines will do what they are supposed to do, as well as ensure that they won’t cause undue harm to the people taking the medicine.

But GMOs have not gone through that thorough testing process. The only tests done on them were done by the companies that produced them, and those tests were focused on whether or not they would do what the company claimed.

Little to no testing has been done to determine if GMOs will have any long-term side effects on the people who consume them. That testing is going on now. You and I are guinea pigs in those tests. They are waiting to see if we have any problems which are serious enough to warrant taking action.

But people are having problems from GMOs.

According to a paper published in the scientific journal Entropy[1], GMOs have been linked to gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer Alzheimer’s disease and the dying off of our bee population.

Actually, it’s not the GMOs themselves that seem to be causing the problem, but glyphosate, commercially marketed by Monsanto under the trade name “Roundup.” The major push of GMO development has been to make GMO crops resistant to glyphosate, so that larger quantities of it can be used, to make up for glypohosate resistant strains of weeds that have evolved.

In order to help Monsanto, which has many ties to the government, especially the FDA, the FDA recently changed the acceptable amount of glypohosate in our food, increasing it to 2,000 times more than it was before. So that means that we are eating much more of these chemicals than we used to.

The dangers that GMOs present have led a number of countries in Europe and other parts of the world to ban their use. Yet here in the United States, they’ve all but taken over. Why? Because of the political clout that Monsanto has, and their tight connections in Washington.

Of course, that may be immaterial, if these chemicals are actually linked to the killing off of our bee population. So far, 30 percent of America’s bee colonies have died out, most of them suddenly. If the current rate continues, we may reach a critical point soon, where there are not enough bees left to pollinate our crops. Once that happens, it might be all over.

So, looks like I was right; we all need to keep our powder dry and our survival equipment close at hand. We’d better see to our food stocks too, and make sure we’ve got enough to last.

Dr. Rich Murphy

[1] http://farmandranchfreedom.org/gmo-multiple-chronic-disease/

 

PS: Take your food off the grid and back from Monsanto with this.