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market-farming - Re: Bio Tech Corn

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  • From: "Jill Taylor Bussiere" <jdt AT itol.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Bio Tech Corn
  • Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 11:41:48 -0500


>its still a new technology and will take years before we can ever make a
sane decision on >its future sort of like where hybrids were 50 years
ago...Bob

We are still dealing with the effects of hybrids - especially from the
effects of the "Green Revolution" whose implementation was devastating on
the self-sufficiency and plant biodiversity of many countries. So, I guess
my thought is that it will be more than 50 years until we can make a sane
decision. But yet we have already made it, and are using the technology
when the sanity of our decisions, and the repercussions of our actions are
not yet known.

This is not to single you out, Bob - many of us do the same thing by driving
cars, using metals, using plastics, using household chemicals - there are
many things that we do whose effects are not known at all, or are just now
starting to be known.

Even the some of the Amish, a friend told me yesterday, are growing biotech
tobacco. The Amish, who usually deliberate carefully about things before
they do them. That one boggles my mind.

I am in Wisconsin, and like where you are, most farmers feed their biotech
crops directly to their animals - so the consumer concerns about GE foods
don't affect them. Although one farmer I interviewed who uses GE crops said
that he didn't know if in the future people would want to eat animals or
milk from GE fed animals. Primarily people in Wisconsin base a decision
about whether to grow GE crops on whether they are more productive than
non-GE or not. Those who have success with them often choose to continue.
Some stop growing them, and others try them for the first time. I think in
Wisconsin the numbers of growers using GE crops are about the same as a few
years ago - perhaps a little higher.

Jill





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