Before you get into this, I would like to warn you that this is a rather opinionated topic that I have written & spoken about for our food oriented class. What we were asked to talk & write about was whether organic farming or GMO farming where better alternatives for an ever growing food system. When I was done, I was proud of being able to find a huge amount of resources to support my opinion on organic farming. I learned a lot about the genetics of plants and how genetics effects all plants. I hope you decide to continue reading this article and that you enjoy it.
Persuasive Speech
224 years ago… The United States of America were born! For more than 100 years we had grown all crops organically until the birth of the current era. The era Genetically Modified Organisms also known as GMO’s. GMO’s are organisms whose genes have been changed so that they have a different phenotype or so they can withstand different conditions. Sometimes both.
I am here to state my opinion on GMO’s so lets get into it. I believe that GMO’s are not such a great alternative for providing food because they just aren’t guaranteed the safest way of producing food. Allow me to elaborate.
GMO’s are usually made into a monoculture which then creates more diseases that animals & plants both suffer from. This happens because monocultures make it easier for new and stronger disease to construct themselves. If the food source is depleted, then the consumer can also be depleted.
From listening to the a genetic scientist we met yesterday, I find that changing the genes and genetics of the entire organism to change a single outcome in it (such as pesticide resistance) by eliminating a recessive gene, can change the entire result of how many nutrients we are actually getting from the GMO. Some of the nutrition in the modified food could be gone do to “modifying” it. What is the point of buying the “nutritious” food in the first place if its missing the nutrition your looking for in it?
I also found due to the work on the farm that Big Bowl works with that GMO foods are not always proven safe to eat. Half of the GMO’s that are grown and sold in the US have not been tested to see if they have long term effects on the things that eat them. Here is a quote: “GMO’s are made to be sprayed with pesticides. These pesticides harm bees and bees are essential to the process of producing food,” said Farmer Mark. This just proves to you that by using GMO’s and pesticides you are doing more harm than good.
I believe that growing and farming organically is the best way to farm because it doesn’t do any damage to the environment if you do it the right way. I feel that it is also the best way to farm because in the long run, you will save more money than buying things to produce huge amounts of GMO’s! When producing huge amounts of GMO’s to make more money, you have to buy more land, bigger machines to harvest it on, more pesticides, and you have to spend money on buying seeds every year because all of the seeds are patented, which makes it illegal to save them. With organic, you don’t need as much land, can find natural ways to prevent viruses and pests from harming the crops, and you can save seeds! You can save money, your health, and others health also. You become a superhero.
Also by more countries growing all organic, it shows that they have healthier people living in them while everyone still has enough food to eat. For example look at this graph I made. I decided to look at two countries were they grow all organic. I decided to look at Switzerland and Italy. If you look at Switzerland, the only grow organic is working pretty well. Look at the yields of corn from the years 2006 – 2007. That is a 20% increase in production of corn! That is incredibly high especially when you take into account that they can’t use pesticides that are not organic also. This shows that it is possible to produce enough food to feed the growing amount of people in the world while still growing food that is healthy and that we know is safe to eat.
Thank you for allowing me to voice my opinions and I hope I have made an impact on what you were previously going to vote on. Have a nice day and stay fresh like my crops.