Monsanto Sharing Genetically Modified Crops with the World?

Now we can all share some tasty GM foods.

Probably the most interesting news during my application time was that Monsanto will be okay with generic versions of their genetically modified crops.

From a recent Economist we can see that they control the vast majority of the GM seed market, which is growing by leaps and bounds. The idea of being able to save and replant the seeds from your crop seems to be an essential part of agriculture which was missing from the GM vision. Sure you can some really persuasive video blogs together to defend your work, but there has been a lot of injustice in the name of pushing GM as well. Perusing the Monsanto wikipedia entry, one can see a veritable laundry list of victims of big ag litigation. One particularly tragic example is that of Kem Ralph, who served 4 months in jail and was forced to pony up $3 million for saving seeds.

I am a huge proponent of Genetically Modified crops, especially for food. They represent the best chance we have of putting those Malthusian prophecies to rest once and for all. However, Monsanto has been the big fish in the small pond of biotech for a long time and owns most of the seed patents. Therefore we can safely blame them for the terrible roll-out of GM food in Europe which turned the EU against it. Now the biotech world has to backpedal fast to get them to accept them as good for public growing and human consumption.

Without further ado, my top 5 list of issues to be addressed for genetically modified foods are:
1) Balancing profitability with social justice - I like the idea of investment over hand-outs but its a delicate thing and should focus on augmenting local communities
2) Biodiversity. Think about how many different strains of bananas are left? Potatoes? Maize? The Irish Potato famine was able to occur because there was only one genotype being produced. Agricultural heritage MUST be preserved or we risk a repeat of history.
3) Lack of proper human testing - Because its not too out there to think of genes that you don't want to eat. What if the oil that lets you grow oranges in the arctic circle or watercress in the sahara also makes you sick. If you aren't doing adequate testing you aren't going to know till its too late.
4) Spread of genes through cross pollination and horizontal gene transfer to other organisms. Once the genes are out there it really isn't possible to control them, regardless of how good the controls are (i.e. Jurassic Park).
5) Big Ag versus Family Farms - The spread of big ag in the U.S. along with their political bargaining power just makes me sick. Following instructions from the IMF/World Bank developing countries focus on developing their agriculture but can't sell it to the developed world because of agricultural subsidies which you can't take off the books because of big ag. GM's have the potential to really push food away from smaller farmers. Ironically, I am a huge fan of "going local" because of the benefit to smaller farms though they usually market as being anti-GM. I will save my subsidy rant for another day though.

If you want to know about more positive stuff from GM crops, check out this great article by Wired.