Being a farmer these days can be tough.
In times past, most people had some connection to agriculture and may have even worked on a farm at some point. But the demographics of our society have changed drastically, and today most people have never even stepped foot on a farm. In fact, most consumers are now several generations from a farm and have very little experience with modern agriculture. With only about 2 percent of the United States population actually farming, the message of agriculture has been shaped by those outside of the industry, including those with an agenda.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on the topic of genetically modified crops. A type of breeding tool, genetic engineering allows scientists to produce crops with desirable or beneficial traits. While the technology has already yielded several crops with benefits to the environment, farmers, and consumers, not everyone is so excited about the technology. Many well-funded special interest groups and activist organizations have launched all out wars against the genetic engineering, especially on social media.
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[This article was originally published on AGDAILY as a guest column.]
Vegetables have been modified for a thousand years by animals and nature itself. We are doing nothing different now. The only difference now is places like Chipotle pay big bucks to scare people into thinking GMOs are bad. That way they can make big bucks off people.