The Future of Farming

I'm not really sure how much of my summer plans I've shared in here. I feel like details about my routine and schedule tend to slip out here and there, and I can never keep track of what I spill out onto the "page" and what I keep to myself. In case I haven't let you in on the secret life of this blogger, school isn't exactly out for me. I'm taking a summer biology course, and we just finished up our unit on genetics with a rousing discussion on everything controversial with in the field. Basically.

One of the topics that came up, however, was genetically modified crops - a topic spanning everything from inserting anti-pest genes into these plants to reduce the use of pesticides (does that make them safer to eat?), to making corn more easily grown in bulk by isolating the gene that makes it grow upright more than horizontally, to injecting fruits and vegetables with vitamins and nutrients that have no place being there in the first place (take a wild guess how I feel in regards to this subject).

From a nutrition standpoint, as well as from the perspective of someone interested in sustainability, the environment, organic products and the livelihood of small time farmers, all of this both fascinates and horrifies me - yet there are so many people who think that this direction will lead us into health, happiness and prosperity. And, as one of the girls in my class pointed out, we can't see into the future. I'm skeptical of the benefits of such genetic modification, but in the end, I know little more than the person standing next to me.

Although I have yet to receive a comment here, and I'm new to the Food Blog website so I don't suspect many people have stumbled upon this blog, I'd like to ask your opinion. If you are reading, that is. The discussions I have are so limited to people from similar backgrounds to myself: if it's my family, I've grown up with them; if it's my friends, we're clearly like-minded on many things; and if it's my classmates, we're at least the same age and therefore tend to be on somewhat of the same line of thought.

What do you think of GMO's and companies like Monsanto? What are the benefits and risks of adding nutrients to everything from rice to oranges? What place do farmers have in a world where agriculture has been transformed into a laboratory science?

And, more than anything else, how much say do we as citizens currently have about what we use to fuel our bodies?