The University of Missouri has published definitive maps showing the people and farmland harmed this summer by dicamba, an agrochemical that caused widespread destruction in the United States in 2017.
Dicamba has been around for half a century without too much fuss, but this year it’s become a major environmental hazard for one simple reason: Monsanto released a strain of soybean seeds genetically modified to resist dicamba. Thousands of farmers planted and sprayed the crop. Downstream and downwind, neighbors fell sick, and crops withered.
Monsanto is claiming, of course, that each and every farmer failed to follow the directions correctly and is personally at fault. This kind of story is indicative of the problems around genetically modified organisms: they are designed to solve a particular, very narrow problem—drought, vitamin deficiency, herbicide resistance—without addressing the ecosystem of causes that gave rise to that problem in the first place, and without adequately exploring the cascade of harm that may result from their implementation. There’s nothing wrong, in principle, with modifying a crop to make it more able to resist drought. But if—as is frequently the case—the crop now needs less water but is no less tolerant of sustained temperature increases, not much is gained. And if your new crop is destroying your neighbor’s, much is lost.
There’s a lot of frustrating discourse around GMOs in the United States. Unlike in European countries I’m familiar with—Italy, Germany, and France in particular—where opposition to GMOs is grounded in ecological and economic claims, US dialogue focuses mainly on notional health risks to consumers of genetically modified foods. We focus on nutrition labeling and Right to Know campaigns with messaging that boils down to “we don’t have enough evidence about whether GMOs are bad for us, so we should all have the option to steer clear if we so choose.”
This claim is true, or true-ish, but it is terribly, lamentably weak. When there are so many sound, well-substantiated arguments to make about how GMOs promote monoculture and increased pesticide use and undermine the economic well-being of farmers worldwide, all without living up to their promise of increased yield, it’s a downright irresponsible argumentative approach.
The case for widespread sustainable agriculture cannot rest on lifestyle choices for well-heeled consumers. We must go beyond a narrow focus on delicious food and consumer choice toward narratives of environmental justice and moral imperative. Organic foods are likely not a matter of life and death to my son—but they are to the children of farmworkers, and that is more than enough.