The Starvation Strategy

Progressives and Liberals sure have a funny way of showing "support" for the poor--they apparently want them all to starve.  How else to explain the protests last weekend around the world over genetically modified foods and the social media campaign to boycott the Monsanto Corporation?  It would seem that attempting to derail efforts to increase the production of food would run counter to the effort to provide more food to people who need it.

Genetic modification is as old as agriculture itself--as early farmers realized that they could cross-pollinate higher-yield plants with other higher-yield plants and increase the amount of grain that could be produced per acre.  Livestock producers realized that breeding the larger animals in their herd--or the better milk-producing cows--could increase their yields as well.  It was these practices that allowed the human species to move from a hunter-gatherer to an agrarian existence and eventually an industrialized society.

Today's genetic modification practices are all about increasing yields even further--and boosting the benefits of foods we eat as well.  Today's grains are more drought, disease and pest-resistant--meaning less need to water crops or apply pesticides and fertilizers.  Supporters of expanding food stamp programs like to use the term "food security".  Well, knowing that the fields you plant are going to produce--no matter what Mother Nature throws at you--that is real "food security".  And today's beef and pork is leaner than the meat we ate just a few decades ago.  The cows and pigs grow bigger and faster--meaning more meat is available in the supply chain.  Fish have been bred the same way--putting less pressure on the oceans as seafood can be "grown" through aquaculture.  Why do you think food prices have always lagged behind other "necessities" when it come to the rate of inflation for the past century?

And GMO's of the future will enhance the healthy aspects of our food as well.  Cancer-fighting agents can be grown right into our corn or fruits or vegetables.  Medicines for other types of ailments could be part of the potatoes or rice we eat every night.  Food-related allergies could be alleviated by changing the DNA structure of the plants or the meat--opening up further food sources to siliacs or those that can't eat peanuts or tree nuts. 

The anti-GMO efforts threaten to take us back to the Dark Ages of mankind.  When a blight or a drought or a year without a summer could put an entire continent on the brink of starvation.  When nations warred over food supplies and when plagues decimated underfed populations.  It was also a time when all of our food was "Organic"--and nearly everybody worked on a "family farm".