A friend and organic farmer notes that if you spray paint designs on cars, no matter how beautiful and copyrighted they may be, if your overspray damages another car, you pay for the damage. Not so with GMO crops – in some cases, Monsanto has actually sued the farmer whose crop was damaged by their overspray for “stealing” Monsanto’s technology.
Already one farmer has planted Roundup Ready alfalfa in our county. His fields are south of ours. With the prevailing wind out of the south, I can no longer be sure that our own grower, who doesn’t spray his fields and has no need of GMOs, hasn’t been cross-pollinated with the GMO alfalfa a few miles upwind. That means there is potential GMO contamination to our livestock, and their eggs and meat.
The damage from overspray is unpublicized but widespread. Organic seed is certified organic because it comes from certified organic farms. Yet a USDA inspector recently told a friend of mine that he believes that if organic corn seed (to name one example) was actually tested for GMOs, it would test positive. In other words, overspray of GMOs may actually be eliminating the possibility of growing organic crops. That, I suppose, suits Monsanto, whose customer base is larger agribusinesses not
organic farms.
(Promoted from the comments to our post about Rogue GMO crops in Oregon.)