August202009
Growing Progress
One evening last week our old-timer neighbor came over with his wife. He brought this as a present for the farmer’s four-year-old son:
It’s Dan, the “Answer Plot Man”! Here’s the side of the package:
Talking about it the next day, the farmer and I couldn’t quite figure whether or not it was a joke. Basically, Dan, the “Answer Plot Man,” is a GMO food-wielding, herbicide-sparying action figure. Little-kid farmers are supposed to play with this toy and grow up with an affection for genetically-modified foods. It’s made by a company called Monsanto, one of the world’s biggest biotech companies.
Monsanto produces a synthetic hormone called rBGH, which is banned in every industrial country but the US. It developed the Agent Orange herbicide in the ’60s (a.ka., the toxic Vietnam herbicide), and was a major manufacturer of DDT (a.k.a., the bald eagle-killer). “Roundup,” advertised on the toy box, is the world’s best-selling herbicide and is produced by Monsanto. There have been several studies linking it to various diseases in humans and animals exposed to it. Because it’s such a strong herbicide, Montano had to produce genetically-altered varieties of crops that could tolerate it—hence the “Roundup Ready” corn and soybean signs in the toy.
But for our old-timer neighbor, and most farmers in our area, herbicides like Roundup are standard tools of cultivation. The farmer has told me that the old-timer shakes his head when he sees the farmer hoeing the little weeds in his beds of greens. And he laughs a little when he sees all the worms in our ears of corn. To the old-timer, the hoes and the worms remind him of the back-breaking labor and meager harvests of his childhood. To him, organic farming probably looks somewhat absurd. But I don’t think he’s really trying to indoctrinate the farmer’s four-year-old son about the wonders of genetically-modified crops. I think Dan, the Answer Plot Man, is just a gentle jab at our “primitive” methods. Every generation has a different idea of progress. For the old-timer, it’s GMO crops. For us, it’s worms in every ear of corn.
