GMO OMG Page #5

the air, right?

This is like,

turning into a nightmare.

I don't know where they are.

Was that fun?

Yeah...

Please, can we do it again?

Can I have water?

Yeah, we'll get some water.

Oh, I couldn't hardly breathe.

Really the problems that farmers

begin to spray for

are there for a reason.

They're taking advantage of

a weakness in the system

that we've created as farmers

and I'm not suggesting

that any farmer

that uses chemicals in

their production system

is a bad farmer

or doing anything that

they're not being told to do.

USDA says, in Iowa,

that for every bushel

of corn we produce,

we're losing 44 pounds

of topsoil on average.

Now, we can do that

for a period of time.

States like Iowa are blessed

with tremendous resources

in terms of soil,

but we can't do it forever.

What we're doing is we're

trading short-term production

for long-term unsustainability.

And that's just a tradeoff that

we just can't afford to make

for future generations.

It's unfair.

We're not suggesting

that we go backwards.

We're suggesting that we take

advantage of that technology

that makes sense

but really discard those

pieces of technology

throughout aren't in

our best interest as a society.

Which are?

GMOs.

After 30 years of

side by side comparison

of organic and

chemical agriculture,

the Rodale Institute's

farming systems trial

proved that organic yields

match conventional yields.

You're telling me that organic

corn and soy will produce...

- The same.

- Just as much

as conventional

genetically modified?

Correct.

In the beginning,

the GMO outperforms.

It really does well

under perfect conditions,

but there is no longevity to it.

And in times of flood ordrought,

organic crops

actually perform better.

It's not three years of data.

It's not 13 years of data.

It's 30 years of data.

It's hundreds of scientists

and it's hundreds of peer

reviewed publications.

So, what was going on?

The industry's

strongest argument

to justify their

chemicals and GMOs

and the ever-increasing price

to farmers and the environment

was that we had to have

them to feed the world.

They spend millions on

advertising to convince us

that there's no other way.

Seven billion people,

one billion of whom

are malnourished.

Today, the population growth

is occurring in Asia

and other parts of the world.

How we are able to

produce food, increase it,

while at the same time being

able to supply to those in need,

is going to be the

challenge that we face.

There's a billion people

on earth

going hungry right now

and many of them are farmers,

small farmers.

We have the tools in our hands

today to address the challenge

of global food security.

Anybody that says we're going

to be using GMOs and Roundup

a thousand years from now

to feed ourselves

is deluding themselves.

It's just not going to happen.

But if we talked about

organic systems

being in place for

a thousand years,

we know that that can work.

So, the myth that organic

can't feed the world

has been disproven.

It's wrong.

We can feed the world

and what we know now

is that we can feed

the world well.

OK, boys, we're here.

It's Seed Savers.

Do you see it?

Look at that.

Dude, this is

killing me already.

I've been waiting for like,

years to go to Seed Savers.

Like, I thought I would never

go to Seed Savers like,

now I finally get to.

Here we are, my son.

And and my third farm

to go to in my life.

Yes.

What are you going

to look for here?

Uh, seeds.

Seeds?

This was the farm

of endless diversity

whose seed catalog had captured

Finn's imagination

when he was 3.

And that passion for

seeds had led us here.

Someone has to be paying

attention to all the pieces.

All the genetic diversity

that we have,

it needs to be identified,

saved,

and distributed

and enjoyed again

and grown in people's gardens.

We started Seed Savers

with that idea

of seeing through any other

people out there interested

in saving old seed

and there was.

Today, we have 24,000 different

accessions of seed

in our collection.

We're saving genetic diversity.

So, until we know,

we can't make a decision

that we'll never need a

amai tomato again

in our food culture,

but we shouldn't through it out.

And so, we're saving all the

pieces and that's what this is.

It's a beautiful puzzle.

When you see this, how

could you let this disappear?

Seed Savers was a tiny

oasis of crop diversity

in a massive ocean of sameness.

We learn that,

in the last hundred years

in the United States,

up to 93% of our

crop varieties have vanished.

They are gone for good because

we have replaced diversity,

seed saving and sharing,

and the farmers themselves

with the corporate-run

industrial monoculture.

The sheer immensity of

what we have lost

is a tragedy on its own,

but it's much more than

losing the beauty and flavor

of those varieties.

As we lose genetic diversity,

we lose traits that could be

the key to saving our crop

from diseases or pests

or the changing climate.

Loss of diversity threatens our

very survival on this planet.

I want to go over the rainbow,

Mama.

Yeah?

I was continuing

on to Washington, D.C.,

without my family.

They needed a break

from the road,

but I had to keep on going.

Don't eat McDonald's.

Yeah, I am going to eat them.

As I drove through

field after field

of identical GMO soy

and corn and cotton

drenched in pesticides

and herbicides,

owned and patented by

giant chemical companies,

I wished I could reach out

and take back the land

for my children.

The reason I'm here is

finding out about GMOs,

finding out that a lot of the

food I'm feeding my children

has GMOs in it, why is it

that these are not labeled

and what's being done?

Well, first of all, of course,

it should be labeled.

I don't know what the impact

of consumption

of genetically engineered food

does to the human body.

I... I don't know.

One thing for sure,

precautionary principle

would dictate

that you should give people

a choice

of whether or not they're

consuming these products

and if people choose to consume

genetically modified food,

they should do so knowingly.

In Europe,

if anything is written GMO,

people would just

leave it on the shelves

and that's why the industry

doesn't want to label

because they know that that

people could actually say,

"Hmm, if I have a choice,

I take the non-GMO."

That led me to introduce to

the House of Representatives

a number of bills covering GMOs

including a labeling bill

and the labeling bill

would require that everything

that was genetically modified

have to, have to indicate that.

Well, that's when

Monsanto went to work.

It seemed possible that Vermont

could pass the bill because

the people in the

state of Vermont

wanted to see

that legislation passed,

but our friends at Monsanto

threatened to sue the state

if that bill was passed.

We've moved forward

on the GMO bill

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