Economic impact of GM crops is huge. Around 70% of most food in the grocery stores is genetically modified. As seen in the graph on the left, the use of GM crops has been rising. Farmers have been using more of these types of crops because they lower key costs to produce by adding higher crop protection and more seed reliability. Also, farmers don’t need to pay so much for fuel and labor to spray herbicides when the GM plants are already equipped to resist. Therefore, the cost of production is much less for GM crops. What Does it Cost For You? GM crop costs change depending on the season. The cost is generally less expensive than organic food.
The negitive economic impacts of GMs are tied to seed puchasing. |  |
Patents
Biotech companies place patents on their GM products to protect the company from illegal use of the patented products. Infringing a patent is a big issue, especially in the biotech field. The economic concerns about patents are that the patent owners can raise the price of seeds so that farmers in developing countries won’t be able to afford GMs. This would cause a larger gap between the rich and poor countries. The hope is that companies will lower GM seed prices when they sell the seeds to developing countries.
Enforcing Patents
Enforcing patients is hard as the farmers who are caught infringing the patents cite that they never knew they were growing GM crops and that it was probably a result of cross pollination. To solve this issue, biotech companies put a gene into their GM seeds called a ‘suicide’ gene that only allows a plant to survive for one year of harvest. The economic problem with this is that farmers would have to purchase new seeds from the company every year. Instead of the usual putting aside parts of the harvest to plant the next year, the farmers in developing nations would face economic challenges of affording the yearly GM seeds. The cost is already very high and many people commit suicide because they can’t pay the debt. Below is an excerpt taken from MailOnline called ‘The GM Genocide.’
“Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiraling debts - and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use Indians a testing ground for genetically modified crops.
The crisis, branded the 'GM Genocide' by campaigners, was highlighted recently when Prince Charles claimed that the issue of GM had become a 'global moral question' - and the time had come to end its unstoppable march…India's farmers are also starting to fight back. As well as taking GM seed distributors hostage and staging mass protests, one state government is taking legal action against Monsanto for the exorbitant costs of GM seeds.
This came too late for Shankara Mandauker, who was 80,000 rupees (about £1,000) in debt when he took his own life. 'I told him that we can survive,' his widow said, her children still by her side as darkness fell. 'I told him we could find a way out. He just said it was better to die.'
But the debt does not die with her husband: unless she can find a way of paying it off, she will not be able to afford the children's schooling. They will lose their land, joining the hordes seen begging in thousands by the roadside throughout this vast, chaotic country.
Cruelly, it’s the young who are suffering most from the 'GM Genocide' - the very generation supposed to be lifted out of a life of hardship and misery by these 'magic seeds'.
Here in the suicide belt of India, the cost of the genetically modified future is murderously high.”15
