Sixty meters is quite a long way; if you could kick a football that far you could break the NFL record for longest field goal, and in the row-upon-row, line-upon-line of commercial agriculture we are talking hundreds, if not thousands, of plants capable of cross-pollinating anything within 60m in all directions. Fertile crops pollinated by sterile ones would not be so occasional, and each such occasion is one generation that will not reproduce. In the case of commercial crops destroyed in harvesting, that means a generation that will never reproduce. It might not be a rapid process, but is an inexorable one as sterile plants become ever more dominant and fertile ones become, not only less common naturally, but less popular with commerical farmers seeking (currently) inexpensive seed more robust than traditional stocks.

There is really only one way for that to end: With the worlds farmers purchasing all their seed from seed manufacturers, particularly as the latter aggressively pursue and win "copyright infringement" cases when farmers manage to find a few GMO seeds that, against all odds, are somehow fertile, and replant them, only to have their manufacturers indignantly litigate against them for growing food without paying a fee for the privilege.


The naturally occurring crops GMOs crowd out are planted in the same tilled cultivated areas; they are just not as well suited to prosper there (in many cases, that is the whole point.) Perhaps I should be more concerned about BT-maize driving monarch butterflies to extinction by poisoning the natural milkweed on which they feed, and I am not indifferent to that concern, but my primary concern is allowing Monsanto and ADM to between them monopolize all agriculture on the planet.

Under the same conditions, unmodified corn will naturally smother BT-maize in short order, because it has all the competitive advantages of the other, plus many the other lacks. If experimentation is needed to confirm the obvious, it is not difficult: Plant a field with unmodified corn next to an equal sized field planted with BT-maize, and see how many of each plant are around in successive generations. I am fairly confident you will find the unmodified corn disappears quickly.


Yeah, I guess you got me on this one; I did not realize GMOs were only being engineered to produce pesticides and be herbicide resistant, rather than producing herbicides themselves. That does reduce their direct threat to non-GMOs, but does not make them innocuous. Even when farmers do not simply saturate cropland with herbicide due to GMO resistance, increased usage still produces potential problems such as those referenced here:

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/gmo-dangers/health-risks/articles-about-risks-by-jeffrey-smith/Genetically-Engineered-Crops-May-Produce-Herbicide-Inside-Our-Intestines-April-May-2006

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/genetically-modified-soy_b_544575.html

Even if herbicide usage remains unchanged, seriously harmful effects that would otherwise be evident can be masked by GMO resistance to it—until it enters the consumer population that lacks such resistance: http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/fileadmin/files/gmo-free-regions/GMO-Free_Europe_2010/Carrasco_ChemResToxAug2010.pdf

I have only done a cursory google, but did turn up this link referencing (among others) UK studies indicating cross-pollination that not only threatened existing unmodified populations of the same plants, but produced strains resistant to MULTIPLE herbicides that consequently required aggressive herbicide treatment to control (which naturally makes the entire environment more toxic for many organisms, especially the majority lacking any herbicide resistance; it should be obvious that any herbicide regimen that can kill a herbicide-resistant plant will eradicate all non-resistant ones:) http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMCANCEP.php

A UK and Canadian study each highlight another danger: The proven extent of cross-pollination by GMOs necessitates significant distance between GMO and non-GMO crops, actually reducing the amount of agricultural land available for cultivation to such an extent the Canadian study states, "The analysis suggests that the potential for market failure in this industry may justify a need for government action," while the UK study states, "Spatially explicit simulations from realistic scenarios indicate that a major increase in separation distances, currently under review by the UK government, may have serious implications for the future coexistence of organic and GMHT crops in the UK."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180090400388X

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/269/1496/1173.short

It appears the threat of cross-pollination and other adverse effects on non-GMO crops is serious enough Canadian and British scientists fear government action may be necessary to prevent non-GMO farmings collapse.

I realize some of those sources are hardly objective, but data-sets know no politics, and I would at least HOPE The Royal Society relatively free of political influences.

Frankly, I think the lesson of DDT and its descendant compounds that sparked the organic movement highly instructive: Just because the scientists paid to develop the technology claim it safe, and the manufactures selling it agree, does not mean it is. Further, the danger may not become detectable until years or even decades after its use becomes widespread, and the damage may persist at serious levels years or decades after the new discovery is abandoned as destructive or even lethal. Those concerns would be grave even without that of cross-pollination sterilizing the worlds agriculture (and possibly not JUST its agriculture) and making us dependent on seed manufacturers rather than seed growers.