Why do farmers want to mass produce GMO foods?

Basic economic principles explain everything (and there are papers written about this – I can send you links if you PM me). Reductions in monetary costs (specifically inputs), time savings, and convenience are the primary reasons why farmer’s plant GMOs. First, realize that only two classes of traits are really importance:

. Glyphosate (an herbicide) resistance (Roundup Ready): Less tillage, and no hand weeding is needed. More than anything, this is time savings and convenience (it’s a far simpler system). Before RR soybeans, farmers (and their kids, and labor) would ‘walk the beans’ and hoe up weeds in their fields, in addition to timely sprayings. This has also enabled conservation tillage methods.

. Bt traits (insect resistance): less insecticides, more reliable yields. Farmers can spray less (which is expensive, and takes time). They also don’t have to worry as much about missing or guessing whether they need to spray, so yields are more reliable. This has had a far larger impact in developing nations than in developed nations; for example, in parts of India where even insecticides aren’t available, they used to pick off bugs by hand.

The primary reason why farmers don’t plant GMOs (other than in countries where the markets don’t accept GMOs) is that the seed are far more expensive than conventional seed.

Don’t underestimate the importance of time and convenience. Less time spent spraying or tilling means more time to do other things.

Source(s): I’m a plant breeder

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr//.htm
http://agbioforum.org/vn/vna-marra.htm

Farmers don’t make much money well they do sometimes but it all goes out in costs. Farming is like playing a gambling game you don’t know what the weather will be that year neither the price for your crop. Many of the larger producers have taken over. The GMOs started in the s with corn I believe. Farmers were really skeptical about them at first, but when they started to get a higher yield from their crops they were much more happier. The argument for doing GMOs is that people have been breeding plants since the dawn of time. Taking the best seeds from their crops and reproducing them. The only thing is they can now do,that genetically and at a faster rate. The only thing I think people get freaked about is that they are coming up with ideas about crops that can resist certain bugs and chemicals the farmers spray, therfore producing a weed. They have to come up with new ideas to mass produce because the world has more people to feed today then ever before. Organic produce is high priced for a reason, more weeds to pull try that on a large scale farm, thousands of acres.

Source(s): Farmers daughter

Farmers who grow GMO and conventional commodity crops get subsides and crop insurance. Organic farmers do not.

To get you farm certified organic you must follow the rules of the NOP (http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop) and your farm must be in transition to Organic for years before the farmer can legally call and sell the crop as Organic. Going Organic is a lot more than simply avoiding synthetic pesticides and switching out conventional inputs for inputs allowed on an Organic farm (as approved by the organic materials review board or OMRI). The farmer must also learn how to feed and build soil and will have to put up with at least years of low yields as the soils are improved, remineralized and brought back to life. Healthy soil should have at least million mirco critters when plated up and looked at under a microscope. Conventionally managed soils have on average maybe life forms, far below the healthy diversity of Organically managed soil.

Conventional farmers have been taught for generations how to farm using synthetic, soil killing inputs. They have invested millions of dollars to do so and to change to Organic would not only be a steep learning curve for them but would also mean replacing old equipment with new at huge expense.

BTW, the only reason GMO’s are not Organically produced is because the USDA NOP bans them, not because they cannot, in theory be grown organically. Though RoundUp Ready crops are engineered to resist a synthetic herbicide so it would make no sense to grow that particular class of GMO’s Organically as they require an input that could never be used on a certified organic farm. But the BT crops could be done Organically if it were not illegal in this and all other countries.

There are a lot of mass produced non GMO crops that destroy the soil and poison the water as badly as GMO’s (that do so not because they are GMO’s but really because of the kind of farming that is used to produce them that predates GMO’s by a good decades.

They mass produce because they can make money this way and because in the ‘s USDA head Earl Butts told the US farmers “get big or Get out” and so farms got bigger, consolidated all with the support of the USDA and the big ag corporations like Monsanto, ADM, General Mills, Dow Ag Sciences, P&G, the grocery manufacturers, etc..

Source(s): I used to get my farm certified Organic

It’s not the farmers, it’s the chemical companies. In fact the opposite is happening. In the USA and the world there is a huge opposition to foods with GMO.

Companies now are trying to raise food without GMO’s in order to satisfy human opposition to the production of GMO’s.

Gluten is a bad protein which is a horrible result of the production of GMO’s.

GMO, genetically modified organisms, can produce bigger crops quicker so that’s more $$ to make when they sell to grocers. Sure organic foods can be good but GMO are much more effective. The problem is that they can be harmful. The FDA claims they don’t have any proof that they are harmful and will remove them if they see evidence to be harmful to people, yet people are complaining Monsanto crops are causing them to be infertile.

GMO’s are cheaper to make and result in bigger, faster crops. For farmers that means more $$.

Source(s): sorry no sources but i took a bioL class last semester and we talked about this

Because organic food is not as good, juicy, large, etc. Everyone wants better looking and tasting food so that is what they are going to plant. GMO makes the plants generally better and hasn’t been proven harmful, so they are gonna keep planting it.