The ability of conventional and organic farmers to produce GMO-free food, as well as the ability of consumers to buy GMO-free products, is being threatened by the biotech industry:
- GMO seeds can drift and contaminate organic crops.
- More than 30% of farmers seeking to grow organic crops reported that unintended GMO presence has been found or suspected on their farms.
- GMO crops reduce genetic diversity, which can lead to massive shortages and the destruction of small farmers. Take, for example, coffee: 65% of our coffee comes from a single coffee bean species, which suffers from extremely low genetic diversity and is increasingly difficult to find in the wild. This type of monocrop creates an environment where one good disease could wipe out our ability to grow that crop. In this case, coffee. This is also becoming increasingly true of other crops like bananas, corn, and soy, since crop choices are increasingly driven by profit margin.