During one of the first weekends of the Foodworks program, I found myself in a car with three other fellows from the Middlebury site discussing my thoughts on GMOs. It was an interesting conversation, and one that all of us in the car contributed to in a slightly different way even though we all seemed to be generally against their use, at least when it came to food products. I think I first started to think critically about GMOs and their role in the food system in one of my environmental studies classes at Middlebury, and I remember feeling so frustrated because while watching the two teams of students debate, the anti-GMOs team used only one argument throughout their presentation: the argument that there were potential health risks, and more time was needed to determine if GMO foods could be safely consumed. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with this argument, but watching Winona LaDuke’s TEDx talk on native peoples and seeds and life prompted me to think back to the many other reasons why the prevelance of GMOs in our food system may be harmful.

I found her examples of groups of native people that have resisted genetic modification and patenting of some of their staple crops extremely interesting, and important when thinking about the topic of GMO foods not in isolation, but in their connection to arguments about local versus global food production and consumption. One of the common arguments for the use of GMO crops is that given the world population and the rate at which it’s growing, genetic modification will be necessary in order for enough food to be produced to feed all the hungry mouths. This argument first ignores supply chains and distribution, since availability of food and accessibility to food are different things. But this argument also ignores the way that food is tied to a way of life and a culture and a place. LaDuke describes how, even in a place with poverty, high levels of health problems, and limited access to healthy food, people are turning away from GMOs, recognizing the harms they cause, and returning to old methods of food production. In these instances, like on her reservation, the global arguments for GMO foods ignore the local arguments that tie a specific food to a specific place, and genetic modification would interfere with the strong cultural meanings that accompany eating certain foods. For instance, the tarrow plant in Hawaii is views as an elder relative by their cosmo-genealogy, and genetic modification would destroy this familial relationship. By returning to work in their sugarbush, planting three new (or rather old!) varieties of corn, and harvesting different varieties of squashes that can last through a long winter, the community on LaDuke’s reservation is tapping into existing food sources that can both sustain them with their nutrients and with their ties to their ancestors and historical way of life.

In terms of fairness, then, one of the suggested prompts for this week’s response, I think it’s important to be extremely wary of GMO use in general, and slow with their introduction in new situations, so that any impacts they may have are carefully thought through. For farmers who have a relationship with their seeds, it’s unfair for genetic modification to take away their ability to save seeds between years, thus cutting important cultural ties. In terms of food security, LaDuke’s talk explains how food availability and the nutrition absorbed into the body are not the same, in the same way that food availability today and food availability in a world affected by climate change are not the same. In all these ways, the local, the cultural, and the non-genetically modified play an important role, and one that all of these week’s pieces prompted me to think about in more depth.