I just returned from a trip to Kansas and I'm haunted by the fact there were no insects and very few birds. I'm beginning to read some things that indicate that GMO crops may be to blame. One night, we were waiting in line at Dairy Queen and noticed that there were no insects flying around the lights. I mean none. I remember when I was a kid there were insects everywhere - especially during the summer. I heard one Meadowlark the entire time I was there. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. Does anyone have any information on this? I would deeply appreciate it. I'll keep checking the posted comments here.

Imported G.M. soybeans are reportedly cheaper, have a higher oil content and lower transportation costs.

I find the lower transportation costs part of this statement very difficult to believe. Cheaper, OK. Higher oil content, no problem. But lower transportation costs? For one thing, I can't believe that GM soybeans are cheaper to transport on a per-mile basis - the weight of a truckload of GM beans can't be very much different than a truckload of non-GM beans. And the US-grown GM beans have to be shipped from, say, Iowa, to a seaport, then transferred to merchant shipping, sailed to Shanghai (or wherever in China), and then trucked to the processing plants. The Chinese beans only have to do the truck trip from their fields to the processing plants. How can that possibly be more expensive?

Given that yields can be dramatically higher per acre for GM beans, I'm not surprised that the OVERALL price for GM beans can still beat domestic Chinese non-GM bean prices. But I have trouble swallowing the claim that it's cheaper to TRANSPORT GM beans than non-GM.

Sean

Sean -- it's not impossible that it's cheaper to ship stuff by train and container from the U.S. to coastal processing plants in China, than to ship soybeans from inland China to the cost via overburdened railroads and small highways. That is one of the paradoxes of globalization.

But I don't know for sure.

The age of Peak Oil is upon us, with it the Green Revolution will cease to exist and with it will go GM crops. As oil and its derivatives, diesel fuel and herbicides/pesticides become far too expensive for farmers, GM crops will drop away. Besides who can afford food transported from thousands of miles away when the cost of fuel is 5 dollars a litre of 15 dollars a gallon? Neither transports or farmers can afford to operate under those conditions. Agribusiness was founded on the green revolution, without cheap energy in the form of oil derivatives, and fertilizer from natural gas (which peaked in North America in 2001) they will fall, and local agriculture will be needed to fill the gap, the other option is famine.

Those countries that protected their local seed banks will be in far better shape than those that allowed their agriculture to be taken over by multinationals that will no longer be in a position to supply them.