... the future you describe doesn't sound that bad.

Farmers are going to use genetically engineered plants that are easier to grow and better to use for making ethanol? Folks are going to use those plants to make biofuels?

Sounds good to me.

Yeah that's a great future. When asked about what happens when the bugs evolve resistance to Monsanto's GMO's they will say "trust us." I'm sure that corn Version 3.0 is already in the works. What about that treadmill that is mentioned in the post? It's the same one we're on with tuberculosis and antibiotic resistant staff infections. Do you think Monsanto will step in a fix it when this stuff escapes into the environment? Do you trust them to be able to contain it? I don't. This is not just about energy, it's about the food chain. They will swear up and down that the GMOs are safe. They don't know that. They can't know that because the long term research hasn't been done.

I keep hearing about all this hype about corn-produced ethanol and how it will solve our fuel problems, but at the moment producing ethanol from corn isn't necessarily an energy efficient process. When you consider the amount of energy it takes to actually produce the corn, especially a fertlilzer hungry plant like maize, the amount of energy we get back is not much above breaking even.

Why isn't anyone talking about Miscanthus? Miscanthus, otherwise incorrectly known as switchgrass, grows year-long and can grow to heights of 20 feet in a single season WITHOUT outside fertilization! The only issue is how to efficiently convert all that cellulosic biomass into ethanol, a process which is being researched right now by a joint project between UC Berkley and UIUC.

Biofuels produced with energy-intensive crops are not the answer.

We live in a world of lies.....

Does not capitalism thrive on them?

Just last week, pet food seems to be a killer. We are now told it is "rat poison".

However, the same pet food included "wheat gluten" that had been genetically modified.

Don't worry, folks - trust the system. It was "rat poison".

Tell me now, anyone out there in cyberspace, what makes you think, when the shit truly hits that proverbial fan.... what the fuck makes you think that we will be able to find the truth?

Just today, a friend of mine mentions the skyrocketing rate of autism in children. What is the cause?

If there is a profit in the cause, we will never know.

Trust the system. Has it ever failed us?

Stop thinking.

for some reason this post immediately linked in my head to the stories of how the bee populations in the United States and elsewhere are literally disappearing. (I think there was a personal story about this in Salon a few weeks back). This article (hyperlinked below) explores the possible linkages between GM crops and the disappearance of the bees. What a tragic irony (if Einstein is right - that without bees humanity has about 4 years of life left) that the 'sustainable' approach to solving climate change leaves us with no sustainable food supply...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,473166,00.html

No doubt Monsanto plans to come up with new, "improved" corn seed products that will target new, improved pests, and will be able to resist new, improved herbicides. That is the treadmill that the human race has put itself on, and whether we'll ever be able to get off of it seems a highly doubtful proposition, unless food prices rise so high that biofuels become politically impossible.

We've been on this treadmill since the beginning of life. It's called evolution.

Mr. Leonard is dead-on about the implications of toying with our food supply. It's obvious that companies like Monsanto Chemical and Novartis do not make magnanimous gestures; they are in it for financial gain, pure and simple. Their attempt to hide behind the guise of providing biofuels is despicable. These companies continue to play Russian roulette with our food supply - nay, with our lives.

In 1998, Jeremy Rifkin wrote an article in New Perspectives Quarterly entitled "Genetically Engineered Crops could Wreak Ecological, Health Disasters." In it, he describes a number of transgenic experiments that have been carried out right under our noses, utilizing non-food entities, and without regard for the possible "genetic pollution" that might ensue. I believe that the consequences described in 1998 are now beginning to be felt.

Man was not meant to play God, but mega-corporations continue to push the boundaries of what is safe and prudent, at a time when our fragile planet is at its most vulnerable. Additional information about this topic is available at http://www.organic-nature-news.com/genetically-modified-organisms.html.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,473166,00.html

Don't forget that Monsanto also engineered a "death gene" into their corn, so that if a farmer tries to keep some for next year's crop, it will automatically die. Just another way to keep farmers on the buying end of the stick.

What is the alternative?

To sow corn and see it destroyed by parasites?

To weed by hand?

Did ever Mr Leonard did an hour of backbreaking farm work on sun in his life?

I wish him to feed his family as a hunter gatherer in the Brazilian rainforest.

Or as a Mexican ejidatario.

Monsanto dont have to sell him food, let him grow it by himself. He can have Theosinthe seeds from nature.

Monsanto is doing a great job. Feeding millions, producing ethanol.

Badmouthing it deserves punishment.

It's a shame that ethanol in the US is only allowed when it comes from Corn. I wonder if maybe we could get enough public outcry going since we've signed a deal for Brazilian Ethanol from Sugar Cane, but won't allow any from this source domestically.

One of the continuing wonders of this column is your partial love affair with ethanol. Living out here in the 'corn belt', with an ADM terminal about 6 blocks from my house, I see it what it is. Our whole farm economy here is Minnesota is based on corn - and the corporations that run Minnenapolis don't want to change that.

Ethanol is just the latest, and perhaps last, boondoggle to ruin the environment and agriculture, all in the name of 'green'ing and fighting 'foreign oil.' It is like the 8-track solution to portable music. True, it is not made in the Middle East. True, it is partly renewable. That is to the good. But the oil, chemical, pharmaceutical and water inputs into corn (and ethanol), and the environmental and health 'outputs' make it very problematic as a long-running solution. It is not sustainable into the middle future, only the very near future. Thank you for pointing out the genetically modified 'blowback' issue. Why then, do you still favor ethanol more than 50%?