 Hi, I'm Mark Hall. I work with farmers as part of my job as a specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. When my non-farmer friends find out I work with farmers, the first thing they want to know is GMOs. Are they safe? Let's ask our farmers. It's been a huge historical shift for people away from any personal knowledge or connection to agriculture through the first half of the 20th century in the United States anyway. Most people had some relationship to a farm if it was not with a grandparent or something that they visited, but those relationships have diminished and most of the population of our country has no personal exposure whatsoever to the growing and raising of crops and animals. That population has a growing desire to understand where their food comes from and that's a good thing. What has become a problem is misinformation about where GMO fits, and that's a frustration as a farmer. Lawrence County farmer Larkin Martin Rose corn, cotton, soybeans and wheat. She is a former member of the Federal Reserve Board. Well, I'm one of four daughters, so I have three sisters. I'm the oldest and I think if there had been a brother, I probably wouldn't be a farmer, but there was not a brother, so when my father was diagnosed with cancer and I had finished school and was working in Washington D.C. at that point in time, because of the relative ages of all of us and our interests, I was the one that came back to begin on-site management of the farm, and at that point it was temporary, but it has continued for the last 24 years. My husband and I live in a house on our farm. It happens to be in the middle of a field, and we have raised our children there. We have four children, and prior to GMO crops, if the crop around our house needed to be treated for an infestation of a certain insect or a bad weed problem, we would have to spray, in the case of insects in particular, a relatively harsh chemistry, a broad spectrum pesticide usually, and they come in several categories, and if it was wet, that's to say when our machines couldn't go through the field and with wheels because of mud, we would have to spray, because it has to be done in a timely way before the insects eat the crop, we have to spray with an airplane. So early in my children's lives, they're now teenagers, but before GMO crops, I would know when the airplane was going to spray, and we would make the children come inside, because just like any mother, I didn't want my children or myself outside, in that close, to somebody spraying something that was a known pesticide. That doesn't happen anymore with GMOs. We're not spray, we don't have, the plants themselves have the technology inside them to combat the pests, so those pesticides aren't even used right now. GMO stands for genetically modified organism. In its broadest definition, any plant or animal breeding that man has tried since we domesticated plants and animals, we have been involved in GMO technology. We have been crossing things and creating a little bit of this and a little bit of that to make something new for a long time. What recent developments in science have allowed us to do is to do that in a laboratory and take a desired trait from one source and insert it in something where it would be helpful. We started using GMO crops for the first time in the mid-90s when they first became available, and not only were they effective for us in terms of stopping a pest that was really ravaging our crops, but we didn't have to spray strong chemistry for the first time in a long time to control that pest. We had a naturally occurring protein in the plant, something that's in the soil already, something that was recommended and used by organic farmers that had been taken from a bacteria in the soil, put in the plant, and now all of a sudden we were farming successfully and raising a crop successfully without the use of harsh chemistry, so it was a huge environmental win for us. What was five or six or seven or eight pesticide sprays in a year went to zero. We used to plow to control weeds. It was the best thing we could do, or use harsher soil active chemistry. Now we can plant the seeds of the crop with the Roundup Ready trait in it, the Glyphosate Ready trait, and they emerge along with weeds. We are able to spray the crop with a chemistry that quickly degrades if it's not touching growing leaf tissue, so I understand it's not altering the environment in any way, but when it hits living plants, it is effective in stopping their respiration, so the weeds that don't have the tolerance for it die. The plants we've planted that are tolerant of the chemistry continue to grow, and we've got effective weed control, again, a huge environmental win. We've adopted technologies that are GMO that have helped us be better, more environmentally friendly, more productive farmers using less inputs, and getting more productivity out of the soil in a healthier way. Dad always told us, if you're moving forward, you're growing, and he always told us to do the best that we could to keep up with technology. As kids, we had to, it used to be a road to go down the middle of this field, and we would have to chop to cut by hand. I'm talking about day in, day out, we have, you know, you were spending, you were spending like now, we spent our summers working, but back then we would have to have 50, 60 people trying to get out and clean the crop up, just even get a chance of trying to make a living, to make a living off of it. And as far as I know, the GMO Roundup Ready have made it easy for us just to make a living. It's still hard, but our chances are better of making a living off the land now than it was back then. Farmers are hard workers, and they, and they believe in what they do, and they love what they do. And I have, I have not met a farmer nowhere. I've been in many, many states and talked to a lot of farmers and, and most of us are pretty much the same. We, we, we love people, we love ourselves, and we wouldn't do nothing that would bring harm or danger to, to anybody. We're farming four times the land that my dad used to farm with a less than a third of the, of the manpower. We're doing more with less. I mean, I'm the fifth generation and right down the trucks of six, I want him to get this land better than I got it. If you buy a vehicle today, are you going to buy the latest technology for your economy, performance and all that? Yes, you're not going to buy the old 1942 model. You're going to buy the new trend, the same thing with, with farmers. We're, we're using cutting technology every day to, to make us, you know, the bottom line greater. When we buy a bag of seed corn, a bag of cotton, soybeans, whatever it may be, we want all the technology, all the, we want the best of the best because when, when a farmer, the American farmer goes to the field, we're thinking about those other 150 families we're feeding every year. And we're doing our best to make sure we not only feed them, but we want to feed even more than that because they claim by 2050 that the world's population is going to double. So whatever we're doing right now in production, we've got to double that as well. And I think the American farmers are up for the task. Well, we used to use seven or eight herbicides. Now I'm using two or three getting a better job and a safer job for my employees as well as for me to use. And that's what it's all about. Farmers were the first environmentalists. I mean, we're just a steward of the land. It's my job to leave it better than I found it. The last year that we had conventional cotton was 1995. And we sprayed that cotton 10 times for worms, 10 with an airplane. And now, now we spray three times for stink bugs. So gallons of pesticides or amounts of pesticides are totally way, way down. Less pesticides being used. That's a good thing. When Roundup Ready crops hit the market, that allowed us to plant into stubble, specifically wheat stubble. And so now we went from a full blown conventional tillage farm to a no-till farm. The biggest advantage of no-till is it keeps our soil in the field. On April the 28th, we had a 100 year rain event or some people it was a 500 year rain event. None of our ground was worked. 25% of it was in wheat. And so we had very little erosion. If the flood had occurred 20 years ago, it would be a, we'd have a mess on our hands. Our yields are trending up. And as we get a world with more people and less farmland, the only way we can feed them is with increased yields. And GMOs help, help in that regard. Farming is not an easy life. We go to bed worrying. We wake up worrying. And we stress every day. But our main goal was to make the best crop possible. And of course make money doing it. We see a yield reduction of probably about 30% where we have non-GMO crops. And I'm mainly talking in cotton. But and the reason is it's not just from the standpoint of GMO crops means a better yield. But it's just as we can't get and spray that insecticide out in a timely manner, like it needs to be every single week. You know, a rainstorm may come in, we may get two inches and may put us out a week. And we've missed that bug spray. And then all of a sudden we start losing yield. And I can definitely see where the consumer is concerned about herbicides and and they're used to insecticides and they're used on our crops. But let me assure you that we use it daily. Basically on a daily basis, we're using a herbicide insecticide something. And you know, we're pouring out of that jug, we're pouring that concentrated material onto that or into that sprayer. And so, you know, we have to be very, very careful how we use it and things like that. But but I worry about it more than the consumer worries about it. Because of that contact to me and to my workers, we were definitely worried about safety. We're definitely worried about, you know, using the right rates, making sure that it's put on in the right time. So, so safety is an issue and we worry about it more than the consumer will ever worry about. As a farmer to protect the environment, that's what that's what I'm doing, putting as little as I can out, but still try to make a good crop. We may not fit the mold of the nostalgic farmer with the pitchfork and the overalls, but we can't really be that guy and do what we need to do to meet the challenges of today's environment. With the onset of more global trade and the world economy and ag products, I think having the GMOs out there to be able to develop and see and fight some of these outside pests that we may not know about, whether they be like a kudzu bug or others, that's going to be important. And having people on top of that kind of research is going to be important too. With the regulation and the regulatory environment that we're in, you can rest assured that USDA and others are going to make sure that it's a safe, you know, safe practice. In order to maintain the integrity of the insect-resistant varieties, we don't plant every acre in insect-resistant varieties. We will have a refuge plot like this, which is only herbicide resistant. So when worms and other pests get in the corn and damage the end like this, this is really of no value and it damages the crop and it damages, you know, puts damage in the field. So if we didn't have this technology, there'd be even more cases of this kind of damage, not only in this field, but in other fields too. So where we do have insect-resistant varieties through GMOs, it's a very big help to farmers to have corn that's not wormy and doesn't have, you know, active pests in it. And you don't want to go to the store as a consumer and find, you know, a worm in your corn. And likewise, we don't want to find it in ours either. So I'm a fifth generation farmer here in North Madison County, Alabama. Here currently, we are raising roundup-ready soybeans, roundup-ready corn with BT gene in it and also roundup-ready cotton with BT gene in it. I guess I kind of feel like I have a maybe a slightly different perspective than maybe other farmers because I am a mother. I have a 14-month-old little girl and if I didn't believe in 100% in the safety of GMO foods, I wouldn't feed it to her nor myself, you know, or any of my family for that matter. Seeing something come from the seed from where I planted it to where we harvest it and send it off to the meal, I'm a 100% believer in the safety of our food supply. I believe in the United States, we have the safest food supply in the world. With the introduction of the GMOs, we are able to get by with less insecticide applications, just say for instance our cotton, whereas 20 years ago, before the introduction of BT cotton, my family here would spray insecticide on cotton two and three times a week. Now we're down to, you know, an application maybe once every two weeks during the summer. So that in turn has decreased our cost of production in that sense, which in turn, you know, leads to the bottom line for the consumer there. For my family, we just like everyone else, we go down to the local supermarket and buy our food. Well, I'm okay with buying food that has GMOs in it. I'm not scared of it. All the research that I've seen says that they're safe. There's really not any evidence out there that prove otherwise to this point. I think a lot of people saying that it might have long-term effects, but we don't know that at this point, and I'm not scared of GMOs in my food right now. And my family eats it, I eat it, and I'm sure it would expose them to anything that was dangerous. There's going to continue to be more GMO traits included in seed that's going to make it easier and for farmers to make a crop. There's so many different things and different horizons that are coming up for farming. We don't even know yet. Five years from now, we'll say, well, how did we do without that that we don't even know about right now? Thank you for watching this video. I hope it's given you some useful information and deciphering GMOs. I'd like to thank our farmers for helping with it. Once again, thank you for watching.