GM Crops Now Growing in the Wild…

Remember that scene in Jurassic Park, when all the archeologists are touring the “nursery” for the baby dinosaurs?

In that scene, the main character, Sam Neill, asks one of the genetic scientists how they’re managing to control the population of all the dinosaurs.

The scientist gives him a smile, and says, “Oh, all the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are female. They can’t reproduce, which means we control the population.”

And, we all know how THAT turned out.

Sometimes, movies do get it right. And when Jeff Goldblume says, “Nature will find a way,” he was spot on.

We can see this playing out right now in Nebraska. Scientists have discovered that genetically modified plants, mainly canola, have begun spreading into the wild.

Scientists investigated over 3,300 miles of roads in Nebraska. They photographed 407 canola plants growing by the side of the roads. What’d they find?

That 80% of them were the genetically modified strain of canola that local farmers had been using. These strains are resistant to the herbicide Roundup. They’re also drought resistant, and heat and cold tolerant.

This means they’re going to be very difficult to control. The CDC suggests now that gm crops are reproducing with native species, we could begin to see strains of “superweeds”. Since this new strain is resistant to all natural forms of weed control (drought, heat and cold) as well as man made forms of weed control (Roundup), chances are high it’s going to spread like wildfire.

As much as I hate to think about it, the situation resembles Jurassic Park just a little too closely. Fortunately for us, the canola plants aren’t going to rear their ugly heads and, teeth flashing, chase us down a muddy road at night.

But they are going to spread. And spread. And spread. All because a group of scientists thought, just like in the movie, that they could control Mother Nature.