This post examines why we are generally comfortable with non-GMO plants being released without safety testing, but have very different standards for plants developed with GMO methods.
Are hybrid fruits & vegetables safe? The short answer from this educated layperson is “yes, of course, generally.” I’m not terribly worried about the dangers of the limequat, or the ugli fruit or the plumquat.
Ugli fruit by Steve Eng via Flickr
But still. To the best of my knowledge, none of them has ever been tested — that is, subjected to the sorts of long-term safety assessment that would involve feeding these things to generations of, say, mice or rats. The sort of assessment that critics of GMOs typically insist ought to be done on, say, Roundup Ready soybean.
The question arises because, in a very plain sense, hybrids are genetically modified foods, crosses between plants from two different species. But when people worry about GMOs, almost no one is ever thereby worrying about hybrids.
There are quite a few online sources that attempt to reassure people about the safety of hybrids, while at the same time demonizing genetically modified foods (i.e., GMOs in the modern sense). All such sources that I’ve found so far are full of fallacious reasoning — faulty logic through and through. There are claims that hybrids are “natural” whereas GMOs are not. There is no more common error in online debates over food than the mistaken assumption that natural means “safe” and artificial means “dangerous.” (Is naturally-occurring cyanide safe?) Such defences of hybrids also tend to be factually misinformed (‘hybrids are more nutritious’ or ‘GMOs always combine DNA from different sources’). False, and false. Consider this: when a scientist creates a new kind of apple by, say, deleting the gene known to code for some particular trait (say, its flesh browning when exposed to air), it has to go through a scientific assessment before it can be sold. But hybridize two apple varieties — or cross an apple with a plum — any number of genes get scrambled, and no scientific or regulatory scrutiny is required at all. If blind faith in hybrids isn’t based on pure emotion and prejudice, what is it based on?
Until recently, I never put too much thought into where farmers get the seeds that they grow into the foods we eat. I assumed they saved seeds from their previous crop. I thought this would give the farmer more control over his or her operation and save money. I presumed that if a farmer chose to buy seeds, they would do so out of convenience. In reality, most farmers buy new seeds every year because of genetics! Now I know, and to help people understand the scientific rationale of purchasing new seeds every year, a group of young scientists, including myself, made a short video.
In the video, we describe what hybrid plants are, and their benefits to agriculture. We illustrate what would happen if a farmer kept and grew the seeds produced by the hybrid plants.
The video was made by UC Davis scientists Jenna Gallegos (graduate student), Don Gibson (graduate student), David Coil (project scientist), and Nir Oksenberg (postdoc). We are members of the Science Policy and Communication Group (SPCG). The SPCG is a project of the UC Davis World Food Center’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy (IFAL) and also receives support from the UC Global Food Initiative – Communication, Literacy, and Education for Agricultural Research (CLEAR) program.
Did you like the video? What would you like to see us do next?
Written by Guest Expert
Nir Oksenberg is a professional science communicator for the Delta Stewardship Council, a California state agency. He fosters productive communication among scientists, the public, water managers, and policymakers. He has a PhD in human genetics from the University of California, San Francisco and was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Davis studying the rice response to bacteria, flooding, and drought in Pamela Ronald’s lab.
New research suggests that seeds could now be formed without the biological process of fertilisation. CIMMYT By John Bowman. Republished with permission from The Conversation.
Sex without seed. Seed without sex. It’s been said that the greatest gift of science to humankind would be achieving those two goals.
Effective contraceptives such as the pill have pretty much nailed the first goal.
Our findings, published recently in Science, could be significant pieces of the puzzle for the second.
That’s because by helping solve one of the fundamental questions in the evolution of plants, we may also have brought closer the possibility of cloning a plant with good traits through easy-to-distribute seeds, rather than cuttings.
This so-called “apomixis” is one of the holy grails of agriculture because it would make new crop varieties – ones that are resistant to drought, say – both cheaper, and more widely available. Continue reading “Seeds without sex – some racy findings on the cloning of plants”→
Frank gets a smooch from a carrot at SciFest, 2012
Happy May, everyone! Frank N. Foode™ here to announce the start of a new community contest here on the Biofortified Blog!
Spring is an exciting time for a plant such as myself. Farmers and gardeners everywhere are planning and planting, tilling and drilling, and hoping for a good summer grilling! Around the hemisphere, plants are popping up from the soil – aided by our human friends. Being a domesticated plant has its benefits, but we depend on people to plant us, weed our beds, protect us from pests, and make sure we have the moisture and nutrients we need. I try to help when I can, digging my roots deep in the soil, and jousting with caterpillars ad beetle larvae, but my tassel’s off to the hard work of people who love plants.
If you read this blog, you probably love plants. You might be growing plants right now, or have tried to. If so, this contest is for you. We want to hear about your gardens! Those labors of love between you and your plants and all the successes and failures that come with it. And we’ve got some special prizes just in time to make your gardening even more awesome this year (or to help heal the wounds of past attempts)! Continue reading “Community Contest 6: Love your plants!”→
While the comments on Anastasia’s excellent post about the hybrid seed donation situation in Haiti continue to flow in, I thought I would make a few extra comments about the situation that I thought were interesting, and highlight some comments of others.
The first thing that occurs to me in this discussion about the hybrid seed is that there still is a lot of misinformation flying around about it. Beverly Bell, who ‘sounded the alarm’ about farmers supposedly planning to buy and then burn the donated hybrid seed, continues to make stuff up about the situation. While Monsanto never offered to donate GE seeds, Bell claims that the Haitian Agricultural Ministry rejected such an offer. Ronnie Cummins from the Organic Consumers Association assumes it to be true and expands upon the tall tale:
“Monsanto wanted initially to dump GMO seeds on Haiti, but even the corrupt Haitian government knew that this would spark a rebellion, so Monsanto cleverly decided to dump hybrid seeds instead.”
However according to Monsanto, they never offered GE seeds, ever. Bell and Cummins both repeat the claim that hybrid seed cannot be saved, or is worthless to save. Also not true. The traits of saved hybrid seed will have a distribution of combinations of their parents’ traits, but will still grow. I would like you to watch this short video which contains an interview with an “Agronomist” named Mark who is taking part in apparent protests against Monsanto in Haiti.
I put “Agronomist” in scare quotes because they profess to having expertise in agronomy and yet they make false statements that a responsible agronomist would not make. Again, he repeats the claim that hybrid seeds cannot be saved, but he also continues to drum up opposition to the seed donation on the idea that they could be GMOs! (Even though the interviewer points out that they are not.)
There is also a very troubling thread of paternalism going on here. After the dire food needs of developing countries, the most troublesome issue as I see it is when people in industrialized nations decide to tell people who are worse off what they can or cannot do. It seems that everyone’s got a vision for the ideal agricultural situation in Haiti – some would like to see them produce enough food to feed the country with hybrid seed, others would like to see them stick to traditional (low-yielding) open-pollinated varieties. Few have mentioned the possibility that Haiti could develop its own local high-producing hybrids down the road. So is everyone just telling the Haitians what to do? No, there is an asymmetry.
The seeds are donated to the nation of Haiti, and will be distributed within the country at a low price to those that wish to buy and plant them. The seeds are not being given out for free, which keeps local seed producers from being driven out of business by having to compete against free seed. No one is forced to grow these seeds if they don’t want to (unless of course you agree that Haiti has a shortage of seed). And farm inputs to help the seeds grow are also being donated.
The above protest was organized by Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP), the organization that Mark the “agronomist” works for. I find it troubling that someone who is conveying false information about hybrids is intimately connected with the initiation of this protest, which means that they could have misled all these protesters with the justification for the protest. (The protest was also apparently against the Haitian president, which is why I called it an ‘apparent protest against Monsanto.’) If they have led the farmers to believe that the seeds cannot be saved, then they have treated these people as mere means to some political or social end, which is wrong.
Indeed, what is the reason for the protest? Is it just to convey the message that ‘We think money would be more help to us than seed and we would like our government to understand that,’ that would be one thing. But I don’t think so. The purpose of this protest may be to stop the hybrid seed donation, which is where the paternalistic asymmetry comes in.
Monsanto is not limiting the choices available to the Haitian farmers by making this donation, however, several well-meaning people and organizations are trying to limit their ability to choose this seed. By continuing to falsely claim that the seeds are genetically engineered, or covering up the fact that the seeds can be saved but just do not breed true, they are also trying to mislead the farmers into rejecting the seed on prejudice.
Developing countries have many different kinds of food and farming systems, and they should be able to choose how they want to do it. I mentioned before that maybe there could be a local hybrid seed economy, with a few breeders specializing in hybrid versions of Haitian crops. (I’m sure that Monsanto would like to open up a Haitian breeding station and sales office someday as well.) Part of the reaction to this seed donation is the fear of change – that small subsistence farmers in Haiti will be unable to adapt to a changing agricultural system and will be left behind to continue into poverty. At the same time, preventing them from having the option of moving beyond mere subsistence is also leaving them behind in a different way. Haiti imports at least 50 percent of its food, continually leaving them dependent upon foreign aid in both food and money (which the agronomist above preferred). Tariffs and subsidies play a role, but do does local production capacity.
The norms of farming have changed over time – with the advent of hybrids seed saving has become less the norm and more an oddity – this is a trend you’ll often see when a manufacturing process becomes so highly specialized as to require experts to do it – breeders create new hybrids, farmers farm – breeders probably wouldn’t make the best farmers (they’re trained as breeders) farmers probably not the best breeders etc – that’s how any discipline advances, higher specialization leading to a better end product.
Along with the misinformation about hybrids, there has been an upwelling of opposition to the very idea of hybrids themselves. Ronnie Cummins doesn’t like them, people on blogs don’t like em, there are even companies trying to literally bank off of a recent opposition to hybrid seed. But what these people are missing is that although you have to pay someone to produce your hybrid seed (or take special measures to produce them yourselves), the yield or other trait benefits you get outweigh the cost of producing them. Otherwise farmers wouldn’t buy them.
you want to create “hybrids” (though from what I’ve read Monsanto’s version of hybrids could never occur on their own in nature), fine
In Givin’ props to Hybrids, blogger DeLene writes about a recent paper about hybridization and its demonization as being unnatural. While DeLene is talking about hybrids between species (and animals at that), these perceptions are connected. Hybrids happen in nature, more often than genetic ‘purists’ would like to think.
Finally, the shape of the discussion about the Haitian hybrid seed donation reveals what it is really about. First, when the claim was flying around that the seeds were genetically engineered, that was the reason why the seed donation was bad. Then when that wasn’t even true it was because the seeds are hybrids and that is why they are bad. Now, the discussion is shifting away from hybrids to how the seeds have been treated with common “toxic” fungicides to prevent them from rotting in the soil. The real reason, which will come as no surprise to those who read this blog regularly has little to do with any of those reasons – it is mostly because the donating organization is Monsanto. Look at all the people cheering the symbolic destruction of these seeds on the Non-GMO Project facebook page. You’d think that they would be happy that the seeds aren’t genetically engineered. Nope – it’s entirely about Monsanto.
I for one, think that the seeds should be treated with fungicide. Besides my personal experience with the difficulty of getting non-treated seeds to germinate well in my lab’s nursery field each year, there is a real biosafety reason why seeds donated to Haiti must be treated for fungi: To protect the farms of Haiti from contamination with new strains of crop-eating fungal pathogens that are not native to the island. If any organization is sending seeds grown from crops elsewhere in the world and they are not treating the seeds to kill hitchhiking bugs, they are putting Haitian agriculture at risk. Whenever my lab sends seeds to be grown in our Winter Nursery in Puerto Rico or Mexico, we have to not only treat the seeds, but also include one seed from each packet in a big batch to test for pathogens before importation.
Imagine an alternate situation where Monsanto did not treat the seeds with fungicide – I could easily imagine the opposition claiming that Monsanto is trying to infect Haiti with exotic fungi so that they will become dependent upon them in some other fashion. Does Monsanto have to anticipate every bio-political move and misunderstanding before making a humanitarian gesture? Damned if you do…
I would like to end on one important point. Some people are saying that Monsanto is only doing this for PR purposes. You’ll have to ask them about that because I’m not privy to any motivations other than what they have already said publicly. They sound like they are genuinely trying to help, although people suspect otherwise. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. Monsanto’s intentions do not affect whether or not these seeds will help Haitian farmers. Buy the seeds. Plant them. Grow enough food to feed your family and your neighbors’ too. Thumb your nose at Monsanto and don’t buy hybrids after this again. What matters most is that the people in Haiti have the power to grow what they want and rebuild the food security of their country however they see fit. And if Haitian farmers decide that they like or don’t like these seeds, and choose to grow or not to grow them in the years ahead, that is their choice, not yours or ours. That’s what it comes down to.
You may have heard about Monsanto’s donation of $4 million worth of seed to Haiti. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of confusion about exactly what’s happening. In this post, I hope to help clear up some of the biological questions up as well as addressing some of the intellectual property questions. If you have specific questions about Monsanto*, I hope you’ll bring them to Monsanto’s blog Beyond the Rows or ask some of the many Monsanto employees on Twitter such as @Mica_MON and @JPlovesCOTTON.
The donation
Monsanto’s May 13 Press Release Monsanto Company Donates Conventional Corn and Vegetable Seeds to Haitian Farmers to Help Address Food Security Needs is a good place to start to find out exactly what was donated and how it got there. Importantly, the donation was approved and by the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry was involved in selecting seeds that would be “appropriate for the growing conditions and farming practices in Haiti.” The exact way the seeds are being distributed ensures long term benefits from this one time donation:
The initial seed shipment will be distributed to Haitian farmers by the WINNER project, a five-year program to increase farmer productivity funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). WINNER will provide the in-country expertise, technical services and other inputs, such as fertilizer, needed by farmers to manage the crops.
“Our goal is to reach 10,000 farmers this growing season with these seeds,” said Jean Robert Estime, the director of the WINNER project. “The vegetables and grain these seeds will produce will help feed and provide economic opportunities for farmers, their families and the broader community. Agriculture is key to the long-term recovery.”
The seeds are being provided free of charge by Monsanto. The WINNER project will distribute the seeds through farmer association stores to be sold at a significantly reduced price. The farmer stores will use the revenue to reinvest in other inputs to support farmers in the future. The farmer associations alone will receive revenue from the sales.
I can’t think of a better way for this donation to be distributed. There are a lot of problems with the way international food and agriculture aid have been handled in the past, but the situation certainly seems to be improving as private and public donors as well as governments see the need for education and infrastructure, not handouts.
Food aid is the worst. It’s good enough in the very short term, but as soon as the food is consumed, there is no lasting benefit. Donations of seed are better, but again, once they are used there is no lasting benefit. Seed donations in combination with development of infrastructure that farmers need to distribute their products and to obtain inputs are much better, and I’d argue that such infrastructure development in combination with extension is the best possible way to help farmers, particularly when local people are involved in the process – which is exactly the case here. Ideally, part of the process would be to develop local seed production, but the information available on WINNER doesn’t say if that is included or not. The Earth Institute at Columbia University is also involved in improving agriculture in Haiti.
You may have noticed a distinct lack of terms like biotech, genetically modified, GMO, Roundup Ready, or Bt in the press release. Haiti has no system in place for regulation of biotechnology, according to FAO‘s Biotechnology Country Profile for Haiti. Haiti is “party of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol” which, as I understand it, requires member countries to develop precautionary-principle based rules to protect biosafety if they want to even have biotech seeds cross their boundaries. In short, the regulatory framework needed to grow biotech crops in Haiti does not exist. Without that framework, they can’t accept biotech seed as a donation, and as far as I know, Monsanto did not even consider donating GMO seed to Haiti.
These two articles seem to be the source of many of the erroneous posts and Tweets. Some of Timi’s questions are answered in the press release itself while some require a little background in crop science. Her questions are well thought out, if not well researched, so I think they are a good place to start, even though I’m obviously not the intended answerer. I don’t think Jean-Yves’s article is even worth addressing, it’s so completely made up – but I thought it should be included here since it has been cited in so many other blog posts and articles.
Five questions
1. What do Haitians think? Do Haitian farmers actually want these seeds?
Members of the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture and Haitians in the WINNER project were involved in approving the donation and making it happen, so that’s at least some Haitians who want the seeds. As for the farmers, they have the choice to buy the seed or to not in the stores run by farmer associations listed in the press release. No one is forcing them to take, buy, or grow the seeds. Even if individual farmers don’t want the seed, is that a good reason to prevent every farmer from having the seed? Is it fair to keep farmers from having a choice because organizations outside Haiti like the Organic Consumers Association (based in the US) don’t want them to? Anything other than letting the farmers for themselves choose is tantamount to paternalism.
2. Will Haitian farmers be able to save the seed?
Yes. Haiti doesn’t have any laws in place to protect plant intellectual property such as Plant Variety Protection (at least according to Haiti’s Biotechnology Country Profile), so even if Monsanto wanted to prevent the farmers from planting the seed from this year’s harvest, there would be no legal basis for the contract. On Beyond the Rows, Monsanto employees have clearly stated that these seeds can be replanted without any intellectually property interference. There will be no Haitian Percy Schmeiser, even if the seeds are brought into local breeding programs.
Some of the seeds are hybrid. Hybrid seed can be replanted, but many farmers choose to purchase hybrid seed each year due to the superior qualities that hybrids can have. (more on this in a minute)
3. Will Haitian farmers be able to use existing farming methods?
Per the press release: the seeds were selected by the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, to be “appropriate for the growing conditions and farming practices in Haiti.” To me, the big question is: how are Haitian farmers currently farming? Are they using de facto organic (put the seeds in the ground and hope)? Certified organic? Sustainable agriculture ? Conventional agriculture?
There’s not much info out there on the web to answer the question, but Manuel Rivas (Monsanto’s Regulatory Affairs Lead in the Andean Region, Central America & Caribbean) has shared some pertinent info on one of the Beyond the Rows posts:
…the corn hybrids sent to Haiti have been tested in the region with no fertilizer use and the yield obtained with them has been higher than the average yield Haitian farmers currently obtain using their open pollinated varieties.
…although farmers there have very limited resources in general, the use of fertilizers and pesticides is quite normal among them. Many times Haitian farmers don’t have the resources to purchase those inputs, but they know how to use them and they do use them whenever they have access to them.
The assumption that almost everyone has when they see the state of poverty in Haiti is that agriculture in the country is in the pre-historic ages. However, keep in mind that Haiti has a long tradition in agriculture since colonial times and not so long ago (in the 70’s) the country was an important exporter of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and mangoes, just like other countries in the Caribbean. The use of agricultural inputs in those crops and in rice (the most important local crop) has been very common with most of them coming across the border from the Dominican Republic. Political problems in the last 25 years or so have practically destroyed the country’s agriculture sector and made the country dependent on foreign aid; but the farmers are still there trying to survive and willing to make their land productive again.
What’s exciting about this seed donation, in combination with the WINNER program, is that there is potential for a lasting improvement of farmer’s ability to purchase inputs if they wish to, along with the in-country expertise to help them choose the best farming methods for their situation. While the WINNER program won’t last forever, five years is a long time to get a strong, sustainable system started.
4. Will Monsanto donate GMO seeds to Haiti?
No, for the aforementioned reasons.
5. Will indigenous seeds be “contaminated” by Monsanto’s seeds?
Yes and no. Gene flow is simple and complex at the same time. For the most part, pollen stays near the source, but in a country as small as Haiti (10,714 mi²), wind and pollinators could conceivably carry pollen all over the country. If farmers choose to plant traditional varieties, they will be able to maintain those varieties. Some percentage of the seed that they harvest at the end of this growing season will be a hybrid between the traditional variety and the new seed, depending on how close they are physically to a farmer who planted the new seed. Conversely, the farmer who planted the new seed will have a certain percentage of his harvest “contaminated” with the traditional variety. They can keep their two varieties separate (for the most part) generation after generation by keeping seeds from plants that are similar to the variety they want and avoiding keeping seeds from plants that look different. Importing heirloom or open-pollinated seeds would “contaminate” the local varieties as much as the seeds from Monsanto. For more details on gene flow, check out Those naughty plants!
There are actually potential benefits of crossing the donated seeds with the local varieties (remember, there are no intellectual property restrictions with this donation). After an initial cross, a farmer could simply select the plants that do best in his or her microclimate. They would be gaining alleles for disease resistance, high yield, and other traits, while maintaining local alleles that make the plants uniquely suited for their location. Done right, this could result in high yielding locally adapted varieties.
What are hybrids, anyway?
A hybrid is simply a cross between two different plant varieties. The two varieties can be inbred lines or populations like open pollinated varieties. The reason why hybrids are used is a phenomenon called heterosis, or hybrid vigor. While the exact mechanisms of this phenomenon aren’t completely understood, its effects are striking! In maize, hybrids have been used since the 1920s. A classic maize hybrid is B73 x Mo17. B73 and Mo17 are divergent inbred lines, meaning that they have different sets of alleles for each gene in the maize genome. When crossed, the resulting plants are much stronger and have much higher yields than the inbreds alone.
The power of hybrid vigor.
Some people argue against hybrid seed by saying it has to be purchased every year, but this isn’t quite true. First, the seed from hybrids can be planted – there is no biological reason why they wouldn’t produce seeds that grow perfectly well. However, if you cross hybrid plants together, the resulting plants won’t be quite as good as that first generation hybrid, though they will likely be better than the original inbred lines. Second, farmers and gardeners are perfectly capable of producing their own hybrid seed, and some do, if they like a challenge. Most, however, let seed companies big and small do the work of keeping the inbred lines separate and producing the hybrid seed for farmers to buy.
Some people argue against hybrid seed by saying that it that it requires more inputs, but this isn’t quite true either. Seeds are seeds. That is an over-simplification, but a given seed no matter its genetics can be grown with high inputs or with no inputs at all. The difference is that the seed grown with fertilizer and pesticides will, on average, yield more than the seed with no inputs. The ability of a plant to respond to fertilizer can be changed with breeding, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow a seed with high fertilizer response without inputs. Breeding specifically for low inputs can be done simply by selecting the best performing plants under low input conditions – the breeding process remains the same. The specific corn hybrids donated have been tested under low input conditions, as mentioned by Manuel Rivas.
Some people argue against hybrid seed by saying that it that it is less nutritious, but this isn’t quite true either. It is true that most of the commercially available seed was bred for high yield without consideration for characteristics like taste and nutritional composition that are important to consumers. The reason for this is obvious – consumers don’t buy seed, farmers do. And farmers (particularly grain farmers, but fruit and vegetable farmers too) are paid for quantity not quality. This is not a characteristic of hybrids but of the system in general. Heirloom varieties are typically selected for taste, not yield, and taste is affected by nutrition. Gains in yield from breeding do suffer if selection for too many other characteristics are added, but it isn’t impossible, especially with the advent of precision breeding.
Toxic chemicals on the seeds?
Besides the confusion over hybrids, there has been quite a bit of confusion over the fungicides that protect the seeds. First, the Hatian Ministry of Agriculture was made aware of the fungicide, to which they responded: “The products listed are used everyday in Haitian agriculture and should pose no problem,” according to Between the Rows. The specific details were provided by Monsanto employee Mica:
The corn seeds were treated with Maxim XL, which is a Syngenta product. According to Syngenta, approximately 90 percent of U.S. corn seeds are treated with Maxim XL… It’s also used in Western Europe and Latin America.
Thiram, a Bayer Crop Science product, was used to treat the vegetable seeds. Thiram has been registered for use in the U.S. for more than 60 years and is used to treat approximately 1.3 billion pounds of seed annually. (Source: U.S. EPA)
It might seem strange to treat seeds with these chemicals, but it helps protect the seeds from being destroyed by fungus before they germinate. They are used safely by farmers all over the world. The fungicides also help prevent the spread of fungus on seeds from place to place – such as from the US to Haiti.
Reasons for seed treatment. North Dakota State Extension.
to control soil-borne fungal disease organisms (pathogens) that cause seed rots, damping-off, seedling blights and root rot
to control fungal pathogens that are surface-borne on the seed, such as those that cause covered smuts of barley and oats, bunt of wheat, black point of cereal grains, and seed-borne safflower rust; and
to control internally seed-borne fungal pathogens such as the loose smut fungi of cereals.
Let the Farmers Decide
There is nothing inherently dangerous with the seeds being donated or with the WINNER program. Farmers may choose to purchase the seeds or not. Burning the seeds or demanding that the seeds be turned away just takes away options for farmers. I hope that the people calling for burning the seeds will stop and think about the consequences of their actions for those farmers who might want to try planting the donated seed and instead think of ways to help farmers who don’t want seed from Monsanto for whatever reason.
* Disclaimer: I do not have any personal or financial connection to Monsanto, I’m only writing in hopes of dispelling some confusion about things like hybrid seed that could ultimately have a negative effect on farmers in Haiti and other places. I had been avoiding writing this post but the confusion about what hybrids are and what they do just became too much to ignore!
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