Analysis: The way to use this argument is to do a comparative analysis; talk about how farmers in the past were self1sufficient and could generally afford to feed themselves and earn money. This argument is most powerful when weighing against the benefits to first world consumers and farmers. Essentially, you can argue that most of the benefits of GMO crops flow to first world consumers that can afford the greater varieties of food that GMOs provide, and that farmers in the first world can afford to buy pesticide and herbicide each year. On the other hand, it traps third world farmers in a system where they have to use GMO’s to compete and have to choose between being forced into debt to finance GMO’s or go out of business because they can’t compete with first world farmers. GMO’s coerce farmers, and force them into a cycle of dependency on large corporations, and the harm that perpetuates outweighs the marginal benefits to first world consumers.
Analysis: The way to use this argument is to do a comparative analysis; talk about how farmers in the past were self1sufficient and could generally afford to feed themselves and earn money. This argument is most powerful when weighing against the benefits to first world consumers and farmers. Essentially, you can argue that most of the benefits of GMO crops flow to first world consumers that can afford the greater varieties of food that GMOs provide, and that farmers in the first world can afford to buy pesticide and herbicide each year. On the other hand, it traps third world farmers in a system where they have to use GMO’s to compete and have to choose between being forced into debt to finance GMO’s or go out of business because they can’t compete with first world farmers. GMO’s coerce farmers, and force them into a cycle of dependency on large corporations, and the harm that perpetuates outweighs the marginal benefits to first world consumers.
nov2014pf.docx