11-18 IAN GMO and Farmers
Food Regulations. A lot to discuss.
There are lots of issues that impact farmers' freedom to operate - and various commodity boards have teamed up on a program called Common Ground to help inform consumers with the facts behind today's agriculture. Common Ground is a grassroots movement to foster conversations between farmers who grow food - and the consumers in urban areas who buy it. One of the issues CommonGround focuses on is biotechnology and food - because food containing GMOs is a hot topic in grocery stores around the country. Kristie Swenson - a soybean and corn farmer in Minnesota - is a Common Ground Volunteer and talks with consumers to educate them on a variety of topics - such as GMOs. "When you think about what you buy in the grocery store, there are so many levels of testing and food security and so many rules and regulations that farmers have to follow and all of these rules and regulations are set by different organizations. The USDA, the EPA... There are so many things that farmers have to do to insure that we are producing safe quality food to put on consumers tables." Swenson says she tells consumers about how biotechnology helps decrease farmers' impact on the environment: "GMO's enable farmers to reduce tillage - which decreases fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions and soil and water runoff."
