Spring in the Mid­west should be announced by end­less miles of green, but at best, a hap­haz­ard patch­work of win­ter wheat, rye, hay­fields and the occa­sion­al bit of pas­ture are the only green that show up after snow-melt.

Most of the win­ter grains plant­ed last fall have been sprayed and killed to make way for end­less miles of corn and soy­beans. (We use cov­er crops to pro­tect the soil in organ­ic pro­duc­tion too, but they are not sprayed in the spring, rather incor­po­rat­ed into the soil to increase organ­ic mat­ter and fertility.)

Corn, soy and alfal­fa cov­er the Mid­west, a mono­cul­ture of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered (GE) crops that have dis­placed the small dairy farms and their pas­tures, the fields of small grain and diverse mix­es of clover and grass hay.

We are at least, par­tial­ly, through the her­bi­cide sea­son. The first wave was last fal­l’s ​“burn-down”, the non-selec­tive spray appli­ca­tion (most notably the glyphosophate her­bi­cide Roundup®) that kills every­thing and gives the fields that love­ly dead brown look in the spring.

The spring ​“pre-emer­gence” spray (killing weeds before the corn and soy emerge) is over and the third wave of ​“post-emer­gence” spray­ing is in progress and of course the forth and even fifth spray appli­ca­tions can come any­time dur­ing the sum­mer to hope­ful­ly kill any weeds that escaped the first three attempts.

Then of course, wheat will need the pre-har­vest appli­ca­tion of, again, Roundup®, to kill any sur­viv­ing peren­ni­als, but most­ly to enhance the dry down (or ripen­ing) of the grain. This is done a few days pri­or to har­vest, and while it is quite effec­tive as a des­ic­cant, it also puts a good amount of her­bi­cide direct­ly on grain that will move into our food chain.

So, if noth­ing else GE crops have clear­ly changed the appear­ance of our land­scape, the crops farm­ers grow and the way they man­age weeds and pests. But they have changed the econ­o­my as well. The small diver­si­fied farms, the cheese fac­to­ries and the small town busi­ness­es are most­ly gone.

“ Small towns, peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment have become sec­ondary to the growth of mod­ern agriculture.”

Some would argue, most­ly agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mists, cor­po­rate agribusi­ness exec­u­tives and those farm­ers who decid­ed to get big rather than get out, that ​“mod­ern” agri­cul­ture is the eco­nom­ic engine that dri­ves rur­al America.

And it does, but those of us who still farm on a rel­a­tive­ly small scale, those who val­ue the envi­ron­ment, who try and keep our rur­al schools run­ning, our rur­al roads pass­able our hos­pi­tals open, to us, it appears mod­ern agri­cul­ture has most­ly dri­ven the mon­ey out of rur­al America.

Indus­tri­al­ized agri­cul­ture still needs peo­ple to do the work, but that work must be done at very low wages. When the prof­it is gone, when small farms are gone, when farm inputs are no longer pur­chased local­ly, when the tax base erodes — rur­al com­mu­ni­ties die.

The prof­it seems to have instead, gone into the pock­ets of seed, chem­i­cal and equip­ment com­pa­nies, Wall Street banks and through the hands of cor­po­rate lob­by­ists into the hands of elect­ed offi­cials who will, at all costs, sup­port cor­po­rate prof­it and the wish­es of agribusi­ness. Small towns, peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment have become sec­ondary to the growth of mod­ern agriculture.

Just as blue col­lar work­ers have seen their jobs and finan­cial sta­bil­i­ty out­sourced, so we have seen the wealth of our rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, the local farm income that had once been recir­cu­lat­ed in our small towns, sent into the prof­it mar­gins of cor­po­rate agribusiness.

So, do I blame this on GE crops? No, not direct­ly, but the sys­tem of farm­ing, the large scale mono­cul­ture grain and live­stock pro­duc­tion for the world mar­ket could not exist with­out them.

Before the intro­duc­tion of GE soy in 1996, the trend to larg­er and few­er farms was clear­ly hap­pen­ing, but the GE ​“promise” of effec­tive weed con­trol and high­er yields cer­tain­ly has­tened that trend. But that ​“promise” was just that, a promise — one that was false and quick­ly broken.

The Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence in a recent report seemed to find no clear evi­dence sup­port­ing the grand promise of GE crops. They worked in some instances, but failed in oth­ers. There was some indi­ca­tion of increased yield but weeds were devel­op­ing her­bi­cide resis­tance as well. In short, hard­ly a ring­ing endorse­ment. And, GE crops actu­al­ly increased her­bi­cide usage, not a pos­i­tive change for our health, or the environment.

Despite the high cost and pro­gres­sive fail­ure of the GE tech­nol­o­gy, farm­ers con­tin­ue (out of des­per­a­tion to make a prof­it?) to embrace it and cov­er the Mid­west with GE corn and soy. More grain used to fat­ten live­stock (despite the demand for grass fed dairy and meat) and to fur­ther the expan­sion of dairy, hog and poul­try pro­duc­tion into giant Con­cen­trat­ed Ani­mal Feed­ing Oper­a­tions (CAFO’s).

The inte­gral part GE crops have played in the growth of indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture, the glob­al food econ­o­my, obscene cor­po­rate prof­its and the decline of rur­al com­mu­ni­ties will be their real legacy.

And don’t be sur­prised, as Amer­i­can con­sumers increas­ing­ly reject GE tech­nol­o­gy, cor­po­rate agribusi­ness, with the sup­port of our gov­ern­ment, will force GE crops on the rest of the world. That, it seems, is one more aspect of Amer­i­can Exceptionalism.