GM-tech running agriculture to seed

To eat GM food, or not to eat: that is the question in China after the Ministry of Agriculture allowed field trials with genetically modified rice seeds. The experts' world is divided.

GM seed supporters argue the world's hungry cannot be fed if agriculture doesn't change its traditional ways (read: if farmers do not use GM seeds). They say if the opponents can accept Bt cotton and genetically engineered medicine, why cannot they accept GM rice.

Let's take China and India, where Bt cotton is grown widely, as examples. GM seeds were introduced in these countries as high-yielding varieties. Very few, if any, farmers were told at the outset that they would have no choice but to keep paying exponentially more to buy them season after season. The Western world, which claims to have gifted the magic seed to the poor, is obsessed with democracy. But after using GM seeds does a farmer have the democracy of choice to revert to conventional seeds? To be honest, he has - but the soil, contaminated by GM seeds, would at best yield a poor harvest.