Like a thousand other farmers across the US, Kirk Bair is a farmer looking for ways to grow food economically and with as little labor as possible – but what are the moral implications of planting food you are aware is toxic, and selling it to your friends and neighbors? Is Bair in the right for planting GMO seed, even if conventional seed is hard to come by?

Bair has said:

“When you put a herbicide gene inside a corn seed, soybean, wheat, whatever you’re working with, you’re eating that. You’re ingesting it.”

It is clear that Bair realizes the health dangers of GM crops, but he plants them anyway? Why? He feels he has no choice, and there is a multi-billion dollar industry calling the shots.

“I’ve got some good looking ears coming,” said Kirk Bair, admiring his genetically modified corn crop, developed with Monsanto’s technology.

When asked why he has planted GM corn, Blair states:

“To use conventional corn, non-GMO, I’d have to till, apply pre-emergence herbicide. It’s more economical and more convenient to use GMO corn on real ground. I only use it because I felt like I had to. My seed supplier said, ‘Kirk it’s harder and harder to get a hold of conventional seed.’”