Hampered by current environmental issues such as, salinity, poor soil quality, global warming and drought, just to name a few, it is no surprise that farmers want to increase yields, or get the same yield using less land, less sprays, less fertiliser.

Although Europe has largely ignored GM food, countries such as America however, are growing GM crops and see it is a part of the overall solution of ensuring future food supplies, especially to countries plagued by drought, insect plagues and other environmental disasters such as Africa. Most meals consumed in an American household will have some GM food content. The predominant GM crops are soy, which is an important protein source and maize. Both soy and maize have been genetically modified to produce bigger yields on the same area of land as normal crop or the same yield requiring less herbicide, insecticide and fertiliser.

Behind the GM food production are multinational companies such as the giant Monsanto corporation. Monsanto is a multibillion dollar company that exerts world dominance over GM food and companies such as this are driven by decisions based on profit. Jeremy Cooke writes "In the US, I found that for some farmers the problem is not so much a distrust of GM technology, but rather the way, they say, it makes them fall under the complete control of the biotech giants". Big business of biotech is making it tough for farmers to make their own decisions about what to grow and almost all of the seed available is GM seed. Some GM crops have been engineered so that they can not reproduce naturally and therefore the farmer must purchase a new batch of seed every year from the biothech companies..

Since the late 1990s there has been no report of humans getting sick by eating GM food or of any environmental problems caused by GM crops.

Although the safety of the technology, so far, does not appear to be a problem another issue does appear to spark the same level of controversy. Ownership of our food supply.

Two questions to think about?