Johnny, Itasca is not GMO.

Most of the edible GMO crops grown in the USA are either corn, canola or soybeans, and none currently are potatoes. In the non-edible area, there's a lot of GMO cotton. Some fruit raised in Hawaii (papaya for sure, and maybe pineapple) also are GMO but I don't know how widespread the use of those varieties might be. For all the talk about GMOs, there are not that many such crops grown here in the USA except the ones I already mentioned. So, with potatoes (Itasca and all others except Innate, which is not yet available commercially), you're good to go. There is one GMO squash variety but it is not widely grown and I don't know if it is sold as fresh squash or if it is processed and sold canned or frozen or whatever.

When they (Monsanto, I think) briefly introduced the first commercially produced GMO potato in the USA, maybe around the late 1990s or early 2000s, it was called New Leaf. I believe it was modified to have resistance to CPBs and maybe to leaf roll. While New Leaf briefly was used for McDonald's french fries, the American public soundly rejected the idea of eating french fries made from GMO potatoes. With no market for the potato, it was withdrawn from the market. Because of consumer rejection of GMO potatoes, as far as I know, no new ones have been introduced to market in the USA except for Simplot's Innate which is close to being approved for market. It remains to be seen whether the American public will choose to eat Innate potatoes if they ever actually make it to restaurants or stores. There is another GMO potato that was approved in 2010 but it isn't grown or sold here in the USA as far as I know.

If the American public knew how much GMO corn, canola and soybeans are grown in this country, I think the public would pitch a fit and start boycotting processed foods made from the GMO corn and soybean crops.

Hope this helps.

Dawn

What Varieties of Potatoes in the USA are GMO?

Thanks again Dawn,

We are growing "Dia De San Juan" corn this year because it is an heirloom variety. So I am trying to plant all heirloom going forward.

Our Kennebec potatoe plants look very happy, all 10,000+ plants!

We will be saving corn seed for next year. I have looked and found no other corn fields near us.

You're welcome. Are you growing Itasca potatoes now or merely contemplating doing so in the future?

I sure am glad y'all won't have to dig potatoes by hand.

Even if you had cornfields within pollination distance, what would the odds be that their corn plants would be tasseling when yours were silking? Probably not all that high. Isolation by time is as effective as isolation by distance.

If you ever find someone growing corn near you and worry it will cross with your corn and potentially make a mess of your seed saving, you sometimes can prevent the crossing by planting a tall border of plants on all 4 sides of the corn plot. Tall, dense sunflowers make a great border plant and if you plant several rows of them close together they will form an annual hedge that can prevent someone else's corn pollen from blowing into your corn. I've used some of the tall grain amaranths in the same way, and amaranth produces an edible crop that can be cooked and eaten sort of like quinoa.

Dawn,
Thanks again. We are lucky to have tall trees all around out our largest plot. However, your suggestion may come in very handy elsewhere.

We plan to do a side by side trial of about 10 pounds of Itasca and Kennebec next year. I want to compare their performance in our clay soil. I will be adding sand all next winter. I reckon it will take me a few months to amend with sand and compost.

I probably don't need to say it, but would love to hear of the update on these. Since my fam loves their potatoes I think a more prolific variety might be more suitable. My primary garden space is taken up by potatoes!

Bon,

When we have our potato harvest, your family is welcome to help. We will give you a nice big box of Kennebecs for helping. Maybe even two boxes.

If you car pool with another family, they can have a box too. We will be digging them as new potatoes after brush hogging the vines. It will be the first time using our mechanical potato digger.

Would love to help !

Dawn,

Here is an email reply I received from Dr. De Jong at Cornell University. I asked the PAA (Potato Association of America) for their position on GMOs.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Johnny,

The PAA per se hasn’t taken an official position on GMOs.

As an individual potato breeder and geneticist - I work in
the public sector, employed by Cornell University - I believe genetic
engineering is a tool that can help us improve potatoes as well as other crops.

Is genetic engineering the solution to every problem?
No. Are genetically engineered foods safe? Yes.

My primary concern with genetic engineering is that it is
concentrating too much power in the hands of large multinational seed
companies. It is expensive to get a genetically engineered crop approved.
Only those with deep pockets can play.

~Walter De Jong

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Field of Plant
Breeding
School of Integrative Plant Science, Plant Breeding and Genetics Section

Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

tel 607-254-5384
fax 607-255-6683

wsd2@cornell.edu

Johnny, Thanks for sharing his response, and I happen to agree with him. I think it is awesome he took the time to personally respond to you. He clearly is a class act!

I think there are ways that GMOs can be used to improve life here on earth in a positive way, but it all depends on how the people using the science choose to use it. Like anything else, it can be used in a variety of ways..

The last thing I want to see is too much power over agricultural breeding stock (of any kind, GMO or not) to be concentrated in the hands of one or even a few large multinational corporations. I won't mention any names but most people would instantly thing of a company whose name starts with "M"

Am I in favor of something like fish DNA being inserted into a vegetable or fruit? Not especially, but what about a potato like Innate, where the GMO they are using in the potato also comes from a potato? Is it bad to use potatoes to improve potatoes? I also don't want to see things progress to the point that we cannot get our hands on the OP varieties we choose to grow. Just because new technology produces new agricultural seed stock in new ways doesn't mean we all would choose to use them.

Did you know that one of the drugs being tested for Ebola is a GMO---it is grown in a genetically modified tobacco plant. To me, that is a very positive example of the way a GMO plant can be used for the good of mankind. Through his job, my son and some of his coworkers were potentially exposed to Ebola last year a month or two before we'd had any Ebola patients flown back to the USA and well before we had an actual Ebola patient in Dallas. We had a very nervous 5 days waiting for the test results to come back so my son and his coworkers could find out if they had or had not been exposed. None of them really thought they'd been exposed, but they had to wait for the test to be sure. During that time I read about ZMapp and how it was being made and it made me realize that GMOs can be used in positive ways. However, I'd still like it to be my choice whether I eat GMO food, the same way it is my choice whether to buy conventionally raised foods or organic foods.

Even if I had been 100% opposed to GMO food, if my son or any of his coworkers had been exposed to Ebola and then had been offered a chance to take ZMapp as a part of their battle with the disease, would I have been in favor of that idea? Oh yes, only one million percent in favor of it. If scientists can use a GMO plant to help produce a cure for a horrifically deadly disease, who could oppose that?

Dawn

The Use of GMO Plants in Development of an Ebola Drug

Dawn,
My main concern is simple. Our food is way too important to play fast and loose with.
I don't want mouse or bacteria DNA in my food. I don't want it in my descendents food. They deserve better from us.

Johnny, I don't want those things in our food either. I'd rather see them take their GMO work in the direction taken with ZMapp where they modify a plant in a way that they can produce a viable, successful treatment for horrible diseases. I think there are right ways and wrong ways to use genetic modification. To my way of thinking, using it in crops that we consume as food is the wrong way to use it.

I worry even about simpler things....for example, they modified potatoes by inserting Bt genes so that they could, in theory, grow potatoes without having to spray for Colorado potato beetles. Thankfully, the American public rejected GMO potatoes (so far) modified in this way. My worry about that sort of GMO food was two-fold: (1) I didn't want to be eating Bt genes in potatoes, and (2) I felt like the constant use of the Bt gene inserted into food crops likely would give rise to pests like CPBs becoming resistant to the BT. That happens all the time with pests developing resistance to pesticides, so why couldn't it happen to pests constantly exposed to Bt? If it happened, organic farmers and gardeners would lose one of the most effective weapons they have against Colorado Potato Beetles. Even though it seems like Spinosad is largely replacing Bt 'tenebrionis' as the organic treatment of choice, we still wouldn't want to lose the Bt as an equally effective treatment. Will Bt-cotton give rise to caterpillars they are resistant to Bt 'kurstaki'? Maybe it already has. Who knows? Once that happens, organic farmers and gardeners lose a valuable weapon currently used to fight caterpillars on certain food crops.

I wish they would leave our food crops alone and not mess with them, but they don't. That's largely why my family grows and preserves as much of our own food supply as possible. At least that way, we know what we are (and aren't) eating.

In a similar vein, Round-Up Ready crops and the huge reliance upon glyphosate to treat those fields for weeds have given us increasingly higher numbers of weeds resistant to or tolerant of glyphosate. So, no matter how I look at it, to me they are ruining the reliability of glyphosate and some day it won't kill anything at all because everything will develop resistance. I don't even use glyphosate but it is (or has been) a good herbicide for a long time. What comes next? I guess they develop an even stronger herbicide that will replace glyphosate. Where does it end?

Good question. Where does it end indeed.

I have just asked Monsanto for a kit to detect GMO contamination. We'll see.

Are you going to check your corn?

When I think of GMO contamination, the case involving Percy and Louise Schmeiser comes to mind. Be careful---if your crops are contaminated with anything that Monsanto has patented, then your plants are now their plants and you could find yourself in a Percy Schmeiser type lawsuit situation. So, if I had contaminated plants, I'd never tell them. Never. I was so thoroughly disgusted by what the Schmeisers went through with their legal battle against Monsanto for so long that it still makes me sick to think about what happened to them.

Ultimately, the Schmeisers stood up to Monsanto and won, but their legal fees were enormous and they had to spend years of their life fighting a giant corporation. It was so unfair. The Schmeisers were innocent victims of Monsanto's patented crop contaminating their canola seed they'd saved and adapted for decades. To have to fight in court like the Schmeisers were forced to do just highlights how high tech crops can ruin an innocent family's livelihood.

I'll link a story about their battle in case anyone here is not familiar with the Schmeiser case. I consider Percy and Louise Schmeiser to be true heroes for fighting a huge multinational corporation and, ultimately, winning.

The Percy Schmeiser Case Involving Monsanto

Yes, I want to check my corn. I will be asking USDA, Oklahoma Dept of AG and others for a kit as well.

Percy and Louise Schmeiser won a battle. Our complacency will allow Monsanto to win the war. Are we an oligarchy or a democracy?

Our descendents deserve better.

Well, they won on principle, but I feel like they lost in so many ways. They lost their adapted canola from seed they'd saved and selected for many years. They lost their ability to ever grow canola again unless they were willing to face the same contamination and battle again. They lost years of living normally because they were tied up in the court case. Maybe in the end they won, but they lost all along the way. I give them credit for sticking with the battle and winning the final battle in the small claims court. It must have been satisfying to have that one go their way.

In the overall battle for control of the commercial seed world, I think Monsanto won long ago. In the last 10-15 years, though, there has been a huge resurgence of interest in growing open-pollinated varieties and in saving the seeds. Tons of little home-operated seed companies have sprung up right and left, offering open-pollinated seeds of varieties that "no one" has heard of and that "no one" knows about. I try to find some of those little less-well-known varieties and grow them every year. This year, among my oddball plantings are two OP tomato varieties I bought from a small family-owned and operated seed company. They are called Joe's Giant Pink Oxheart and Work Release Paste tomatoes. If they are great tomatoes, that's fine. If they are not so great, that's fine too. I enjoy the hunt for something that no multinational firm can take away from me. Some beans I bought from them are the first beans to bloom (other than scarlet runner and Insuk's Wang Kong which I'm growing just for their flowers and to renew my seed supply) and the flowers are pink, to match the Flamingo beans, I guess.

One of my old farmer neighbors used to give me so much grief for growing tomato varieties no one ever had heard of. He'd shake his head when I listed off the ones I was growing. He didn't have much use for anything that wasn't a hybrid with a string of disease-tolerance letters following the name, which is exactly the ones I mostly avoid. He also called my flowers "weeds" and said there was no place for them in the garden, so obviously his opinion didn't carry much weight with me after that.

Take a look at the Flamingo Bean pods at the link below. I bet a person could convince a little girl who doesn't like to eat green beans to perhaps give pink beans a try.

Flamingo Bean

I'll keep that in mind. I have a few little girls in my circle of garden buddies.

One of my teen garden buddies is hooked on PEPH peas. She eats them as shellies or dried peas with: onion, bell pepper and fried bacon. I give them corn meal, that I grind, for their corn bread.

Dawn, glyphosphate resistance weeds aren't actually that high on the list of most resistant. Looks like it started well before any type of Round Up ready crop existed.

http://weedscience.org/graphs/soagraph.aspx

I have been in touch with a few GMO experts. Here are a couple of GMO testing service links.

Hi Johnny,

Thank you for your follow
up. Our GMO test solutions come in kits of 100 tests, so purchasing a kit
from us to do your testing would be excessive for what you are looking to
do. I would recommend sending a few of your samples away for third party
analysis. Here are two places you can contact for further information and
can help you:

·
Genetic ID - http://www.genetic-id.com/Home.aspx

·
Eurofins - http://www.eurofinsus.com/food-testing/testing-services/gmo-testing/

Best of luck, please let me know
if you have any further questions!

Sam

Sorry just couldn't resist.

https://www.facebook.com/M.Elefteriades/photos/a.726703117362949.1073741825.144803705552896/1011752468858011/?type=1&theater

Those pink flamingo beans are AWESOME!!!!
<lurker from the NE :) -- a friend is trying to recruit us to OK so I'm scoping out the garden gossip. gotta keep priorities straight!>

Yoshimi...come hang out with us any time! We are a friendly bunch, and as a transplant myself...Oklahoma is a very friendly place :) However...there is that Cornhuskers/Sooners thing... :)