If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my time in this state, it’s that Iowans know a lot about corn.  And our trip to the Pioneer seed company proved to be no different.  I was greatly impressed by the company’s vast facilities and came to better understand the processes Pioneer uses to produce its products.  One part of Pioneer’s operation deals with creating better hybrid crops, which is essentially a more complex version of selective breeding involving no genetic engineering.  The company prides itself on this aspect of their business as they claim to have superior advancements in this field compared to their competitors.  But Pioneer also provides GM products, which go through significant amounts of testing by the USDA, EPA, and the FDA.  The process by which Pioneer develops and tests its genetic traits can take as long as 10 to 12 years to be ready for the consumer market.  Currently the company is working on crops that conserve water more efficiently making them more resistant to drought-like conditions.  The future of the biotech industry seems to very bright as the company is rapidly growing and hiring new and larger staffs each year.  Concerns about the safety of GM products are hotly contested.  Advocates of the food safety claim that there are no scientifically valid studies done that prove any harmful effects of GMO products, whereas non-GMO advocates claim that simply because there is no evidence against their harmful effects does not mean that they do not exist.  Some believe that the world’s population could already be experiencing adverse side effects from GMO products and that they are not being recognized as such.  Another negative aspect that the non-GMO side warns against is the loss of biodiversity in our food supply.  Miles and miles of corn cover the state of Iowa and generally, all this corn is biologically the same or very similar.  This could be a potential problem if a new disease were to develop; the disease would be able to easily spread from crop to crop potentially destroying a large portion of our nation’s food supply.  But GMO crops are in the ground today for one primary reason, the world’s population.  Genetic engineering of food crops is necessary to obtain high enough crop yields to support the growing population.  And as we have heard on this trip over and over again, we must be able to “feed the world.”