European environmentalists and consumer-advocacy groups were the first to launch major protests that have since spread worldwide. Environmentalists in India have filed suit against Monsanto to prevent it from testing genetically modified cotton. In the Philippines, farmers have demonstrated against seed giants Monsanto and Dupont's field tests of Bt corn. And activists there point to Miracle Rice a product of the Green Revolution in the '60s as a cautionary lesson. Its wholesale adoption in Southeast Asia led to a rice monoculture, making crops more vulnerable to insect pests and disease, and more dependent on pesticides.
Public hostility is understandable.
And they are often marketed by large, multinational corporations that produce and sell the very agricultural chemicals farmers are spraying on their fields. So while many farmers have embraced such crops as Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans, with their genetically engineered resistance to Monsanto's Roundup-brand herbicide, that let them spray weed killer without harming crops, consumers have come to regard such things with mounting suspicion. Indeed, the benefits have seemed small until golden rice came along. Golden rice is the first compelling example of a genetically engineered crop that may benefit not just the farmers who grow it but also the consumers who eat it. No wonder so many of those concerned about poverty and hunger are convinced that such crops have a critical role to play in feeding the world.