GMOs have delivered more hype, harm and false hope than real solutions
GMOs were introduced with claims of eliminating hunger, reducing pesticide use, and boosting nutrition — but these promises have largely failed to materialise.
Herbicide-tolerant and pest-resistant crops like GM soy and Bt cotton initially reduced pesticide use, but later triggered superweeds, secondary pests, and a return to heavy chemical dependence.
Touted as a cure for vitamin A deficiency, Golden Rice underperformed in real-world conditions, while public health programmes addressed the issue more effectively and affordably.
GM crops and animals — such as GM cassava, sweet potato, salmon, and American chestnut — failed to deliver in the field, facing regulatory setbacks, poor performance, or market rejection.
India’s Bt cotton led to farmer distress and suicides; gene-edited rice and GM mustard faced backlash for bypassing biosafety norms and undermining seed sovereignty.
GM technologies have prioritised patents and profit over farmer welfare, ecological balance, and food security, often avoiding rigorous regulation and democratic oversight.
The proposed Indo-US Trade Treaty pushes India to weaken its GMO safeguards, threatening biosafety, seed sovereignty, and the right to regulate risky technologies.
Around the world, communities are reviving agroecological practices rooted in local knowledge, resilience, and justice — proving that real food solutions don’t lie in gene-editing labs.
Picture a world where there is plenty of food, no hunger, fields grow without chemical pesticides, children are saved from malnutrition and people live healthily. This is what the world was promised in the name of genetically modified organisms (GMO). Three decades later, these promises lie across the fields like superweeds — costly, useless and crowding out real alternatives.
In 1995, with the approval of Bt maize and glyphosate-tolerant soy in the US, GMOs were touted as the silver bullet: Eliminating hunger, reducing pesticides, boosting yields and fortifying nutrition. But the dream, peddled by biotech giants and promoted by complicit research institutions, has proven illusory.
A comprehensive report, Bitter Harvest – 30 Years of Broken GMO Promise, by farming organisations Save Our Seeds, GM Watch and Beyond GM, offers a reality check. Through eight meticulously documented case studies, the article lays bare a pattern of ecological harm, regulatory evasion, scientific failure and corporate overreach.
The pesticide trap and the vitamin mirage
Let’s begin with the flagship claim of pesticide reduction. Herbicide-tolerant varieties like GM soy triggered an explosion of glyphosate-resistant superweeds, pushing pesticide use even higher. Insect-resistant Bt crops initially suppressed pests and reduced spraying. But with secondary pest infestations, farmers were forced back onto the pesticide treadmill.
Then comes the poster child of GMOs, golden rice. It promised to save a million children from night blindness but failed to reliably deliver even a basic level of beta-carotene in real-world field conditions, while public health programmes quietly and effectively addressed vitamin A deficiency through proven, low-cost solutions.
After decades and millions spent, GMOs remain mired in controversy and halted rollouts.
Frankenfish, failed forests and flopped soybeans
Many other GMOs could not withstand the complexities of the real world. GM cassava and sweet potato in Africa failed to outperform conventional crops, their performance no match for agroecological methods. AquaBounty’s GM salmon, designed to grow faster and relieve pressure on wild stocks, entered the market with strong industry backing, only to face consumer rejection, labelling debates and environmental concerns. In 2024, the company halted production.
Even ambitious efforts to re-engineer photosynthesis to boost yields remain stuck in labs. Forests weren’t spared either: the GM blight-resistant American chestnut, heralded as a model for ecological restoration, languishes in regulatory limbo with disappointing performance during trials. And gene-edited “healthier” soy by Calyxt, launched to replace trans fats, fizzled out due to poor demand and a failed business model. The pattern is evident, slick tech meets messy reality – and fails.
India’s cautionary tale
India offers its own cautionary tale. Bt cotton, once hailed as a pest-resistant breakthrough, has seen pest resurgence, pesticide dependence, rising seed costs and increasing debts and farmer suicides, especially in high-adoption zones. GM mustard, disguised as a productivity solution, is actually herbicide-tolerant – threatening ecosystems, biodiversity and health. Fortunately, it did not make it to the farms or plates.
Most recently, gene-edited rice, pushed by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research with government backing, has triggered outcry for bypassing biosafety norms, ignoring farmers’ rights and compromising seed sovereignty. The story repeats: techno-fixes fail, ecosystems are disrupted and farmers pay the price.
This makes India’s strong opposition to the current United States’ push for exporting GMOs through the proposed Indo-US Trade Treaty both timely and essential. Behind the language of innovation and cooperation lies a determined effort to force open India’s food and seed markets, dilute biosafety norms, and legitimise risky, failed GM technologies.
The US is seeking regulatory alignment that would weaken India’s precautionary stance and bypass democratic oversight. Accepting such terms would not only endanger our farms and food systems but also surrender our seed sovereignty to corporate control. Our negotiators are absolutely right to resist this new kind of technological and trade-driven coercion.
Who benefits and at what cost?
Why do these “technological solutions” collapse? Because they are designed to serve corporations, not communities. They ignore ecological complexity, bulldoze regulatory checks and reduce farming to a patent-controlled lab experiment. These are not responses to genuine needs; they are products in search of markets, driven by intellectual property, not food security or safety.
We now know that these technologies are often inadequately tested, impractical and disconnected from farmers’ realities. The biotech industry thrives on promises but withers under scrutiny.
Even now, with CRISPR and new gene-editing tools being fast-tracked by governments, the biotech playbook hasn’t changed: Inflated promises, regulatory shortcuts, focus on a few traits and the sidelining of safer, low-cost, farmer-led agroecological alternatives. The lessons of three decades are being wilfully ignored in the rush to resurrect the failed GMO model in a shinier avatar.
Uproot the illusion, sow the future
Thirty years of failure is not just a verdict. It’s a warning. From Golden rice to Bt cotton, from failed GM trees to floundering GM fish, the evidence is overwhelming: Biotech has overpromised and under-delivered at great cost to farmers, food and freedom.
But beyond this illusion, something real is growing. Farmers, communities and seed savers across the world are rebuilding food systems rooted in ecological wisdom, local resilience and shared knowledge. Consumers, too, are pushing back, demanding food that is safe, transparent and just. The future of food will not be written in a gene-editing lab. It will grow from the ground up.
It’s time to call out the illusion, uproot the weeds of false promises, reclaim the narrative and sow the seeds of a real revolution, one that values people over patents, diversity over domination and nourishment over novelty. This real food revolution is already underway, quiet, local, collective and growing strong.
Sridhar Radhakrishnan is an environmental and social justice activist.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth