What are we eating these days? through the eyes of Monsanto

My wife and I recently started moving our diet to organic foods after she read In Defense of Food.  Today I decided to take a few minutes and dive into the heart of the matter.  What are we eating?

I started by visiting www.Monsanto.com and found more than I had hoped for.  Monsanto listed many crops being developed by the "Biotechnology" method in their "R&D Pipeline" section of their "Our Products"   In case you're wondering what they mean by their "Biotechnology" method, which is a catch-all phrase, I found a diagram of it on page 16 of their R&D Pipeline Review - Boston
Presentation given 1-13-2010 (direct link (.pdf file))

Genetic modification, GM, is their "biotechnology" method, and the result is that proteins that have never before existed are being created inside of food crops chiefly corn and soy.  Though Monsanto is working hard on a host of others.  The results of introducing these proteins are unknown.  They have not been test.  Fortunately, some honest scientists around the world are working on it (see A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health for a great example of the kind of research that needs to be done).

How serious is this?  In the Robb Fraley Presentation at the Credit Suisse Global Agrochemicals Conference I found a wonderful bar graph of how many acres over the past 13 years have been planted with genetically modified crops.

Globally, we aren't eating what we ate 14 years ago.  We're now eating genetically modified.

Here is a link showing the global distribution of geneticially modified crops 340 million acres (which is a more conservative estimate than others I've seen). 

Some of the breakthroughs enabled by genetic modifications may be useful and safe; however, the concept of making crops that can be doused with excessive amounts of Roundup and/or other strong chemicals, or crops that contain proteins that can kill or make infertile any insects that eat it don't make sense.  It's obvious that eating lots of herbicide and pesticide is dangerous.

Finally, if you're wondering how to avoid genetically modified foods, there seem to be two ways.
One is to buy your food from the people that grew it.  Go to the farmer's market and ask, "Is this corn genetically modified?"
The second option is to stick to things with the "organic" label.