An article in the March 17 issue of USA Today gives a Spartan rundown of the controversy over genetically modified crops. They frame it in terms of two opposing sides: Those who support biotech because it increases yields and economically benefits the farmer, and those who are wary of any type of genetic engineering because it hasn’t stood the test of time and been proven to be completely safe. (These folk are likened to parents who, no matter what, will not get their children vaccinated.)

What the article completely misses, not entirely surprisingly, is the new form of agro-colonization that biotech creates. Large seed companies like Cargill and Monsanto patent all the brands of genetically engineered plants and sell it back not only to farmers in the United States, but to all farmers abroad who want to include their product on the global market. Farmers must buy new seeds every year instead of using their pre-existing seeds for free, and must worry excessively about cross-pollination (and thus illegally creating a new breed of already-patented plant).

All autonomy is stripped from the farmer. In her book “Stolen Harvest,” Vendana Shiva writes how biotech companies took basmati rice seeds from rural Indian farmers, patented it, then forced those same farmers, the original cultivators of the crop, to buy the rice seeds back from them year after year. Many went bankrupt, and something that was a living part of the culture and heritage of the community, not to mention a major dietary staple, was stolen and renamed under the ethics of capitalism. It’s simple theft.

The entire idea of patenting plants is not only morally offensive but completely unsustainable. It puts all of the power in the hands of the few companies, to which any grower must continually return. It defeats the entire idea of local innovation as a means to build community and generate revenue in developing countries—if we want people to grow their own food and make their own money, we are undermining them by giving them no choice but to buy from biotech companies if they want to participate in the market.

USA Today mentions none of this. It dwells on how China is shifting the market in favor of biotech as it buys more and more breeds of rice, and on how we will never be able to feed the world without these innovations. Maybe this is true. Maybe we can’t feed the world without genetic engineering. Is it horrible to say that maybe we shouldn’t? That there just shouldn’t be 10 billion people on the planet?

That’s a weighty statement, because I will not be the one suffering because of it. It will be the people in those developing countries, those who are already starving and rioting over food shortages. America and the West will not go hungry for a long time.

Still, it doesn’t seem like biotech is helping starving people. Most of that food still ends up in the hands of Westerners, who continue to get fatter and fatter off it.

Maybe, instead of trying to patent new and improved crops and sell them off, we should focus our priorities on helping people build up their local agricultural infrastructures. That’s a future I’m willing to invest in.