Last week, a Native American botanist argued that the genetic modification of crops is a form of rape. Perhaps the next step in the #MeToo movement involves returning to the low crop yields before the Green Revolution, which saved billions of lives by making food more available through genetic modification, among other things.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY-Syracuse, called corn "one of our deepest and oldest relatives." In an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, she humanized corn as the "Corn Mother," saying, "Corn is sacred because she gives us her children in return for protecting us."
Kimmerer wasn't talking about the sweet corn Americans love to eat today, but rather the Native corn that comes in hundreds of varieties. She contrasted this wild corn with the genetically modified corn her neighbor grows.
"There’s a word for forcible injection of unwanted genes," Kimmerer said. "Rape."
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