GM woes: no water, no birds, no butterflies, and we’re coughing at harvest time

Farm Wars
by Cindy, Coldwater Michigan, USA

A farmer with land near us next to Silver Lake in southern Michigan (Branch County) dug a deep well two years ago about 600 feet from the lake shore. He did it in the dead of winter, going through snow and frozen ground after the summer crowd left for the season. When everyone returned in the spring, we and some of our neighbours found that our water pipes often sucked air. The farmer used immense irrigation systems the whole summer on his GM crops. Another GM farmer near a pond that our friend owns a few miles away in the same county also drilled a well to irrigate his fields and the pond went dry.

The first farmer started planting GM crops about 3 or 4 years ago. We knew he did it because he put out signs indicating that they were GM when he planted his corn that year. Then in the fall, when he began to harvest, he actually flew a skull-and-crossbones flag on his combine and harvester! My husband and I started coughing, and we coughed our way through his harvest, as we do every fall now, and getting worse every year.

The other thing that’s happened is that we have almost no birds here anymore. I have bird feeders out, for both songbirds and hummingbirds. For years I’ve enjoyed a wide variety of birds outside my window. But sadly, this year I never once had to replenish my bag of feed. The birds are gone. So are the butterflies. I saw zero butterflies this summer, and there were hardly any bees.

The bees used to battle the hummingbirds for food, but the two lonely hummingbirds that visited our feeder this year had very little competition from the handful of bees that came around. I used to enjoy flocks of hummingbirds, but this year my hummingbird feeder actually went sour before I had to change it. The wild deer are gone too. In other parts of our country, people are blaming the drought for low bird populations. But we’re sitting on a lake.

There’s plenty of water here. And there are no birds. Again, the only thing that’s changed is we’re surrounded by GM fields.