The issue I have with GM grains is that their supposed benefits are narrowly evaluated. The implementation of Roundup resistant grains has caused much more herbicide use and more strictly mono-culture fields. Neither of those is a good result. A diverse biome cannot be supported by vast sterile swathes of mono-culture crops.
A weed here and there is not the end of the world and is actually a necessity. As weeds have developed resistance to Roundup, substitute herbicides are being introduced. Is this really a good trade-off? Do the benefits justify the means? I cannot see how they would. Developing nations cannot afford the GM seeds without subsidies and they cannot be saved for planting next years crop. When they can afford them, the result is heavy use of herbicides which will eventually be replaced with other herbicides.
GM wheat is not yet a commercial crop. But look at the history below of heritage wheat grains, and their characteristics of more nutrition and more and distinct flavors, that were set aside for the sake of industrial flour milling years ago. Just like GM seeds, the narrow focus is on cheap production.
About Wheat | Anson Mills - Artisan Mill Goods from Organic Heirloom Grains
Roller milling, which was introduced to America in the early 19th century as a tool of mass production, brought about a revolution that took wheat production away from landrace farming. In New York’s Genesee Valley, farmers and bakers nearly rioted when operators of roller mills refused their wheat. This was the first time the industrialization of wheat met with resistance on a large scale. The uprising was ultimately quelled by military intervention, but American farmers as far away as Kansas continued to resist industrialization well into the 1870s. After that point, most of the landrace wheat production in America simply disappeared because mills would not accept the grain.
Roller milling involves rolling the outer bran layer off the kernel, scalping the germ (where all of the flavor and most of the nutritional oils reside), and then milling the starchy endosperm that remains into flour. The process punishes grains to such a degree that thin-branned kernels of traditional landrace wheats are destroyed by roller mills; only wheat varieties with extraordinarily thick bran layers—many of which are the product of scientific development—can survive the operation. Roller milling creates ultraprocessed, refined flour, drop-dead consistent for baking and totally stable for distribution and storage. In fact, roller-milled flour has itself dropped dead in a way, as it contains no nutrition except carbohydrates and must be fortified with synthetic vitamins to be classified as food.
And along with thick bran comes high tannin concentration. The red landrace varieties used to develop modern wheats derive their color from highly tannic pigment that resides in the bran; thick-branned modern wheats, then, contain large amounts of tannins. Tannins are extremely bitter, and the energy exchange between kernel and machine during bran and germ extraction is so massive that the milled flour is left with residual bitterness.
Common white flour is no exception to the rule—it, too, suffers from this residual bitterness. Though roller milling produces refined white flour as an end product, it is standard industrial process for wheat flour of any kind. To make what the industry calls whole wheat flour (as opposed to nutritionally intact whole grain flour), the scalped bran layer is ground up and mixed back into the milled, bolted white flour, without the flavorful and nutritious germ.
