Last week, the Leadership Dallas County learned everything there is to know about agriculture in our county.

We also learned about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and what the extension program at Alabama A&M and Auburn Universities.

The extension program claims that farmers have purposefully changed the genetic makeup of crops since the beginning of domestic agriculture almost 10,000 years ago.

Domestic agriculture allowed farmers to genetically modifying plants to improve crop production.

Cultivating crops allowed early farmers to choose crops with characteristics that suited their needs. Subsequent seasons of selecting crops with particular characteristics and saving their seeds for planting led to the domestication of current food sources. This process is known as selective breeding.

During the 1980s, genetic engineering technology was applied to introduce or to enhance traits in plants.

Since the early 2000s, the technology of gene editing has had the potential to turn genes on and off or remove them to create desirable traits in crops.

Despite what I thought, I learned that this technology does not introduce foreign DNA into the host plant genome like transgenesis, which is the process of introducing a gene from one organism into the genome of another organism (I had to look it up too, don’t worry). Instead, it works with the existing plant.

Coming from a farm, I can see where this would make sense. We select which animals in the livestock group will be used to make more, and in my adult life, there has always been a stigma about GMO produce or food in general.

We edit the genetic makeup of our livestock, so why wouldn’t we edit the way our plants grow and produce as well?

The stigma that GMO is even at a national level.

However, the extension claims that the United States food supply is one of the safest and most abundant food supplies in the world.

The extension also claims that 1.4 percent of the United States population produces food for the remaining population.

In 2017, the United State Census Bureau reported that there were 325.7 million people in the United States.

While that 1.4 percent may seem small, that is still 4,559,800 people that are involved in farming and agriculture.

In Dallas County, agriculture and forestry is an important part of our make-up.

In 2010, $142.9 million was generated through the county’s agriculture and forestry production sector.

Dallas County also ranked second in the state in catfish production, which contributed 27.9 percent of the county’s total agricultural and forestry production, making it the largest agricultural resource we have.

This type of industry is important to our community and we should not be quick to judge the way farmers run and operate their businesses. They provide us with the food and other goods that we need to survive. They truly are one of the backbones of our society.