Factory farms and monoculture crops have been around for decades, long before GMO existed. That's due to the cost efficiency of large-scale production, not due to any particular type of plant seed, pesticide, fertilizer or whatever.
Organic GARDENING can produce chemical-free food when it's your own garden and you have complete control over what happens to it. Large-scale organic farming is a different matter, it looks very similar to large-scale conventional farming complete with pesticides, herbicides, monoculture crops and seeds that have been tampered with. It's not quite the same type of chemicals and altered seeds that conventional farming uses, but they have the same end result - dead bugs, dead weeds, and nice produce.
There's a technique called cisgenic engineering which is OK to use with organic farming. It's genetic engineering using genes from the same species or closely related species. "True" GMO is transgenic engineering which used genes from unrelated species. Not a whole lot of difference between them really, and it's easy to find articles from the organic community complaining about it, for example
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/05/d ... Xb330Y8WtBNo one knows for sure why honeybees are dying but it seems to be due to a combination of factors. Pesticides/herbicides are one of these factors but Roundup is pretty far down on the list of suspects - it may or may not be part of the problem. It's one of the least toxic herbicides that there is, which is why it's so popular. When it hits the soil it breaks down quickly into harmless compounds, and it doesn't harm anything but the plant that it's been applied to, with a couple of exceptions. It would NOT be a good idea to be out in the middle of the field breathing it in and collecting it on your skin while it's being sprayed, because such a high level of direct exposure isn't good. A surfactant in Roundup (not the active ingredient which is glyphosate) can cause problems for aquatic life so something else needs to be used in the immediate vicinity of bodies of water. There's an alternate form of Roundup called Liberty that doesn't contain this surfactant and can be used near water.
Roundup works by inhibiting a specific enzyme in plants. Humans and animals don't have this enzyme so Roundup doesn't bother them. "Roundup-ready" plants have been genetically engineered so they continue to function normally even when sprayed with Roundup.
The only problem with Roundup that seems to be reasonably well documented is its impact on the monarch butterfly population. It doesn't harm the butterflies directly, but the use of Roundup has dramatically reduced the population of the butterfly's host plant (milkweed) on the edge of farm fields. People are being encouraged to plant milkweed in their yards to support the butterflies. I planted milkweed in my yard to attract butterflies long before any of this hit the news, and I'm many miles away from any farm fields. The butterflies really do like it too. I don't know how many monarchs I get (Tucson isn't exactly on their migration route) but there are lots of other species that come.