The transgenics (TGs) or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that have been planted and harvested in agricultural practices are offspring of the liaison of technoscience and multinational agribusiness. Ambiguities linked with this liaison having to do with harms, risks, benefits and alternatives, and how to investigate them scientifically underlie competing narratives of the life and times of TGs and the turmoil that has marked it. Agroecology admits no place for using TGs; it is aimed at satisfying simultaneously, and in a balance determined by farmers and their communities, a variety of objectives, including productivity, sustainability of agroecosystems and protection of biodiversity, health of members of the farming communities and their surroundings, and strengthening of their culture and agency. It exemplifies practices in the space of agricultural options with proven success and whose potential needs to be more fully investigated empirically, and it provides a point of contrast that enables us to discern clearly what TGs are. TGs have experienced tumultuous times.