I start from a position of distrust when it comes to pharmaceutical companies and multi-national chemical conglomerates
Fine, start from there. But the moment you deny the scientific consensus which says that GE crops are safe and benefitial, you've careened right into conspiratorial nonsense.
As for patenting, I suppose you would exhibit the same distrust of conventionally bred crops, which have also long been patented? Even if we do take this to be a good point, it applies to far more than GE crops. I suppose you re willing to pay the salary of the breeders who make your food supply possible then? From where I'm standing, the system works pretty well. You develop something, get a patent for a limited time to prevent someone from mass producing your hard work without having put in the possibly substantial investment of time, money, and energy, and then the patent expires. Where is the unfairness there? Ever eaten a Honeycrisp apple? It used to be patented, until the patent expired. Monsanto's first generation of genetically engineered soybean is off patent; you can literally buy 50 lb bags of generic GE soybean at Rural King now. And even if you just hate those big corporations for whatever reason, what of smaller plant breeders? Ever had a pluot, aprium, or pluerry? What of something like Zaiger's Genetics, who develops them? Should they just work for years and years on something, only to have someone bigger come along, buy one of their trees, and mass produce them, leaving Zaiger's with the bill? Without patents on their pluots, what do they do?
Well then start by labeling your products.
Why? Why single out GE crops for labeling? It can't be about consumer information, considering how readily available that information is, and that you do not make similar demands of crops produced through grafting, crops produced through induced mutagenesis, crops produced through wide crossing, crops produced through embryo rescue, or any other crop improvement technique.
In short, the objections you raise, while popular, do not have merit.