by Karl Haro von Mogel on 18 December 2009 This was a pleasant surprise in my news feed. Israel Deladem Agorsor, in the department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana just published a column on GE crops and the future of African Agriculture. The debates on Genetically modified organisms at crossroads: Which way for Africa? Africa is busy trying to catch up to the developed world in order to feed itself on into the future, and genetic engineering is a contentious topic over there. Perhaps nowhere else in the world is it as touchy of an issue, for a variety of reasons that Agorsor details. Is Africa embracing biotechnology an inevitability, welcome or not? Will it help with adaptations to climate change?
Here is a good excerpt:
Now, here we are at the crossroads with what looks like a monkey business, confronted with a choice as to whether to go east or west, as to whether to embrace or ignore plant genetic engineering and GMOs.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 11 December 2009 Matt Ridley, author of an upcoming book on science called The Rational Optimist, wrote an article for The Economist called The new NUE thing. NUE stands for Nitrogen Use Efficiency, a trait that can maintain yields with lower applications of costly fertilizer. Nitrogen Use Efficiency has got him, well, rationally optimistic about the environmental benefits of some GE traits.
Imagine you could wave a magic wand and boost the yield of the world’s crops, cut their cost, use fewer-fossil fuels to grow them and reduce the pollution that results from farming. Imagine, too, that you could both eliminate some hunger and return some land to rain forest. This is the scale of the prize that many in the biotechnology industry now suddenly believe is within their grasp in 2010 and the years that follow. They are in effect hoping to boost the miles-per-gallon of agriculture, except that the fuel in question is nitrogen.
In a play on those who call GE crops an “unmitigated environmental disaster,” he instead calls them an unmitigated environmental miracle. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call them a miracle, it is quite astonishing what has been achieved in the literature in so short a time, and what traits we are likely to see commercialized in the next decade.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, however, just released another report, this time questioning the usefulness of genetic engineering to make crops more nitrogen-efficient.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 25 November 2009 As a society, we are scared of viruses. They are too small to see, insert themselves into our own cells, and turn our bodies into factories for making more of them. On top of that, they make us feel ill and can be tough to beat. HIV, H1N1, Papaya Ringspot Virus – it’s hard to find anything good to say about the little pseudo-living things. So it comes as no surprise that when people hear that scientists sometimes use DNA from viruses to genetically engineer crops, they get scared.
Viral DNA in food? How nefarious! Well, not really.
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by Karl Haro von Mogel on 11 November 2009 When it comes to genetic engineering in agriculture, most of the attention on the web and in films focuses on Monsanto when there are several other big companies (and a lot of little ones) that also work in this area. Reuters has just published a list of the big six, for your perusal:
- Monsanto Co (MON.N) – Based in St. Louis, the company posted record net sales of $11.7 billion and net income of $2.1 billion for fiscal 2009. Among its key products are corn, soybeans and cotton that tolerate weed-killing treatments and resist pests.
- Pioneer Hi-Bred – Subsidiary of DuPont (DD.N) based in Johnston, Iowa. Produces, markets and sells hybrid seed in nearly 70 countries worldwide and is the closest rival to Monsanto for market share in U.S. biotech corn seed market. Revenue totaled $4 billion in 2008.
- Syngenta AG (SYNN.VX) – The Basel, Switzerland-based company operates in 90 countries and generated 2008 sales of $11.6 billion. Collaborating with International Rice Research Institute to improve rice.
- Dow AgroSciences – Subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co (DOW.N) based in Indianapolis, Indiana. With global sales of $4.5 billion, company offers insect-protected corn and cotton, among other seed products, and is expanding its research into wheat.
- BASF (BASF.DE) – Based in Ludwigshafen, Germany, this leading global chemical company is increasingly focusing its health and nutrition division on plant biotechnology to increase crop yields. Like its rivals, BASF is working on a drought-tolerant corn seed. Revenue in its agricultural division totaled 3.4 billion euros in 2008.
- Bayer CropScience AG – The unit of Bayer AG (BAYGn.DE), had 2008 sales of 6.4 billion euros and operates in 120 countries. The company is pursuing 56 “bioscience” research projects involving six crops.
Hopefully people will come to know that there is more to the private sector than just Monsanto. Lists of the big ones are easy to make, though, what about a profile of the little companies? Start-ups in Africa, South America? What about China?
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Terminator 2: My Mission is to Protect You
“Terminator” technology, also referred to as “Suicide Seeds,” are marketing terms coined by GE opponents to reframe what is technically called Genetic Use Restriction Technology, or GURT. This technology can take several forms, the most widely discussed one was developed by scientists working at the USDA and the Delta and Land Pine company, which is now owned by Monsanto. It works by means of three engineered genes, that when brought together in one plant, they act in combination to halt the development of embryos in the seeds the plant produces. The result is a plant that produces food as normal, but does not produce fertile seeds.
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