Over the last 15 years, agriculture has been changing technologically at an amazing pace. It is something that is truly fun to look back at and realize where we have come. As a producer of corn, soybeans, wheat, seed corn, and popcorn over many of those years it has truly changed what we are able to do and what we will be able to do in the future.

Equipment technology has created a way for us to be able to be better stewards of our ground and resources. Biotechnology has allowed us to push the food, feed, and fuel production to levels that only a few short years ago, many people would not have thought possible. Plus, we are utilizing fertilizer at a better rate. We are reducing our need for irrigation, in irrigated crop production. We are using fewer and fewer pesticides, which not only allows for a healthier product but also for cleaner natural resources like streams and drinking water.

For the farmer, this new wave of biotechnology, has allowed him to plant sooner and get over more acres faster. It also allows for a crop that can remain in the field in good condition longer. It is also allowing for new “green” technologies to come along with the feedstocks from the field being used for future cellulosic ethanol production and for helping coal fired electric plants to create a cleaner energy as well. All this is possible because of the healthy plants that biotechnology is allowing us to have. A plant that can protect itself, will be stronger then the plant that isn’t. Whether that protection is from in field pests or whether that is from the plant being able to be resistant to certain herbicides, it all helps in the final standability and yieldability of the crop that is planted.

Farmers love to plant biotech corn and soybeans. According to the USDA June 2009 Acreage report, US farmers planted 85% of their corn to biotech hybrids which was up from 80% in 2008. They also planted 91% of their soybean acres to biotech which was down 1% from 2008. Farmers have seen the value of these crops and are willing to plant them.

This doesn’t mean there doesn’t need to be more work done. Seed companies are going to have to realize that even though farmers are willing to plant biotech hybrids and varieties, they will start decreasing biotech acres, especially in “multi-stacked traits”, if they do not maintain an acceptable final yield. At the end of the day, farmers want yield. It is the final measuring stick of what the year was like.

As we move forward, we will need to find the way to feed an ever growing world. With population projections of 9 billion by 2030-2050, biotechnology is going to have to be the key to making sure the world has a plentiful, healthy, affordable food supply. And we, as farmers, will continue to plant it.

Brandon Hunnicutt farms in South Central Nebraska with his dad, brother, and cousin. They raise corn, soybeans and popcorn.  All their corn and soybeans contain some aspect of biotechnology in them, except for the popcorn.  Brandon has been involved with defending biotechnology and promoting throughout the years and currently serves as President of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association.

It may seem odd to some that a blog that mostly focuses on controversies in modern agriculture would ask someone who studies insects to write on their site, but it’s not as counter intuitive as you think. Insects are a huge part of agriculture because they are our biggest competitors for food. One of the most common types of genetically modified corn, the various BT cultivars, were developed to fight the European Corn Borer, Ostrinia nubilalis, which is a tiny Crambid moth which burrows into the stalks of the plants and eventually kills them.

An entomologist writing for a site which explores the politics of Genetically Modified Organisms makes sense for another reason, and that’s because entomologists sometimes modify the genes of insects in order to do their work. Some of this occurs naturally, through the actions of polydnavirus particles some parasitoid wasps inject into their hosts to control the behavior, development, and immune reactions of that host. Sometimes it’s simple and artificial such as releasing insects sterilized with X-ray radiation in order to fight diseases and crop pests. Some of the things that entomologists work with aren’t necessarily insects but are used to control their populations. A great example of this is the modification of viruses as systems which are used to deliver pesticides directly to the insects rather than spraying the environment with pesticides.

What I hope to do is to use this site to educate the public about some of the GMOs you may hear about on the news, and I hope to make people realize that these are wonderful inventions that better humanity. New things are definitely a little scary at first, but education is the best way to overcome these fears.

Since this is my first post, let’s explore some really basic insect biology that might be necessary to understand parts of my posts. Insects go through two types of development: hemimetabolous, or incomplete metamorphosis and holometabolous which is commonly known as complete metamorphosis.

Here’s an example of hemimetabolous or incomplete development. The video below depicts the life cycle of a cicada which begins as an egg and then develops through a series of nymphal stages before maturing into an adult. Notice how the adults are very similar to the nymphs with the obvious exception of wings. Also notice how they have a relatively similar ecological role, both feed on sap but in slightly different areas.

This is an example of holometabolous development. The butterfly in the video has a very strange parasitic relationship with ants. This butterfly goes through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Notice how the larva looks nothing like the adult, and how the larva has a completely different role than the adult. In this case, the adult feeds on nectar from flowers while the larva is a parasite in the ant nest.

Farmers, he said, should use the best aspects of organic methods and GM technology to maximise yields while limiting damage to ecosystems. He accepted that organic lobbyists would regard the idea as heresy, but said that genetic engineering could create better organic crops than those grown today with further environmental benefits.

“What frustrates me is there is a real potential for combining GM technology and organic approaches,” said Professor Conway, who stepped down last year as chief scientific adviser to the Department for International Development. “To say that is probably heretical, but there would be real benefits if we got over this notion that GM is somehow not organic.”

He continues, explaining how the pure philosophical basis and underlying assumptions may work against the overall goal. And I’m glad to see that he pointed out how conventional breeding is just as artificial as genetic engineering. (It’s called artificial selection for a reason!)

While the processes used to create GM crops are unnatural, so too is the conventional breeding that has created today’s non-GM varieties. Both methods involve genes that are natural in origin, but genetic engineering can create crops with significant advantages.

The rigidity of organic certification rules can thus work against sustainability by blocking the use of helpful technologies, Professor Conway said.

Current Organic orthodoxy doesn’t currently allow for it, and organic customers aren’t too likely to go for it, yet Conway is optimistic about the future of such an approach.

“I think we are going to end up in a very interesting hybrid world in which we choose the technology because it is appropriate, not because of where it has come from. And 2050 will be like that: it will not be completely high-technology, and it will not be a completely back-tonature world.”

Can we do it in 40 years? I wonder what could be accomplished in 10.

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. Previously, they claimed that GE crops have failed to significantly increase yields, a couple months after an announcement of a GE trait developed by Mendel Biotechnology that does that remarkably well in soybeans. This time, while people have been talking about nitrogen use efficiency, the report gives the impression that such traits are a long way off. (I’m beginning to notice a pattern here.)

The report is titled No Sure Fix.

Besides the fact that this is not a peer-reviewed report (which does matter), I have already noticed one glaring problem – while the report focuses on pleiotropy (effect on other genes and traits) for genetically engineered traits, it ignores the same topic with regard to non-GE nitrogen-use-efficient genes. Here is the only place where the comparison is made on this topic (page 30):

Since little visible effort has been made thus
far to explore this variation, either within crop
species or their sexually compatible wild relatives,
the potential exists for improving NUE by making
use of this variation through breeding. As with
GE, however, it is possible that NUE traits within
the crop gene pool could have unintended negative
side effects. But we do not believe this risk is
as high for genes that are part of the normal crop
genome as it is for exotic genes introduced to the
crop genome through GE, or engineered genes
expressed in ways outside the typical range of
crop metabolism. (emphasis added)

The bold sentence is a completely unreferenced, unsupported statement in the paper. Notice how they make this statement about non-GE genes for NUE traits, after just saying that little visible effort has been made exploring this variation. This is an error in scholarship and logic.

If you want to change a trait through introducing a new gene from a wild relative, you are technically introducing an exotic gene, just like with GE. Or if you are instead introducing a new allele with different expression from another variety, you are changing the expression of the genes in the crop. The Bottom Line: If you are trying to change the [nitrogen] metabolism of a crop you want to change the genes and gene expression in your crop. If you are not changing expression outside the ‘typical range of crop metabolism,’ you are not making an improvement.

Still, there are some other good things to look for in the report, such as info about enhancing nitrogen use efficiency with precision farming and other practices. I’m interested to see what people think about it?

“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.

For those that are interested in a full scientific explanation of the technology, you can read about it here. But in short, GURTs can be used by seed companies to protect their intellectual property by preventing farmers from saving and replanting their seeds, which has often led to several lawsuits, some high-profile. It has also been suggested that for some crops that do not get much attention from plant breeders, that it would provide an incentive for them to spend the time and money it takes to improve a crop, because they could guarantee being able to sell their seeds in the future.

The public reaction to GURTs has been to imagine that it will turn farmers into servants of the seed industry, completely dependent upon them for seed purchases year after year. It is assumed that no non-GURT seeds will be available, and that this technology will allow seed companies to tell farmers what to grow and at what price, tell people what to eat, and basically rule the world. Hyperbole aside, at the very least the worry is that it will make farmers unable to choose what to grow, or financially yoked to a large corporation. For small-scale farmers in developing countries, they worry that it will give those large companies the power to extract all the money they can, keeping them in an impoverished state.

The strong backlash against “Terminator” GURTs has likely contributed to Monsanto’s decision to pledge not to use GURTs in any of their seeds. They acquired the technology when they bought Delta and Land Pine in 2000, a cotton breeding company. Nevertheless, many people believe that GURTs are widespread in use, even Vandana Shiva seems to repeatedly indicate that she believes that Bt cotton seeds are sterile and cannot be regrown. (You would think that since preventing the use of GURTs in commercialized GE crops is regarded as a victory for GE opponents, that they would all be very conscious of its absence.)

How much of this opposition is based on legitimate fears, and how much does would it change seed buying/replanting practices on farms?

As I have said elsewhere, monopolistic control of food crops by a few companies does not sound very likely to me, since companies making GE crops are sprouting up around the world, and antitrust laws in this country and others. Not to mention that government agencies and nonprofit organizations are also working on GE crops for developed and developing countries alike. In the case of GE crops developed by companies, since they would have patents on their engineered traits, they would have the authority to require royalties for farmers to plant fields of those crops. Given that farmers today are not allowed to save GE soybeans and replant them without paying a fee to the seed company, the only difference in this situation with a GURT is that the control would be biological rather than legal.

Would it force farmers to buy seeds every year? The fact is, many farmers already rebuy seed every year. In the case of hybrid crops that have higher yields than open-pollinated varieties, the hybrid must be regenerated each year from two inbred parents (which are typically proprietary). The debate over seed saving was hashed out in the debates over hybrid corn in the 1900s, and the result is that the vast majority of corn grown are hybrids. The increase in yield and other beneficial traits outweighs the continual cost of buying the seed.

Indeed, as Raoul Adamchak explains in Tomorrow’s Table, even organic farmers often purchase new seeds every year. Whether it is an heirloom Brandywine tomato or a hybrid sweet corn, seeds bought from a company that specializes in seed production (and/or breeding) are often a good bet against a bad batch of seed. From page 133:

At reasonable prices it is easier to let the seed companies provide the seed. In addition, they generally do a better job of maintaining seed purity and quality. If hybrid prices get too high, growers can switch to [Open-Pollinated varieties] instead, and save seeds. This can be a difficult choice is a specific trait like disease resistance, size, or uniformity is needed. Yields may also be less.

Even if seed saving is possible to do, it is still economically preferrable to go with seed provided by professional seed-producing operations, aside from issues of variety and transgene patents. If the price of seed gets too high, whether genetically engineered or not, farmers will go back to other varieties that are better for their bottom line. The economics of the situation will drive farmers one direction or another. I’m no economist, but it seems that the economics of competition in the seed market will ensure that there are alternatives available, irrespective of the presence or absence of GURTs.

“Terminator’s” you Eat

There is a very widely used and accepted conventional analog of Terminator GURTs that most of us have eaten – they’re called Seedless Watermelons. These are generated by manipulating the number of chromosomes in watermelon cells to give them three copies of each chromosome instead of two. (For more on how this works, you can watch a video I made about it here.) The resulting “Triploid” Watermelons sponteneously abort their seeds, leaving a juicy, seedless fruit. The seeds have to be regenerated year after year from other plants, and farmers and consumers obviously cannot replant seeds that don’t even exist!

Ironically, while genetic engineering is not allowed in organic agriculture, Seedless watermelons are. Nevermind the fact that the chromosome numbers are artificially manipulated using chemicals – it appears that this early form of direct genetic manipulation has been grandfathered in.

My point in bringing up the seedless watermelon is this: It results in exactly the same thing as genetically engineered GURTs – and that is it effectively prevents the plant from generating fertile seeds. The argument is often made, most vociferously by Shiva, that GURTs are immoral because they interrupt the traditional practice of seed saving. Shiva and others must therefore agree that seedless watermelons are also immoral for the same reason. Why is there no call for a moratorium on seedless watermelons? Well, that would be the pits.

Anyone wonder where the seeds are in bananas? There’s another one for you. The bananas we eat are also triploid, and produce no seeds. Although you can grow new banana trees from cuttings, it doesn’t produce any seeds that you could plant. Is the cavendish banana immoral, too?

Neither of these were made with genetic engineering, which means that unless Shiva hasn’t heard of Bananas and Seedless Watermelons, that the objection is not based on its effects on seed saving but on something else.

Can you think of any more examples?

Spread of Sterility?

In the global discussion of GURTs, there is a widespread perception that the “Terminator” will get out and run rampant, killing off not only every native crop but also spreading into other species and wiping them out. This about this for a second, is it possible for sterility to spread?

Not by any genetic mechanism I am familiar with. The pollen grains from GURT crops that cross-pollinate with others will make a few sterile seeds that will not grow and so their genes will not make it to the next generation. So if you grew corn next to another farmer who grew corn with a GURT in it, some of the seeds from the edge of your field could have been pollenated by a few stray grains from your neighbor’s field. If you were growing an open-pollinated variety and saved seed from year to year, you would have a few seeds that wouldn’t grow – but only if you gathered them from the margins of your field (which is not a good idea anyway).

And as for GURTs spreading into other species sterilizing them – these claims are based on a basic misunderstanding of how evolution works. Genes spread when they provide a benefit to the organism, and sterility is the exact opposite of an advantage. Aside from the small increases that can be seen from genetic drift – a trait needs to help the plant survive and reproduce to sweep through a population, and sexual sterility by definition does not do that.

But take a look at what Vandana Shiva said on pages 82-83 of her book, Stolen Harvest:

Molecular biologists are currently examining the risk of the terminator function escaping the genome of the crops into which it has been intentionally incorporated and moving into surrounding open-pollinated crops or wild, related plants in nearby fields. Given nature’s incredible adaptability and the fact that the technology has never been tested on a large scale, the possibility that the terminator may spread to surrounding food crops or to the natural environment is a serious one. The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that could eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet.

It is ironic that Shiva often argues that genetic engineering and the “Terminator” violate evolution, when it is evolution that proves that her claims are unfounded.

It is possible that one of the three genes in the Delta and Pine-style GURT could mutate and not function anymore – so this style of GURT is not 100.00% fool-proof. However even in that case the remaining two functional genes would not spread sterility because you would need all three genes to bring about sterility. Still no scientific justification for Shiva’s declaration about ‘spreading sterility,’ however it is possible that a few transgenes of the other traits in the crop could still leak out on rare occasions.  At Genetic Maize Anastasia argues that a different style of GURT would be a better choice for preventing gene flow.

The prevention of gene flow is an interesting issue when it comes to GURTs. On one hand, companies want to make money selling their GE seeds and not have to chase patent infringers for saving their seeds. So the biological reification of the legal landscape seems to be what the opponents are the most afraid of. On the other hand, GURTs can be seen as a layer of protection for those who do not want to grow (or eat) genetically engineered crops.

My Mission is to Protect You

In the first Terminator film, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the enemy, a robot bent on terminating Sarah Connor before she could bear Humanity’s Last Hope. In the second film, the same Schwarzenegger instead played the part of the protector of Connor and her son. How can “Terminator” technology instead become a protector working for seed savers rather than against?

To explain this, let me turn to Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Jeremy is not known for very glowing reviews of genetically engineered crops, although he has said that he tires of the same old pro-anti debate. But recently, he posted a very thoughtful rant on seed saving and GURTs:

When are the knee-jerk opponents of genetically modified crops going to realize that genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) are their friends?¹

(…)

GURTs thus stop any characters bred into a GMO from being transferred into another variety of the same crop and into the crop’s wild relatives.

So, IIED, remind me, please: why is that a bad thing?

Does it stop the farmer saving seeds? On the contrary, it makes life easier, because the farmer does not have to worry about genetic pollution. She can, of course, still take advantage of good pollution, or introgression, if she wants to.

Does it stop her using farm-saved seed? No, how could it, when any polluted seeds are going to fail to grow. It makes using the farm-saved seed more secure.

Can she still exchange and sell farm-saved seed? You bet, and not only that, but her customers and swap-partners will be grateful that her seeds cannot possibly be polluted.

Opponents of GURTs seem to think that massive influxes of foreign pollen are the norm. They’re not. And I certainly wouldn’t want to accept, even as a gift, seed from someone who knew so little about farming and seed saving that they couldn’t even maintain their own varieties. Cross pollination from a different field is a fascinating and rare source of diversity in farmers’ fields, not the norm. GURTs pose absolutely no threat to farm-saved seed. In fact, I believe that they can enhance genetic diversity (by maintaining the separation between varieties), improve seed quality (for the same reasons) and have no impact at all on the livelihoods of poor farmers.

So you can easily see that GE crops with GURTs in them can instead be used to protect non-GE crops from cross-pollination. Indeed, as many opponents of GE crops argue that farmers are afraid of getting sued for cross-pollination, this fear would be all but eliminated if they were using GURTs. Percy Schmeiser would have remained an obscure canola farmer in Canada. He wouldn’t have been able to spray his fields and collect herbicide-tolerant canola seeds for replanting, and he couldn’t have gotten sued.

There’s something else to think about when it comes to opponents of genetic engineering. Often, the argument is made that GE crops cannot be grown unless there is a 0% risk of affecting the environment, organic farms, etc. Zero percent risk does not exist anywhere in the Universe, but this is as close as it comes. Essentially, the most hardcore anti-GE voices out there are asking for GURTs, whether or not they are aware of it. The more you demand absolute exclusion of cross-pollination in biosafety regulations, the more incentive you are giving biotech companies to develop terminator technologies. If you really cannot stomach GURTs, then maybe pushing a little less hard on absolute separation would be tactically smarter (just a little advice).

GURTs are not opposed for scientific reasons – the pseudo-biological reasons given by Shiva et al are a scientific veneer on what is really an economic argument. They fear consolidation of the seed market and corporate control of the food supply. But as Jeremy has demonstrated, the seed-saving diva Shiva might find GURTs to be her best ally in keeping a GE-free farm-saved seed supply in circulation amongst poor farmers. If a GURT can prevent the flow of patented transgenes into openly-traded seed supplies, it would instead be a A T-101 working to protect her effort from Monsanto’s T-1000. Ironic, isn’t it?

I’m not advocating the use of GURTs, lest anybody misunderstand me. (Although I could form a cogent argument in favor of GURTs in pharma-crops.) But there is more to this trait than meets the eye, and I think that it has become a lightning-rod issue that is less clear-cut than its opponents make it out to be. The Terminator can be sent to kill, but it can also be sent to protect. Discussions about the use of technology so often hinge on these kinds of dualities, which is why we need to discuss these things in a more sensible (and scientific) fashion.

I’ll leave you with Jeremy’s dynamite conclusion.

I hold no brief for or against GMOs, though I do think they have yet to prove themselves in the areas where they make the loudest claims. This is not about GMOs. It is about honesty. Any opponent of GMOs, however good the rest of their arguments might be, immediately loses my respect if they are also against GURTs.

*Arnold voice*: “Respect Terminated.”

When delegates from 192 nations arrive in Copenhagen in December for the UN COP15 summit, they will confront a 181-page draft negotiation text, 2,000 bracketed passages still in dispute, and just 11 days in which to come to some sort of consensus. To power them through these discussions, Denmark has promised a smorgasbord of ecologically minded fare: All water will be tap (not bottled), tea and coffee will be fair trade, and the food menu will be no less than 65 percent organic.

Though undoubtedly well-intentioned, this last provision is troubling, but not because anyone really cares about the provenance of Ban Ki-Moon’s turnip greens. Rather, it suggests a willful and dangerous ignorance about the tenuous state of global agriculture, and the prospects for feeding 9 billion people while also addressing biodiversity loss, water shortage, and, yes, climate change. Organic foods are enjoying skyrocketing popularity in the US and Europe, as are their ill-defined sidekicks, “natural,” “whole,” and “real” foods. Yet popular notions that these foods—and the agriculture that begets them—are at once better for people and for the planet turn out to be largely devoid of experimental support. Worse still, “organophilia” tends to go hand-in-hand with technophobic skepticism towards the very sorts of scientific approaches most likely to supercharge an ailing food system while leaving our planet intact.

How did this movement get this way?

Unfortunately, what may have begun as a revolt against fake food or, for many, the horrors of concentrated animal feed lots, has given way to a culture that increasingly fetishizes organic, natural, and whole foods with little agreement on what such terms even mean, outside of an emphatic devotion to what they are not: They aren’t in any way related to industrial-scale farms or big-box grocery chains; chemical herbicides or pesticides; biotechnology or its subgenre, genetic engineering. And by those criteria, they are deemed to be safer, more nutritious, and less damaging to the environment.

Someone else has noticed that Organic has been identifying itself by what it is not, rather than what it is. So is organic automatically better? Read the rest and come back!

I particularly liked the part about the rat feeding study… Definitely going to look that one up.

Most Europeans don’t consider themselves to be anti-science or particularly technophobic. In fact, Europe’s full embrace of the scientific consensus on another environmental issue, global warming, has enabled the continent to take the clear lead on climate change, with the most ambitious emissions targets, the first carbon trading market, and the greenest urban infrastructure plans on the planet.

Europe’s scientific disconnect is more broadly true of eco-minded citizens worldwide: They laud the likes of James Hansen and Rajendra Pachauri but shrink in horror at the scientist who offers up a Bt corn plant (even though numerous studies indicate that Bt crops—by dramatically curbing pesticide use—conserve biodiversity on farms and reduce chemical-related sickness among farmers).

So why the disconnect? Why do many environmentalists trust science when it comes to climate change but not when it comes to genetic engineering? Is the fear really about the technology itself or is it a mistrust of big agribusiness?

Contributing their views (in order) are Pam Ronald, Raj Patel, Nina Fedoroff, and Noel Kingsbury. Read the article, I’ll offer a few opinions about it after the jump.

In my humble opinion, the opposition is chiefly due to anti-corporate sentiments, some of which are not entirely unfounded. The conflict of interest of making a product and simultaneously ensuring its safety does not go unnoticed – that is why we have government regulators at the EPA, FDA, and USDA. Other nations around the world have set up their own governmental oversight and have come to the same conclusions as in the U.S., and the article does not mention that the European Union has approved several GE crops, while individual nations are sketchy about them. Germany seems to be having a particularly harsh case of food fears, and have gone after public research into the technology as well.

My first complaint about a contribution to the article was when Raj Patel said,

This points to my concerns about the state of scientific debate. The direction of research priorities in agriculture is predominantly shaped not by the relative merit of different technologies, but rather the research priorities of the private sector. The largest publicly funded examination of genetically engineered agriculture—the UK government’s field trials—found GM crops inferior to conventional agriculture in most respects. But conventional and GM agriculture are not the only two comparison points.

First, it is frustrating when people do not give any specific details about when studies were conducted, by whom, and where they were published. It makes it difficult to look up the precise details to verify whether they are accurately reporting the results. Several anti-GE groups have put up position statements about these field trials, which seem to have been completed in 2002-03 and declared the GE crops to be a failure. The Naked Scientists podcast, however, tells more about the story:

After a three years of farm-scale trials looking at the environmental impact of GM crops the results are finally out this week. These were the biggest trials carried out anywhere in the world, showing just how concerned the government are that they get enough information to make a decision about whether Britain should adopt the new technology. The trials were looking at three different crops, sugar beet, maize and oilseed rape- all of which had been genetically modified to be resistant to particular herbicides (chemicals that kill weeds). The idea behind the crops is that farmers will be able to treat fields less frequently with weedkillers, as the treatments will be more effective and only target the weeds without damaging the crops. This would save time and money, as well as reducing the amount of chemicals farmers are using in total.

But the fields trials suggest that at least two out of the three GM crops, beet and oilseed rape, had a harmful impact on the environment in and around the fields where they were grown. This included a decrease in the number of bees and butterflies, as well as a reduction in the number of wild plant seeds available to feed animals like birds. But they did find more soil insects present in the fields sown with the GM beet and oilseed rape, which may be because herbicides were used less often. There was good news for fans of GM technology as well- GM maize was found to be better for wild plants, animals and insects than normal maize. It’s important to point out that these effects on the local wildlife are nothing to do with the actual genetic modification of the plants, but more to do with the levels and types of weedkillers used by the farmers, as well as how often they treated their fields. (emphasis added)

Reductions in insect life that depend upon weeds growing in your fields are going to be fewer when you are controlling the weeds. Interestingly, in the case of herbicide-tolerant beets, it was later discovered that if you strip-sprayed your field of GE beets, it actually provided MORE plants for insect life, without damaging the crop. This is one of the things that happens when you rely on older results. (Here is a link to another option for providing food for wildlife.)

It is good to note that biased reporting of results is going on here. In this field trial (assuming I have found the correct one), they also reported that soil insects were increased in the same fields. They also concluded that the GE Bt maize was better for the environment than the conventional counterpart, mostly because it reduced pesticide sprays.

Next, I would like to comment on Nina Fedoroff’s contribution. She co-wrote Mendel in the Kitchen, which is an excellent book that I highly recommend. In this article, she was straight to the point, accessible, and talked about the way people’s attention spans (including the media) cause facts to be ignored and trumpted stories to be preferred instead. But it may be that Fedoroff is committing a similar sort of error.

With a computer and bit of effort, almost anyone can extract the facts from the gloom and catastrophism. Fact: Modern genetic modification of crops is responsible for most of the crop yield increases of recent years. This means, of course, that the farmers who’ve adopted GM crops have benefited the most.

There have been yield gains in Bt cotton, Bt corn, and with soybean farmers elsewhere in the world that have been able to fit a second soy crop into the same year due to GE technology, however I take issue with her potential mis-statement that genetic modification is responsible for most of the yield increases in recent years. Breeding still provides a large part of yield improvements, which is ongoing, especially for those breeders utilizing marker-assisted or “precision” breeding. The reason why I characterize it as a potential mis-statement is that I know that Fedoroff calls breeding genetic modification. (It is) If she meant that genetic engineering contributed most of the yield gains I would probably disagree, but if she meant all forms of genetic modification then I think she could have been more clear in her statement.

Next, I would like to address a couple of Tom Philpott’s claims. He points out that the kind of consensus that has formed around climate science amongst climate scientists is stronger than the consensus that has formed around GE crops, and I agree with that for the most part. There is a good consensus amongst plant scientists on the subject and some environmentalists, but not all other branches of science fully agree.

The real question becomes: How can serious publications like Seed claim that skepticism toward GMOs reflects a “scientific flip-flop”? To be sure, the illusion of a broad consensus holds sway in the United States, and the IAASTD has clearly failed to correct it. The US media greeted its release with near-complete silence—in stark contrast to its reception in the European media.

The possibility that the IAASTD’s statements about genetic engineering might be symptomatic of this dissonance doesn’t seem to occur to him. There’s a lot of politics involved, for example, the US government was very resistant to climate change agreements under Bush’s presidency, which has quickly turned around now that Obama is in office. The U.S.’s position on GE crops seems not to have changed (and indeed, has been repeatedly emphasized). Could that not be more parsimoniously explained by political opposition to GE crops from people (and even scientists) outside the U.S.? I would like to note that the EU is moving toward growing GE crops steadily year by year.

Next, Philpott brings up a report written by Don Lotter, attempting to explain the pursuit of GE crops in terms of mere economics and politics without the strength of scientific evidence. I have already begun reading the report, and without going into too much detail at this time, its conclusions and analysis are problematic. For example, some major claims are made that do not correspond to the references cited. I will provide more details in another post, but I think referring to a paper with more scholarly rigor would bemore appropriate.

Philpott brings up the multi-generational Austrian feeding ‘study.’

When there have been long-term trials by independent researchers, the results have hardly been comforting.

For example, writes Lotter:

In a 2008 report (Velimirov et al., 2008) of research commissioned by the Austrian government, a long-term animal feeding experiment showed significant reproductive problems in transgenic corn-fed rats when all groups were subject to multiple birth cycles, a regimen that has not hitherto been examined in feeding studies comparing transgenic and non-transgenic foods.

Thus in the first-ever multi-generational study of the effects of GMO food, evidence of serious reproductive trouble comes to light: reduced birth weight and fertility.

As detailed here, this study was raising its mice under poor conditions. How do we know? They fed GE maize and non-GE maize to two groups, the experimental group and the control, and allowed them to breed for several generations. For a properly conducted feeding study, they should have had a very low mortality rate in the control group – about 1%. But as the study authors reported, they lost an average of 8% of their control mice. This means that the mice were living in poor conditions, and is seriously calls into question any conclusions that could be drawn from it. And if you take a look at the average pup losses per generation, you’ll notice something odd:

The curious incidence of silence about mistreated animals

Notice the high numbers of mouse pup losses in the control (ISO), and low losses in the transgenic? The GE-fed mice survived better, yet this is not mentioned anywhere. And the European media is silent on this… the argument goes both ways.

It is also exceedingly important to note that this study was not peer-reviewed – and I daresay it would not have survived even the most lax of scientific journal reviews. David Tribe has posted more about the study and its problems. We need to base our opinions on the best available evidence from reliable studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. As Nina Fedoroff said, anyone with a computer can find out this information. Why hasn’t Tom?

Curiously, after claiming that this study was independent, Tom Philpott then ‘flip-flops’ and supports the notion that no truly independent study exists.

A group of 23 US scientists signed a letter to the EPA declaring that, “No truly independent research [on GMOs] can be legally conducted on many critical questions.”

Which one is it?

I would like to note that intellectual property issues when it comes to public research are in issue that needs to be addressed.

Noel Kingsbury, whose book Hybrid, the history and science of plant breeding comes out later this year, closes the deal:

The fact is that the scientific case against GM is pretty threadbare. It is far more precise and predictable than some of the most important breeding technologies of the last 50 years. If you get hot under the collar about GM, why not the far more frightening “radiation breeding”? Mention that to most anti-GM activists and they look puzzled. Radiation breeding involves zapping seeds or cuttings with radiation, or treating plant material with gene-altering chemicals. Many countries in the 1960s invested in “radiation fields” where trees were grown behind big earthen dykes so that they would be permanently irradiated. The goal: obtaining mutations that might be useful, as one in several tens of thousands was. The first radiation-bred rice was sold as “Nuclear Rice” in Hungary in the mid-1950s. Imagine marketing that today! Radiation breeding is unpredictable, uncertain in its results, and causes widespread genome damage. But no one has ever suggested that it has ever done any harm! Much Italian pasta has been grown with an irradiated durum wheat. Nearly all Asian pears are the offspring of irradiated grafts. And—get this— much European organic beer is brewed from radiation-bred barley! No one complains or protests. Wake up! Be realistic! Why get so excited by GM?

GM crops must be looked at and judged variety by variety. The first generation Roundup^™ varieties are giving way to second generation crops with some highly valuable characteristics, like resistance to pests (thousands of deaths by pesticide poisoning have already been avoided by Chinese and Indian caterpillar-proof cotton) and drought-tolerance. Once we start to see soy with omega-3s or nutrient-enhanced tomatoes, attitudes will surely start to change.

World population is increasing, arable land availability is decreasing, and water resources are shrinking. We need every technology possible to increase yields, reduce toxic pesticide use, improve nutritional value, and feed the world. The European and Indian opposition to GM is rooted in a hopelessly romantic view of farming. Farming is not a romantic business—it is about feeding the human race, and we must listen to the overwhelming consensus of plant science—that GM is safe and desirable.

The important distinction being made here is that there is a consensus within plant science, but not necessarily one between disciplines. The key difference between how these two kinds of genetic changes are being treated politically and socially have more to do with the political and social climates in different hemispheres and less to do with the science that has been conducted around the world. In some cases, science is being ignored in the interest of societal issues, and in other cases, bad science is being wielded as a weapon to draw attention away from the good science that exists.

The return on investment of most types of animal agriculture is small compared to that of plant agriculture. For example, cattle require about 6 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of muscle. All of the water, fertilizer, and pesticides required to grow 1 pound of plant material is thus multiplied by 6 to produce 1 pound of beef. Granted, it isn’t quite that simple, as parts of plants that aren’t used for human food can be fed to animals, but the point holds, even in organic systems.
Demand for animal protein is increasing rapidly both in developed and developing countries. This means that the amount of land used to produce food for animals will also increase. Some lands that aren’t suitable for plant agriculture may be better put to use as pasture land, but those areas can not possibly supply per capita demand for meat – more than 200 lbs per year per person in the US, according to the USDA (and that’s an average, theoretically factoring in the 3.2% of vegetarian and vegan Americans). This image from the University of Arizona concerning the uses of the US corn crop is a little old, but is essentially still true (and the story is similar for soybeans).

Ironically, many people condemn corn ethanol as wasteful and environmentally damaging but continue to consume animal products that account for a far higher percentage of the US grain crop – but that’s another story.

So, what are we to do? The planet would breathe a metaphorical (metaphysical?) sigh of relief if each person just ate lower on the food chain a few meals per week (see Nathan’s pictorial presentation Calories in Context). We’ve been told to reduce meat consumption for our health and for the planet, but it seems like no one is listening. Nathan’s response to the environmental degradation associated with animal protein production is to use LCAs to find which types of animal agriculture provide the most return on investment. At his seminar at Iowa State, I asked how his results can be used to influence consumer habits. We talked about possible taxes based on environmental impact so that food prices reflect the actual price to the environment, but we’ll leave that to the economists.

Nathan, along with Peter Tyedmers, wrote about LCAs in Biophysical accounting in aquaculture: insights from current practice and the need for methodological development, which was part of the FAO Fisheries document Comparative assessment of the environmental costs of aquaculture and other food production sectors. One of the most striking tables in the paper was a ranking of foods “by ratio of edible protein energy output to industrial energy inputs” on page 234. Intensive carp farming is by far the most efficient (when done properly, carp is even better than plants), while cultured shrimp grown in Thailand are by far the worst. Pastured beef is better than feedlot beef (barely), and industrial eggs are a terrible waste of inputs. See the full table at the end of this post.

Industrial energy inputs only tell part of the story, though, because they do not consider any negative outputs like waste or negative effects like spread of disease to wild populations. Ecological impact assessments also do not consider many effects. That’s why we need LCAs. According to the paper, LCAs frequently consider the following Impact Categories:

Nathan and Peter have focused on salmon farming, which can greatly benefit from LCAs. Production of feed is the most energy intensive and environmentally damaging aspect of aquaculture (and all animal agriculture). Replacing conventionally grown plant based feed with organic had a little effect, but replacing animal based feed with plant based has a huge effect. Some might say that we should just eat wild salmon instead, but again, the problem is demand. Wild salmon would be extinct if we tried to supply the current demand with them exclusively.

All of the options are complex, but two lessons of LCAs stand firm – reduce or eliminate synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (which can be done at least partially with genetic engineering), and decrease per capita meat consumption.

Agricultural Life Cycle Analysis is a useful tool in collecting information and making decisions. LCAs take every input and every output into consideration including difficult to consider ouputs like greenhouse gas emissions.

Nathan Pelletier from Dalhouse Uni in Nova Scotia presented his work on ag LCAs at Iowa State recently. He explains that actually conducting LCAs can be difficult. First, we need to define the scope of the analysis. For example, if we consider milk production, we should likely include the cow herself, food, water, and waste. We probably should include all of the inputs and outputs associated with feed production and transportation. We might include the inputs and outputs of pasteurizing and transporting the milk. Also difficult is actually quantifying all of the inputs and outputs to air, soil, and water. Finally, it is difficult to complete a meaningful impact assessment including the identification of “hotspots” or most negative impacts. Despite the difficulties, LCAs are worth the effort. Nathan reminds us that agriculture produces 1/3 of global warming emissions. The demand for food will will double by 2050, so we need to half the impact to continue a constant level of damage.
Nathan used LCAs to evaluate different cropping systems. He found that fuel and field emissions for a variety of crops was similar for organic and conventional (although he did not account for the vast variability in each category). It’s surprising that the field emissions were not different, but we have to consider that many conventional farms are no-till, instead treating for weeds with pesticides like Roundup. I imagine that the overall number of times a farmer drives over his field is similar, accounting for the similar fuel costs, even though the reasons might differ.

Even though overall farming methods don’t make that large of a difference with regard to greenhouse gasses and other negative outputs, nitrogen fertilizer source has a huge effect. Synthetic N, commonly used in conventional farming, is produced with natural gas, and CO2 is a coproduct of the process. Additionally, because of the type of N that is applied, not all of the applied N is taken up by plants, leaving the rest to evaporate as greenhouse gases or to be washed off the land into streams, rivers, and oceans.

The issue of replacing synthetic fertilizer is very complex, though, because we need to consider so many factors. For one, transporting and spreading organic N sources like manure is costly because a lot of weight is needed to provide enough N to see yield increases. Transporting and spreading all of this weight has its own greenhouse gas issues. If we use manure, the animals need food, water, and land, but some of this is offset because the animals themselves are a valuable output. Crop rotation is another option, but depending on the plants used, more land will be needed to produce the same amount of food. Nathan’s models considered out of season cover crops as non-synthetic N sources, but this method might not produce all of the N that is needed for various crop types and soil types.

It is possible that the complications of alternatives make synthetic nitrogen seem more attractive. However, a lot of these drawbacks might become non-issues when fuel costs cause synthetic N, P, and K prices to skyrocket. As you can see, deciding how to best fertilize your crops is far from easy.

One way to at least decrease the N problem is with genetic engineering. Newly developed “nitrogen use efficient” or NUE crops are able to take up more of the nitrogen that is applied, leaving less to run off. This, in combination with optomized nitrogen application techniques, could significantly decrease the amount of N needed. I asked Nathan what he thought about NUE but he said he didn’t know much about it. I hope he looks into it, because NUE crops would be useful no matter what type of fertilizer is used.

Nathan’s work with LCAs included an analysis of various types of animal agriculture, which I’ll save for another post.