Modification part of balanced chain

Modification part of balanced chain

Photo by Elisabeth Arnold on Unsplash

Originally published 4 September 2001

KERRY, Ire­land — Plant genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied, or GM, crops any­where in Europe and in a trice you will have a crowd of pro­test­ers at your gate wav­ing “Franken­food” plac­ards and lying down in front of tractors.

The furor over genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods has been stronger in Ire­land than in the Unit­ed States, where near­ly three-quar­ters of the world’s genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops have been plant­ed with less hubbub.

The ide­al­ism of the Euro­pean GM pro­test­ers is admirable, but for all their black-and-white cer­tain­ty about what is to be avoid­ed, they have not yet artic­u­lat­ed an envi­ron­ment-friend­ly pro­gram for feed­ing the bil­lions of peo­ple on the plan­et, or the bil­lions more who are on the way.

Genet­ic sci­ence has put pow­er­ful new tech­nolo­gies in the hands of farm­ers. Like all tech­nolo­gies, genet­ic engi­neer­ing has the poten­tial for con­fer­ring bless­ings on the human race — and ter­ri­ble mis­chief, too.

What are the poten­tial ben­e­fits? Pro­fes­sor Antho­ny Tre­wavas, a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist at Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty, said: “Help­ing to con­trol dev­as­tat­ing crop virus­es and pests which destroy world­wide an esti­mat­ed 40 per­cent of the har­vest; to improve use of mar­gin­al­ized land and save gen­uine wilder­ness from the plough; to improve the nutri­tion­al qual­i­ty of food to reduce blind­ness, child death, and reduce the inci­dence of spina bifi­da; to reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of man on the plan­et; to pro­duce vac­cines in foods and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in abun­dance, which should see the end of dis­eases such as cholera, hepati­tis B, and even­tu­al­ly malar­ia; to improve can­cer treat­ment and diag­no­sis; to help main­tain and increase an abun­dance of food pro­duc­tion and con­tin­ue the reduc­tion in food prices which dropped four­fold in real terms in the last century.”

Whew! Sounds fan­tas­tic. But sci­en­tists involved in genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied research can be expect­ed to be boost­ers, and Tre­wavas’s gush can be tak­en with a spoon­ful of salt. There’s anoth­er side of the argu­ment, too, not the least of which is our gut aver­sion to mix­ing the genes of dif­fer­ent species.

As with most new tech­nolo­gies, such as nuclear pow­er, the prob­lems of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied agri­cul­ture are more like­ly to become appar­ent after the fact rather than before. Which is why we must rely on gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, such as the US Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion and Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture to insist that the appli­ca­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied tech­nolo­gies be slow and cau­tious. Anti-GM anx­i­eties about super­weeds and species extinc­tions will keep the reg­u­la­tors on their toes, which is just where they should be.

Mis­takes will inevitably be made, but no one — boost­er or detrac­tor — has the pre­science to know if the ulti­mate bal­ance sheet for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods will be plus or minus. Cer­tain­ly, the envi­ron­ment is cur­rent­ly under greater and more cer­tain strain from old­er tech­nolo­gies — auto­mo­biles, for exam­ple, which con­sume more and more of our land and resources, or fire, one of the old­est tech­nolo­gies of all, which is being used to wreak hav­oc on trop­i­cal habi­tats and species.

Then there’s the non-GM agri­cul­tur­al tech­nol­o­gy that is foul­ing the land­scape out­side my win­dow in Ire­land, and around the world.

Until a few years ago, I looked out upon an ancient patch­work of fields sep­a­rat­ed by hedgerows among which farm­ers rotat­ed crops and ani­mals in a sys­tem that nat­u­ral­ly main­tained the fer­til­i­ty of the soil. The var­ied fields and lush hedgerows sup­port­ed a rich vari­ety of wildlife.

It’s all gone now. Encour­aged by gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies, farm­ers have knocked the hedgerows and plant­ed their new­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed fields with a sin­gle inten­sive crop. To main­tain the fer­til­i­ty of the soil, they rely upon chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers, which make the crop sus­cep­ti­ble to dis­eases that have to be coun­tered with yet more chem­i­cals. Nitrate runoff from the fields poi­sons streams and ground water. Wildlife is devastated.

The result of this epoch-mak­ing trans­for­ma­tion of agri­cul­ture has been cheap­er and more plen­ti­ful food on super­mar­ket shelves and more pros­per­ous farm­ers, but at what cost to tax­pay­ers and the envi­ron­ment? Where were the rad­i­cal pro­test­ers when this was hap­pen­ing? I know of no con­se­quence of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods more harm­ful to the envi­ron­ment than the switch from mixed farm­ing to chem­i­cal-based monocultures.

But I tend to be an opti­mist when it comes to tech­nol­o­gy, and I sus­pect that we will even­tu­al­ly see a return to more envi­ron­ment-friend­ly forms of agri­cul­ture, in Ire­land and in oth­er parts of the world. Genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied plants and ani­mals will be part of a yet-to-be-imag­ined equa­tion, incor­po­rat­ing new cross-bred crops, mixed farm­ing, crop rota­tion, and the spar­ing use of syn­thet­ic fer­til­iz­ers and pest controls.

Find­ing the bal­ance that will work best for feed­ing the 8 or 9 bil­lion peo­ple we can expect by mid-cen­tu­ry, while pro­tect­ing as many oth­er species as pos­si­ble, will take the com­bined wis­dom of farm­ers, sci­en­tists, ethi­cists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, agribusi­ness man­agers, gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors, politi­cians, and, yes, the feisty young rad­i­cals who inject urgency and ide­al­ism into the debate.

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Reader Comments

  1. While we can nev­er know very accu­rate­ly “where all this will lead us” we do know very well where not using our new biotech abil­i­ties will lead us – more expen­sive food and poor­er nutri­tion and prob­a­bly peri­ods of region­al star­va­tion. Also less and less land for wild­ness. Either we take dra­con­ian steps to reduce pop­u­la­tion or accept rea­son­able risks of biotech agri­cul­ture. Only this week we’ve read that bio­engi­neer­ing has cre­at­ed wheat and oth­er crops that can cre­ate their own nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers – as legumes already do. Think of what this will do to relieve the nitrate runoffs and make food less expen­sive. Ask peo­ple in poor coun­tries if they are will­ing to take the risks. Bet­ter not ask them why elites in Europe and the US would rather have them starve.

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