The Power and Promise of Agricultural Biotechnology
November 7, 2004
Presentation to Hanover College
Alex Avery
The name of my presentation reflects my fundamentalist rejection of the term genetically altered food. It’s an anti-biotech activist term deliberately designed to elicit distaste and turn off consumers. But more fundamentally, it is totally inaccurate. As a scientist, I simply cannot perpetuate the use of that term.
The terms “food” and “genetic” for the most part don’t belong together. Do we mate with out food? Do we “inherit” genes from our food? No, we eat and digest it. We break down the DNA, RNA, proteins and sugars in “genetically altered” food into their base components the same as we digest and metabolize the constituents of all of our traditional foods.
If corn meal from biotech-improved corn varieties is till corn meal, i.e. starch and proteins, then the “food” hasn’t really been altered at all. What is altered is the genetics of the plants that produce the food—for the most part, things like resistance to disease, pests, drought, herbicides, salt water, etc.
So, I stubbornly have changed the name of my presentation to the promise and perils of agricultural biotechnology. I will cover some examples of the incredible power of agricultural biotechnology and what impacts they will have on agriculture in the 21st century. How they will make our farming more productive, more sustainable, and more environmentally sensitive. How we will make our food safer and more nutritious. How it will lead to new roles for the farm, such as growing pharmaceutical compounds.
But I also want to go beyond a dry, technical discussion of ag biotechnology—genetic engineering—because I don’t think the debate we’ve been stuck in for the past 5-7 years is truly about the technology of genetic engineering and it’s potential perils and pitfalls. I think the debate is for the large part more fundamental. It is about the changes in the social, community, and business structure of agriculture that have occurred over the past 75 years. It is about the change from small, mom-and-pop operations to big agribusiness and vertical integration. It is about the visible role of large corporations, patents, knowledge, and economic power. As such, I want to address some of these issues.
Finally, I will remind all that this issue is also about the fundamental realities of the size and scope of humanity and the daunting challenges of feeding and clothing a larger and more affluent global population without further degrading our environment or destroying biodiversity. These are the key reasons why agricultural biotechnology are so critically important for humanity in the 21st century.
Promises Made, Promises Kept
First, the incredible realities—not promises, but current realities-of genetic engineering in agriculture.
Agricultural biotechnology, or genetic engineering, has already begun transforming agriculture around the globe. It is making farming more environmentally friendly and more sustainable. And we’re still in the comparative “biplane” stage of agricultural genetic engineering. We’re years away from the equivalent “jet age,” when the promise of agricultural biotechnology will produce self-fertilizing (nitrogen-fixing) crops that produce their own insect protectants, perhaps produce their own, natural herbicides to fight off weeds.
This will mean quantum reductions in fossil fuel use, pesticide and herbicide use, and far greater environmental sensitivity. Soils in our fields will improve, with less compaction from tractor traffic, higher organic matter levels, and greater water holding capacity. Topsoil loss will drop even further even as crop yields increase. Off farm impacts from nutrient runoff will decline further still.
This promise is already being realized.
First and foremost, herbicide tolerant crops—the largest single category of biotech crops currently planted, with 73% of the global biotech total—have made soil-conserving low-and no-tillage cropping possible on more farmland acres and made it more attractive to farmers to use these methods. No-till farming is when weeds are killed with herbicides rather than tilling the soil; plowing, disking, scraping, etc. Since the introduction of biotech herbicide tolerant crops, no-till crop acreage has increased nearly 40 percent. Two thirds of soybean growers who reduced their tillage since 1996 cited herbicide tolerant crops as a key factor. I must point out, however, that there are also non-genetically engineered, conventionally-bred herbicide tolerant crops on the market.
Why is no-till and conservation tillage so important? The absence of plowing and tilling leaves a layer of crop and weed residues on the topsoil to protect against wind and rain erosion. Crop seeds are knifed into the soil and the slits closed again with rollers. Farming this way cuts soil erosion by 65-95%. Instead of losing our topsoil, we’re building it. This also protects water bodies from sediment pollution. No till and conservation tillage farming save an estimated $3.5 billion in water treatment, waterway maintenance, navigation, flooding, and recreation costs.
Fuel use is also drastically cut, as pulling tillage implements through the soil burns lots of tractor fuel. The savings total over 300 million gallons of diesel fuel each year.
Finally, the soil quality and sustainability benefits are huge. No-till and conservation tillage result in increased soil carbon, increased water infiltration and water holding capacity, greater soil tilth, 3 to 6 times larger earth worm populations, and better in-field wildlife benefits. Quail are estimated to find their food in one-fifth of the time in a no-till field compared to a plowed field—as the plant residues and soil structure have more beetles, insects and detritovors.
Importantly, biotech has given us crops tolerant to the herbicide glyphosate, or Roundup, one of the softest chemicals in terms of environmental impact. It breaks down rapidly into harmless byproducts. Using glyphosate rather than other, less soft herbicides is a big biotech benefit.
As Stanly Trimble of UCLA has shown in research published in Science, soil erosion from modern farming is now far lower than commonly thought. In one “highly erodible” basin in Wisconsin that he studied extensively, erosion was only 6% of what it was in the 1930s.
Nor are the benefits of herbicide tolerant crops limited to farmers in the developed countries. One of the Subsaharan Africa’s worst pests is witchweed, a parasitic weed that can devastate corn and sorghum, the key food grains in the region. A new strategy is preparing for field trials, which would plant herbicide-tolerant corn seeds, soaked in systemic herbicide which can kill the witchweed as it attempts to invade the crop plants’ roots. That could protect food yields on millions of small African farms.
Insect protected crops are the second largest biotech crop in acreage terms, 18% of the global biotech total. Currently, these incorporate a protein toxic to plant-eating caterpillars from the natural soil bacteria Bacillus thurengiensis, or Bt. This drastically reduces the amount of insecticides used in growing crops, especially corn and cotton. In the U.S., biotech Bt crops reduced insecticide use in 2003 by nearly 7 million pounds, reducing potential pollution and ecological impacts.
Organic farmers have been spraying aqueous solutions of Bt bacteria on crops for decades as a pesticide and Bt is extremely safe. However, the bacteria sprayed on the crops die immediately and the toxin protein breaks down in a couple of days. So farmers must spray crops with Bt 6-10 times per season or more. This uses fuel, time, and compacts the soil. Moreover, as the protein degrades quickly, pests are more likely to develop resistance by a sub-lethal dose. Incorporating the protein into the plant drastically reduces the chances of pest resistance, as the dose remains consistently high. And, we are able to tweak the protein and tailor it to specific caterpillar pests. After seven years of widespread planting on millions of acres, there is still no evidence of pest resistance to biotech Bt. In fact, the only documented case of pest resistance to Bt was from over-reliance on sprayed Bt.
The results are increased productivity, less pest damage and, thus, higher quality crops, and increased profitability. All of these benefits are scale neutral, and farmers from subsistence to mega have adopted biotech crops rapidly.
Globally, both herbicide tolerant and insect resistant crops are and will have significant positive benefits for farmers and humanity. For example, in the Kwa Zulu Natal province of South Africa, esophageal cancer rates have been historically high. The suspected culprit is fumonisin, a fungal toxin that contaminates the corn supply due to inadequate pest protection, crop damage, and environmental conditions. In fact, fumonisin was discovered in 1989 by South African researchers attempting to explain health problems in cattle. More recently, fumonisin has recently been linked by NIH and CDC scientists to spina bifida and other birth defects as it blocks the uptake of folic acid.
Due to the proactive work by scientists in South Africa, farmers in the Makhathini Flats have begun growing Bt white corn. In 2003, over 200,000 acres were planted there, by 90% of the farmers, most of them women. The farmers have seen productivity increases of 10-80% and fumonisin levels lowered. Their incomes are up, they have more time, and their children are likely healthier.
This should be extended into Central America, where rates of neural tube birth defects are 30 times higher than the U.S.
(Note: Fumonisin toxin contamination is a significant concern with organic corn. The UK’s Food Standards Agency last year tested 33 cornmeal brands for fumonisin as a test of a new European Union safety limit of 500 parts per billion. Six of the brands were organic, and all six failed and had to be recalled from stores. Only four brands of non-organic corn meal failed, and these were from corn grown in Turkey.)
One third of biotech crops are now grown in developing countries. Farmers in South Africa and the Philippines are growing Bt corn for food. Indian and Chinese smallholder farmers are growing large amount of Bt cotton, increasing yields and incomes and reducing pesticide deaths. China is growing Bt cotton on 7 million of its 12 million acres of cotton, or 58%.
Indian farmers are officially growing only 250,000 acres of Bt crops, or about 1% of the total Indian cotton area of 22 million acres. But there are literally thousands of acres of illegal Bt crops—the result of fraud by an Indian seed company and the impatience of Indian farmers. But it tells you what the farmers in developing countries that have had a taste of biotech crops think about biotech. The productivity, pollution, and sustainability benefits are significant.
How about a super-eco-potato? A potato resistant to the Colorado Potato Beetle and a devastating virus spread by aphids. As a result, instead of spraying potato crops with broad spectrum insecticides 7-15 times per season, only 2-3 applications are needed. The wildlife benefits are huge. Pheasant forage for insects in the potato fields for the first time. Sound like a fantasy? Nope. It was grown for two years before McDonald’s complained about controversy. It is no longer grown and potato farmers have returned to 7-15 sprays per year. The only place this potato continues to be grown is John Ashcroft’s wife’s Washington, DC garden.
Recently, scientists in Wisconsin, California, and the Netherlands collaborated to create the first “blight-proof” potato. Potato blight is the fungus that caused the potato famine. It destroys potatoes. Even after 50 years of trying, we’ve been unable to breed into edible potatoes the resistance from inedible wild potatoes. Genetic engineering has enabled the blight-resistance genes to be identified and inserted into modern, edible, high-yield potatoes. So far, the potatoes have resisted every type of blight thrown at them. They may be ready for farmer’s fields in 5 years.
Understand, that every year, millions and millions of pounds of fungicides are sprayed prophylactically on potatoes. Organic potato farmers spray copper sulfate, a heavy metal, as their fungicides. Non-organic farmers use safer and less environmentally damaging fungicides, however, they still pose potential ecological risks. The blight-proof potato would require few if any fungicide treatments. Combining the blight-proof trait with insect and virus resistance could cut global fungicide and insecticide use by tens of million of pounds per year. No more spraying, fuel use, soil compaction.
Potatoes are an important nutritious food, and growing in importance in developing countries. Rwanda has tripled its potato production through the 1990s, growing some 250 lbs per person annually. Currently, their potato crops remain vulnerable to blight—as the Rwandan people remain vulnerable to hunger and famine.
We can now grow salt and aluminum tolerant crops through genetic engineering. Dr. Eduardo Blumwald at UC Davis has developed salt tolerant tomatoes and canola by inserting more copies of natural tomato salt pump genes into the genome. This has resulted in tomatoes that can grow in nearly 40% seawater.
Not only that, but this may be a way to deal with the salinization of the world’s irrigated croplands—the problem that killed the hanging gardens of Babylon. These are our most productive lands and salts are in all water used for irrigation. For example, the canola plants store up to 18 grams of salt in their leaves during the growing season. Their oilseeds have no more salts that conventional canola (same for the tomatoes). After the canola is harvested, the farmer can harvest the leaves, and dispose of the salts. Sustainability wise, this is nearly as big an advance as synthetic fertilizers.
To tackle the global problem of aluminum toxic soils, Mexican researchers inserted a gene for citric acid into tobacco, papaya, and rice and created the world’s first aluminum-tolerant crops. This is a problem on 40% of the worlds arable cropland. The citric acid is excreted from the plant roots—a strategy they copied from naturally aluminum tolerant grasses. The citrate locks the aluminum ions in the soil, preventing their uptake by the plants and permitting far more plant growth and yield.
We can now fully explore and exploit the yield-enhancing genes from wild crop relatives as well. Two researchers from Cornell University reasoned that more than a century of inbreeding the world’s crop plants had significantly narrowed the genetic base of our crops. They also reasoned that the world’s gene banks contained a large number of genes from wild relatives of our crop plants. They selected a number of genes from wild relatives of the tomato family, a crop where yields have been rising by about 1 percent per year. The wild-relative genes produced a 50 percent gain in yields and a 23 percent gain in solids. The same researchers selected two promising genes from wild relatives of the rice plant—a crop where no yield gains had been achieved since the Chinese pioneered hybrids some 15 years ago. Each of the two genes produced a 17 percent gain in the highest-yielding Chinese hybrids; the genes are thought to be complementary and capable of raising rice yields by 20 to 40 percent.
Nutrition will be advanced as well. The Rockefeller Foundation has funded research that has overcome two of the world’s largest sources of malnutrition with genetically-modified rice. Around the world, some 400 million people currently suffer a chronic severe shortage of Vitamin A. About 14 million of these people go blind every year, including about 8 million children. Rockefeller’s new “golden rice” contains beta carotene, which the human body readily turns into Vitamin A. (The beta-carotene literally turns the rice golden.) The new rice also has three new genes which overcome the chronic iron deficiency among people in rice cultures; 4 billion people suffer this iron deficiency, and the women are at increased risk of birth complications. (The phytate in rice tied up the iron in their bodies no matter how much iron they consumed; the new rice has phytase to free the iron.) “Golden rice” will offer improved health to billions of women and children in rice-eating countries who could not have been helped through factory-food additives—at a tiny cost to society and no cost to them.
We’re also reducing the allergenicity of foods for the first time in human history. Researchers are currently working on hypoallergenic soy, wheat, and peanuts. While the peanuts appear to be a long-shot, the soy and wheat are nearing the human trial stages. Food allergies kill dozens of US citizens every year.
In short, the promise of agricultural genetic engineering is enormous. It will allow us to grow more food from less land and far fewer inputs of toxic pesticides—fewer even than organic farmers. This alone is an enormously important point.
Why? Agriculture already uses about 37 percent of the earth’s land surface, and any land not already in a city or a farm is wildlife habitat. And if the world has 30 million wildlife species, (a reasonable biologist’s “guesstimate”) then 25-27 million of them are probably in the tropical rain forests, with most of the remainder in such critical habitats as wetlands, coral reefs and mountain microclimates. These are places we have not farmed, and should not farm.
Through the higher yields per acre afforded by the use of pesticides, fertilizers, confinement meat and dairy production and modern food processing, modern high-yield farming has already saved millions of square miles of wildlife habitat from conversion to agricultural use.
Our peer-reviewed estimate is that the modern food system is currently saving something on the order of 15-20 million square miles of wildlands from being plowed for low-yield food production. That makes it the greatest conservation triumph in modern history.
Thus the key to conserving the natural world in the 21st century will be what the Hudson Institute calls “high-yield conservation.” Meeting both the food and forestry challenges of the 21st century, while leaving room for nature, will depend on our ability to continue increasing the food and fiber yields per acre of land and per unit of input from plants, animals and trees on our best land, and transporting the products to where the people are demanding it. Our success will also depend heavily on how urgently we explore such high-tech methods as biotechnology in food, fiber, and forestry.
Two years ago, we were joined by nearly 1,000 scientists and conservationists in signing the High Yield Conservation Declaration. The keynote signers were Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias (former President of Costa Rica), Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, and GAIA hypothesis creator James Lovelock. They recognize the challenge we face in the 21st century of feeding and clothing humanity without taking any more land from nature.
Yet many who we would think would be with us in this, and would encourage resource conserving, land conserving, habitat conserving, high-yield, low-impact farming technologies have lined up against them. Why have so many environmental groups opposed agricultural biotechnology?
There are four main arguments against agricultural genetic engineering: Human health concerns, environmental concerns, natural/organic ethics, and corporate control of the food system.
So far, the human health concerns have been completely unjustified. Even the famed “Starlink” fiasco was a non-health issue. We know only that it was hundreds of times safer than peanut butter. Not even a hiccup has occurred due to biotech crops. Environmental concerns have also not yet been justified. Monarch butterflies are alive and thriving. Weeds haven’t overtaken fields or gardens. The sky hasn’t fallen. Ethics are a personal matter.
Then there is what I think is the real issue: Corporate control of the “food system”. This is what I think motivates the vast majority of those opposed to ag biotechnology. Those opposed to ag biotech are also opposed to the “corporate” farm paradigm, as in farmers using seeds and inputs developed by large corporations and farming as a business rather than a way of life. The “corporate control” label is to me amusing, as no corporation controls any consumers in a free market. Any company must earn its market share. Consumers are always free to buy competing products.
How many companies are needed for effective competition? Two. Look at soft drinks: Coke and Pepsi. Does Coke “control” its consumers? Of course not. Same with inputs and seeds. Today there are six large biotech seed companies. And there are many more smaller ones who have licensed particular traits into their own genetic lines, expanding even further the choices available.
The anti-corporate activism declaims that we should only allow those technologies and policies that “empower” farmers and “the people”. Yet this is a vision of poverty and stagnation, not of economic growth, empowerment, and advancement.
We live in advanced societies, made possible through technology and knowledge, where our children have a high chance of reaching adulthood healthy and productive. Malnutrition and disease are comparatively low. We have good living standards, clean drinking water, good sanitation, low environmental pollution, and high-quality, protected wildlands. Much of this is possible because so few of us must dedicate our lives solely to producing our food.
Instead of extending these benefits to more of the world’s people, we are told to reject these technologies and condemn corporations in favor of subsistence lifestyles. It is about keeping people on small farms—for their own good. It is about keeping them from being “exploited” by corporations.
Why not let them make that choice. I find that the places in the world with few or no private businesses and corporations are places I’d rather not be.
But fundamentally, do we want people free to make their own business choices, weathly and capitalized enough to buy seeds and inputs from a range of potential private suppliers in a free market system? Or do we want them dependent on government handouts or the charity of the horribly underfunded international ag research system?
Do we want a socialist agricultural system or a private enterprise system? I submit that the environmental and productivity (starvation) record of socialist ag systems is far worse than the private model. And all the developing country farmers I have spoken to over the past 10 years have unanimously preferred the private enterprise system.
Instead of creating further barriers to these technologies—thereby making them far more expensive and the supplier/innovator pool far more restricted—social and environmental activists should change course and begin actively promoting these crops. Help reduce regulatory barriers, increase access, and steer developments toward even greater environmental sensitivity.
The risks (perils) of ag biotechnology are manageable and far less than the realizable and needed gains made possible by it. We have the capability through biotechnology to feed and clothe the world’s larger and more affluent population using less land and inputs than we currently use. This would conserve the world’s remaining wildlife habitats at the same time as we improve nutrition, food safety, and sustainability.
That’s why I’m a strong biotech supporter. And also why I’m happy that this war is nearly over and the full promise of biotech will begin to be realized.
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