Calls for change- The debate about GMOs

To start us off, here's an infographic produced in the debate about GMO labeling

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was in search of some principles which would be helpful as we explore alternatives or aim to tweak current practices. I came across this review "

Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21stCentury" in Science by Fedoroff et al (2010)

In it he lays out several principles including:

1. Implementing ecologically sound farming practices
2. Exploring genetic variability
3. Improving post-harvest mechanisms of transport and storage etc.
4. Preventing leakage and pollution by making sure one closes the loop of nutrient flows to (E.g. The relatively new system of Aquaponics- which allows nutrient re-use instead of wastage; see here for a very short but succinct introduction 
5. Improvement of crops via conventional and molecular methods (i.e. GMOs)

I was honestly surprised seeing 1),2) and 5) lumped together.

Going by the information I have come across in the past,  it seemed clear in my mind that GMOs were generally all about increasing yields without considering the environment and reducing biodiversity and are  essentially bad for the environment and health. If this were true, in effect point 5) contradicts 1) & 2).

Fedoroff et al put forth that "there is a critical need to get beyond popular biases against the use of agricultural biotechnology and develop forward-looking regulatory frameworks based on scientific evidence" and that

1. "They have also had environmental and health benefits, such as decreased use of pesticides and herbicides and increased use of no-till farming"  => ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFIT

2. "The first few GM crops that have been grown very widely… have increased agricultural productivity and farmers’ incomes." => SOCIAL/ ECONOMIC BENEFIT
3. "The world has consumed GM crops for 13 years without incident" => HEALTH BENEFIT

He says that in light of the impacts of future climate change crops will need to buffer against the stresses of heat, drought, flooding and salinity, and GMOs are our best defence against these as they allow us to manipulate corps and tailor-make them according to the future challenges we predict e.g. making plants with greater nitrogen use efficiency. All these sound fine and well, but is there any cost to GMOs? The support they give for GMOs is that there are already apparent benefits we experience from them.

Thinking that my preunderstanding might indeed be formed from bias information/popular thinking I have been influenced by, I decided to investigate further:

The evidence/citation(there's only 1 though) provided for all of this was , was from a report by two  economists, Brookes & Barfoot, 2009 asessing the "GlobalImpact of Biotech Crops: Environmental Effects, 1996-2008" 

Fedoroff strongly encourages the use of GMOs: he contends that there is "excellent safety and efficacy record of GM crops" and the support he gives stems from those in the paper by Brookes & Barfoot (2009) who say that GMOs result in:

1. Decreased  pesticides (-8.4%)
2. Decreased herbicide

3. Increased no-till practices which will allow greater efficiency (e.g. Carbon sequestration) leading to significant falls in GHG (equivalent of removing 6.9mil cars on the road)

A cursory reading of this article would indeed advocate an uninhibited promotion of GMOs as the solution to our food problems. However, I feel that much more caution has to be exercised.

Here are some issues I have with Brookes & Barfoot's article. The difference in pesticide & herbicide use are measured

• Comparisons against 'conventional' farming only
• My opinion:It was noted that there is also evidence that environmental impact of GMO-coupled herbicides is said to be lower than other traditional herbicides. Therefore, GMOs might give better benefits to conventional farming. However, given the possible (high) costs to thewidespread adoption & consumption of GMOs (this also brings into question point iii of the above), I think it better that we look into more 'ecologically sound' alternatives. For example, they state that the adoption of GM is an important contribution to adoption of no-tillage (NT) practices in conventional systems. Even if this is true in the area of conventional-tillage systems, it is not to say that there are no better alternatives. In addition, it must be noted that "the large-scale adoption of zero teillage started well before the introduction of GM crops, indicating that in many cases weeds can also be managed in a zero-tillage system with conventional soy".

(Bindraban et al 2009)

Hence there doesn't really look to be a very strong case here.

• Data obtained by private market-research possibly with special interests
• My opinion:Most of the tables given with regard to the values amount of herbicide used in GM crops VS Conventional crops are given by Monsanto, which not only is the monopoly behind GM crops, but also does not have a greatreputation when it comes to welfare of farmers, bringing to question the reliability of the data.  (this also brings into question point ii of the above)

• In fact, Bindraban et al 2009 state results that  their results contradict Brookes & Barfoot (2009) as they show higher impact of GMOs using the same method but with different data input. Thought it must be noted that the areas from which data was collected was different and so it is not directly comparable. They also note that GM herbicide use could increase in the future with increasing resistance. Their conclusion is more conservative: that there is currently no environmental benefit from using GMOs and the "herbicide application rate and the environmental impact from these herbicides was found to be higher in GM soy than in conventional soy" and this warrants more investigation.

With all these considered, it must be said that the intention behind Fedoroff et al's article seems well to me: "However, it is not at all a foregone conclusion that our current crops can be pushed to perform as well as they do now at much higher temperatures and with much less water and other agricultural inputs. It will take new approaches, new methods, new technology—indeed, perhaps even new crops and new agricultural systems. The issue I have is with the fervent, seemingly non-discriminatory support for GMOs while not exploring other equally 'smart' alternatives.

Though I'm not an expert on this, based on the above, its suffices me to conclude that while GMOs are not 'evil' in themselves, the risks tend to exceed the benefits mainly because as of today most of it is not inherently ecologically sound in its intentions. Perhaps GMOs will be viable and superior option in the future but this is not currently reflected the record of its use thus far.

Yep, so because of all these, I do not deny the possibility of GMOs doing good but have decided that I would not pursue, in this blog at least, to explore GMOs as a more 'ecologically desirable' alternative.

This was kind of a detour from my search for 'principles' and an attempt to look more critically into the assertions made by this particular paper. Next week I will go on to draw on the past experience of the green revolution to hopefully tease out some lessons ;)

For more information on GMOs, see this 'brochure' by respected experts in the field:

"GMO Myths and Truths " 

In very recent news, the bid to implement GMO-labeling  has been making the headlines in the US: