I cannot claim to be well-read enough on the GMO debate to have a well-formed opinion. I, like many people, feel skittish of the unknowns: of the possibility that we may let some Genie out of the proverbial bottle, and never be able to put him back. Maybe we should take it slow, with the reverse knob held tightly in our fists, ready to engage in a rapid back-up maneuver if something goes wrong. Big corporations are not always my favorite thing, their capacity for good often seems to be canceled out by their capacity for idiocy. I also feel some romantic sentiment about the old ways of farming, some tenuous connection to my great-grandparents and the very hard lives they lived. And, for most of humanity, there is some comfort in sticking with the “devil you know.”
But I also work with scientists and engineers in the biotech industry, witnessing the creation of breathtaking new technology which saves lives every day. I am grounded in math and science, in invention, innovation, and technology. I can’t ignore that a lot of very smart scientists in the world are saying, in more than a whisper now, we have to move forward. Rapidly. There isn’t a lot of time left, to reverse the trends, to literally save the planet.
And, so, the debate continues to flare. I am torn between the two extremes, as I usually am in any debate. A curious proposal seems to be emerging: what if the people who are worried about global warming actually need to partner with the people doing GMO, in order to address this scientifically demonstrated problem with scientific solutions?
Mark Lynas, a well-known author and environmentalist who used to be anti-GMO, has switched teams. And gave a bomb-drop of a speech about it three days ago. You may have already heard it or read it, given that it’s gone viral. But if you haven’t, it’s worth consideration. A very compelling speech indeed.
What do you think about the points he raises?
January 6, 2013 at 10:22 pm
OK, you asked 🙂
Short version – his “points” are nothing but replay of Monsanto propaganda from 5 – 7 years ago, mostly not true, blatantly disregard some of the main evidence against and completely miss the big picture.
Quite frankly, the GMOs are one of the least of our problems right now and so far from being a solution to anything that they’re pretty much irrelevant. Unless, of course, you’re talking to the companies making money on them (well, mostly on the chemicals that GMOs need) or people getting sick because of them.
My guess is that in 30 years from now only ag historians will remember what GMOs were. Oh, and the people dying from the diseases they picked up while spraying Agent Orange on the fields, because less harmful weedkillers don’t work anymore thanks to GMO geniuses (cross-pollination and evolution, duh).
I’m sure you’re quite familiar with the story of sheep de-wormers miracle and how every new one was better and better until they all kinda stopped working as advertised. Oops. Who would’ve thought, eh? Same story here with the same results in 5 – 10 years.
Long version – do you really want one? 🙂 Some points are well addressed in the comments to the original post but most are just common sense to anyone who understands how nature (or complex systems with multiple feedback loops generally) works.
P.S. I hate most everything about Europe – it’s just not my cup of tea, I guess but the food … oh boy, if they’ve got one thing right that would be the food. And I’m not talking high culinary here – the simplest things like bread and cheese and cucumbers just taste unbelievable over there – may be there is something to being “the food museum”.
January 7, 2013 at 2:12 am
I cannot speak to the GMO issue, but what I’ve seen is that patented seeds from monsanto and the lawsuits related to them are causing quite a bit of ill will towards monsanto, and from my limited viewpoint, just seem to be a way to sell the associated pesticide or herbicide.
No one makes millions off of four crop rotation, but it’s been shown to be just as effective as roundup, but does not have the external input costs associated with modern agricultural chemicals and the associated seeds. But without a profit margin you don’t get the glossy TV commercials or the shiny spokesman.
It’s not that all farmers are luddites, its that the farmers have been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed and basically feel like GMO patents are forcing them to pay a private tax enforced by lawsuits and it’s becoming increasingingly clear that stepping on the GMO train does not result in greater long term yields, which is the primary reason given for GMO crops saving the world from hunger. Other systems, notably the centuries-old four crop rotation systems, do as well or better, but result in less runoff, as well as having fewer input costs.
GMO isn’t easy on the farmer. Witness the conversion of India from a culture of seed-savers to a culture of annual seed buyers (from monsanto, of course). You don’t commit suicide on a whim, or if you have any hope.
Indian farmer suides:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html
Four crop rotation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/crop-rotation-and-the-future-of-farming.html?_r=0
Four crop rotation incorporating animals
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-news/latest/Three-or-four-year-crop-rotation-vs-cornsoybean-rotation-177325161.html
January 7, 2013 at 5:06 am
Bruce, it seems like the Monsanto vs. the seed savers has gotten a lot of attention. But this hints that seed patents have been around long before GMO, and that would make sense. Who would invest in breeding a new variety just to give it away? Maybe Monsanto is just the first company to be really aggressive about patent defense, and it has nothing to do with whether their seed patents are GMO or not. Nobody flinches about patent wars in other industries (I work for a patent king of a company, it’s a huge revenue stream for us), but of course it is more complicated when seed can blow around. And not that I’m defending Monsanto specifically, they definitely have some seemingly creepy practices for patent defense. But it does seem like public perception ties together Monsanto, their business strategies, and GMO, when those are separate issues. Monsanto may still be perceived as equally horrible if they were using traditional seed breeding methods, but were still doing the same marketing and patent protection practices.
I would imagine that if crop rotation is cheaper, eventually the market will bear that out, especially of fossil fuel-based chemicals rise in price. But I suspect that there may be other financial factors which drive companies to consolidate and specialize, rather than diversify, equipment being one of them.
January 7, 2013 at 5:17 am
Leon, I guess I’m just torn between two factions of people who globally declare “my side is 100% right, the other side is 100% wrong!” Usually, I find, that the truth is somewhere in the middle of both extremes, and that’s always what gets me curious. What if both sides have some good points? I like to try to challenge my thinking by entertaining the logic of the other side.
Re: sheep de-wormers, well, it’s an interesting dilemma. But even people who oppose using chemical de-wormers end up just looking for an herbal drug that does the same thing- some of the favorites are so strong, like wormwood, they are dangerous abortifactants. So, the herbal route isn’t all fairies and rosebuds, it’s still using drugs as a crutch. We can us science and NSIP to help us breed sheep that need less de-wormer (which is all about genetics, again), but so far, nobody has bred a sheep that needs no de-wormer. Maybe GMO could achieve this? 😉
January 7, 2013 at 6:27 am
GMO for animal production is busy breeding ginormuses (a recent example in the news is salmon), not so much worm or disease resistance.
As for crop rotation winning in the market, hard to win when things are rigged against the method, which is the current situation.
January 7, 2013 at 8:42 am
If microsoft sues google about a patent nobody really cares. Microsoft is not suing the local drugstore, nor is google. When the patents in question are applied to people without the ability for them to usefully defend themselves from the suit, it’s such a lopsided fight that it’s viewed as unfair.
Even if the person wins, and they do from time to time, its at the cost of risking their entire net worth. Most folks pay the greenmail and then pay the associated “tax” forever aftwards. It was only 1980 that patents were allowed on living things — well within your and my lifetime. Prior to that you couldn’t patent a living organism.
Crop rotation isn’t new; it’s a centuries old technique, but what is new is the pursuit of farmers who do not buy their product via lawsuit to pay corporations for their genes. Crop rotation doesn’t have a marketing director, or an advertising budget.
Stuff like this is what is setting folks off:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser
We have bred and crossbred crops for at least 10 thousand years without the aid of giant corporations.
Some of the greatest gains in agricultural production did not come from some corporation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
summary: We can have progress in yields and production without patent protection.
January 7, 2013 at 12:01 pm
> Usually, I find, that the truth is somewhere in the middle of both extremes
Oh, I’m with you on that. It’s just that his “points” happen to be complete rubbish (may be, as some suggested he was forced to do it one way or another). There are much better arguments for GMOs than those he presented. And you’re right – the truth in this case is between the extremes – GMOs are neither a miracle cure nor devil’s elixir as people on the extremes claim – its basically just snake oil used to sell more chemicals. In a real open market environment that wouldn’t last a full growing season or two. The only reasons it still around are the subsidies and the revolving door problem, where Monsanto and Co. people move between regulatory agencies and the companies they regulate (http://rense.com/general33/fd.htm) as easy as pollen moves from plants engineered to be weedkiller-resistant to plants we do want to kill with the same weed-killer.
GMOs will be gone and forgotten mostly for economic reasons and they will leave quite a few nasty traces behind – superweeds, fields drenched in nasty stuff, etc. I like it how you said ” their capacity for good often seems to be canceled out by their capacity for idiocy”. I don’t think people who run these companies are evil. They’re just paid a whole lot for not seeing the big picture and that makes them behave like idiots. Idiots with a grenade launchers, in this case. Yes, the 4 crops rotation beats the hell out of chem ag but where’s the money in that? Where is the “progress”? Are we to admit that we’ve spend almost 100 years poisoning people and the environment and have nothing to show for it? Impossible! Let’s just ignore the reality and get working on another “improved” variety and by the time it flops, we’ll be working for another company, so who cares.
Sheep de-wormers – one of the curses of being a centrist in a polarized world is that every time you say something against chem companies people assume you’re a hippie :)) I do not believe in natural dewormers! /signed. They may help a borderline animal but they won’t save one with anemia for sure. The reason I know that is because our sheep eat tons of acorns and oak leaves, so they have more tannins in them than a brand new leather jacket. If that stuff worked, we’d never had any problems with the worms but we do. So, I love my Levamisole and I hate people who made it almost useless by misusing it under guidance of the extension “scientists”, who were trained (and paid) by the manufacturers – see the parallel with GMOs here?
The GMOs could be a very good technology but they way it was used makes sure it will be on the same textbook page as other examples of humans managing to turn their great achievements into defeats – antibiotic-resistant bacteria, food-aid programs that impoverish local farmers, etc.
Genetics – there is a big difference between breeding hybrid animals/plants and genetic engineering. In the first case you kinda follow the path trying to find an exit from a maze. If you don’t know all the rules of the maze (and we’ve just scratched the surface of understanding how genes work) it’s kinda OK, because while you follow the path your ability to do something really stupid is limited. The worst thing you can do is to make a wrong turn.
But what genetic engineering does is that they take a tractor and just ram through the maze making a beeline to where they think they want to be. So when they make a wrong guess that’s something 1,000 times worse than just making a wrong turn.
Nature did a study in genetics that lasted billions of years and involved billions trillions gazillions of subjects – imagine R&D budget of that thing! So when we try to play this game against her it’s like brining a knife to a tank battle and the results are rather predictable.
January 7, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Duh! I just realized why naturally-curring de-wormers can’t be very effective. They’re naturally-occurring! That means sheep have been using them to self-medicate for millennia and the worms had more than enough time to adapt …
January 9, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Genetically modified plants are 100% modified: the roots, stems, leaves, and seeds. If you harvest and eat ANY part of the plant you are eating whatever has been added to it. If it were just a drought resistance modification it doesn’t SEEM so bad, but they are also adding herbicides and pesticides to the plant. I would not voluntarily eat herbicides or pesticides.
Pollen that crosses into my field, changes my crop against my will. I have a huge problem regarding these two issues. I have a right to eat healthy organically grown food, and it seems that it will become harder and harder to isolate organic fields from modified fields. Faith.
January 9, 2013 at 9:37 pm
Have we been modifying genes forever? Why yes, but the difference is breeding sheep for parasite resistance, or manipulating ovine genes to include pesticide producing intestines. I like my plants big and healthy as the next person, but I don’t want them to be crossed with jellyfish so they can kill their own bugs. I know this is oversimplified, but it’s not terribly off base. And although Monsanto is the fall guy, there are several big ag businesses involved in this weirdness. Jmho
January 10, 2013 at 7:55 pm
I agree with Mr. Lynas that we should not succumb to the “mob rule” mentality that leads us to react emotionally to an issue without considering and researching the facts. But there are some points that he makes that I find questionable:
– pest-resistant crops require less pesticide. Begs the question of whether we should be using pesticides in the first place. Does not address the effect of either pesticides or systemic pest resistance on good bugs. Does not address the ability of pests to adapt and increase their resistance to the new tool.
– Hybrid seeds robbed farmers of the ability to save seeds. What hogwash. Farmers can still save their seeds, just don’t buy the hybrids.
– Needing fewer inputs. Western agriculture methods require “inputs”, often derived from petrochemicals. Different methods boost the health of the soil in more sustainable ways. Yes, back to the 50’s and before. It worked, actually, and created marvelously healthy soil.
– GM in the lab is safer than a farmer cross-pollinating for local results. Sorry, I just don’t buy that.
– Europe is a food museum. Is this bad? I celebrate it.
– Glyphosate is benign. In what manner is it benign? In that it reduces biodiversity, which our pollinators need? It is not applied as a pure substance to the fields. It is not “benign” when made into a spray to be applied to fields. For instance, the surfactant used in RoundUp is highly toxic to animals and humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate
– There is no reason why avoiding chemicals is bad for the environment? I’m constantly amazed that we think the future of the human race depends on soaking our soil with herbicides and pesticides. This is not sane.
– The e.coli involved in last summer’s lethal outbreak is a mutation that first showed up in 1982. We actually need e.coli to break down cellulose, but this mutation generates serious toxins that many of us cannot handle. I have read that we in essence created this mutant form by feeding our cows “hot feed”, and that cows are more likely to have this strain if they are fed pressed / rolled corn, but can’t find the references right now. But we need to use the fertility produced by our ruminants as fertilizer. Given this mutation, we need to follow safer practices than exposing food that will be served raw to the un-composted manure. This is not a reason to stop organic agriculture.
– Calling the demand that pollen drift be controlled to not affect farmers whose crops are ruined by it “elitist” is quite offensive. Just as he thinks he is saving the world, we think we are saving the world, eh? Not for the elite. Saving the soil, which is core to all life. We can’t have peaceful coexistence because they can’t control pollen drift.
Again, I do agree that we need to back off from our emotional twitter-based sound-byte reactionary non-compromising modes of communication and decision-making. Leads to fiscal cliffs and a breakdown of government. But I believe the concerns about GMO products are real, and the research done – by the companies making the products – is inadequate, flawed, skewed.
I have a similar concern about pharmaceuticals, and wonder who should be doing this research. Is it appropriate for corporations who must make a profit to be responsible for the development and safety research for our medicines? Is it appropriate for a corporation to be able to patent a living thing? Should the universities be doing this research? Is the base paradigm flawed here?
January 16, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Sorry if you’re already tired of this issue but if not, here’s the long version of the rebuttal citing evidence, etc. I didn’t have time to do during the discussion.
I’m glad I didn’t tried to write it though – they did a much better job.
http://civileats.com/2013/01/15/debunking-ge-myths-again/
January 20, 2013 at 6:17 pm
Thanks for the comments and links, all. It is truly a very complex and thought-provoking debate. I find it very challenging to wade through so many assertions made by each side, and without taking the time to further research each claim, it’s hard to know whom to believe.
I think what’s most difficult for me to untangle is trying to separate what has been done to date from what *could* be done. Clearly, some are taking this GMO thing in the wrong direction. But that is common when new technology emerges, some early attempts are clumsy, and fail. But they teach us things which eventually enable appropriate use of the technology.
I still feel like it’s possible that somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, there is a sensible answer.
And then, there is always the option of just asking humans to breed less so we don’t have to worry so much about the increasing burden on the planet. But of course, that suggestion is the least popular of all! 🙂
January 20, 2013 at 9:07 pm
Eh, humans are already breeding less as global wealth effects happen. The more wealth people have, the less they want to have large families (“female education” is partly a wealth proxy). Population trends suggest flattening and decline nearly everywhere, including nearly all of the 3rd world.
January 20, 2013 at 10:07 pm
A Lady, true, but both the global warming alarmists and the pro-GMO camps seem to agree on one thing, that the projections of population growth still cause concern over planetary burden, and the ability to feed everyone. Birth rate can’t seem to decline enough to offset the fact that all our technology is allowing people to live much longer.
January 20, 2013 at 10:38 pm
Our technology also means we could feed everyone without wrecking the land long term. But few enough want to look at it that way, there is a lot of zero sum thinking on the matter.
May 4, 2016 at 12:08 pm
GMOs have not increased yields nor have they reduced overall pesticide use as promised. Traditionally bred hybrid varieties are outpacing GMOs in areas such as drought resistance. The non corporate sponsored data is out there for anyone who wants to know the truth.