by Al Gore
For the rest of the country, those who needed health insurance the most had a difficult time obtaining it, or paying for it when they could find it. By the time the inherent flaws and contradictions of this model were obvious, the American political system had degraded to the point that the companies with an interest in seeing this system continued had so much power that nothing could be done to change its basic structure.
With rare exceptions, the majority of legislators are no longer capable of serving the public interest because they are so dependent on campaign contributions from these corporate interests and so vulnerable to their nonstop lobbying. The general public is effectively disengaged from the debate, except to the extent that they absorb constant messaging from the same corporate interests—messages designed to condition their audience to support what the business lobbies want done.
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOOD
The same sclerosis of democracy is now hampering sensible adaptations to the wave of changes flowing out of the Life Sciences Revolution. For example, even though polls consistently show that approximately 90 percent of American citizens believe that genetically engineered food should be labeled, the U.S. Congress has adopted the point of view advocated by large agribusiness companies—that labeling is unnecessary and would be harmful to “confidence in the food supply.”
However, most European countries already require such labeling. The recent approval of genetically engineered alfalfa in the U.S. provoked a larger outcry than many expected and the “Just Label It” campaign has become the centerpiece of a new grassroots push for labeling genetically modified (GM) food products in the United States, which plants twice as many acres in GM crops as any other country. Voters in California defeated a referendum in 2012 to require such labeling, after corporate interests spent $46 million on negative commercials, five times as much as proponents. Nevertheless, since approximately 70 percent of the processed foods in the U.S. contain at least some GM crops, this controversy will not go away.
By way of background, the genetic modification of plants and animals is, as enthusiastic advocates often emphasize, hardly new. Most of the food crops that humanity has depended upon since before the dawn of the Agricultural Revolution were genetically modified during the Stone Age by careful selective breeding—which, over many generations, modified the genetic structure of the plants and animals in question to manifest traits of value to humans. As Norman Borlaug put it, “Neolithic women accelerated genetic modifications in plants in the process of domesticating our food crop species.”
By using the new technologies of gene splicing and other forms of genetic engineering, we are—according to this view—merely accelerating and making more efficient a long-established practice that has proven benefits and few if any detrimental side effects. And outside of Europe (and India) there is a consensus among most farmers, agribusinesses, and policymakers that GM crops are safe and must be an essential part of the world’s strategy for coping with anticipated food shortages.
However, as the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has evolved, opponents of the practice point out that none of the genetic engineering has ever produced any increase in the intrinsic yields of the crops, and they have raised at least some ecosystem concerns that are not so easily dismissed. The opponents argue that the insertion of foreign genes into another genome is, in fact, different from selective breeding because it disrupts the normal pattern of the organism’s genetic code and can cause unpredictable mutations.
The first genetically engineered crop to be commercialized was a new form of tomato known as the FLAVR SAVR, which was modified to remain firm for a longer period of time after it ripened. However, the tomato did not succeed due to high costs. And consumer resistance to tomato paste made from these tomatoes (it was clearly labeled as a GM product) caused the paste to be a failure.
Selective breeding was used to make an earlier change in the traits of commercial tomatoes in order to produce a flatter, less rounded bottom to accommodate the introduction of automation in the harvesting process. The new variety stayed on the conveyor belts without rolling off, was easier to pack into crates, and its tougher skin prevented the machines from crushing the tomatoes. They are sometimes called “square tomatoes,” though they are not really square.
An even earlier modification of tomatoes, in 1930, also using selective breeding, was the one that resulted in what most tomato lovers regard as a catastrophic loss of flavor in modern tomatoes. The change was intended to enhance the mass marketing and distribution of tomatoes by ensuring that they were “all red” and ripened uniformly, without the green “shoulders” that consumers sometimes viewed as a sign that they were not yet ripe. Researchers working with the newly sequenced tomato genome discovered in 2012 that the elimination of the gene associated with green shoulders also eliminated the plant’s ability to produce most of the sugars that used to give most tomatoes a delicious taste.
In spite of experiences such as these, which illustrate how changes made for the convenience and profitability of large corporations sometimes end up triggering other genetic changes that most people hate, farmers around the world—other than in the European Union—have adopted GM crops at an accelerating rate. Almost 11 percent of all the world’s farmland was planted in GM crops in 2011, according to an international organization that promotes GMOs, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. Over the last seven years, the number of acres planted in GM crops has increased almost 100-fold, and the almost 400 million acres planted in 2011 represented an increase of 8 percent from one year earlier.
Although the United States is by far the largest grower of GM crops, Brazil and Argentina are also heavily committed to the technology. Brazil, in particular, has adopted a fast-track approval system for GMOs and is pursuing a highly focused strategy for maximizing the use of biotechnology in agriculture. In developing countries overall, the adoption of modified crops is growing twice as fast as in mature economies. An estimated 90 percent of the 16.7 million farmers growing genetically engineered crops in almost thirty countries were small farmers in developing markets.
Genetically modified soybeans, engineered to tolerate Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, are the largest GM crop globally. Corn is the second most widely planted GM crop, although it is the most planted in the U.S. (“Maize” is the term used for what is called corn in the U.S.; the word “corn” is often used outside the U.S. to refer to any cereal crop.) In the U.S., 95 percent of soybeans planted and 80 percent of corn are grown from patented seeds that farmers must purchase from Monsanto or one of their licensees. Cotton is the third most planted GM crop globally, and canola (known as “rapeseed” outside the United States) is the other large GM crop in the world.
Although the science of genetically engineered plants is advancing quickly, the vast majority of GM crops grown today are still from the first of three generations, or waves, of the technology. This first wave, in turn, includes GM crops that fall into three different categories:
• The introduction of genes that give corn and cotton the ability to produce their own insecticide inside the plants;
• Genes introduced into corn, cotton, canola, and soybeans that make the plants tolerant of two chemicals contained in widely used weed killers that are produced by the same company—Monsanto—that controls the GM seeds; and
• The introduction of genes designed to enhance the survivability of crops during droughts.
In general, farmers using the first wave of GM crops report initial reductions in their cost of production—partly due to temporarily lower use of insecticide—and temporarily lower losses to insects or weeds. The bulk of the economic benefits thus far have gone to cotton farmers using a strain that is engineered to produce its own insecticide (Bacillus thuringiensis, better known as Bt). In India the new Bt cotton made the nation a net exporter, rather than importer, of cotton and was a factor in the initial doubling of cotton yields because of temporarily
lower losses to insects and weeds. However, many Indian cotton farmers have begun to protest the high cost of the GM seeds they must purchase anew each year and the high cost of the herbicides they must use in greater volumes as more weeds develop resistance. A parliamentary panel in India issued a controversial 2012 report asserting that “there is a connection between Bt cotton and farmers’ suicides” and recommending that field trials of GM crops “under any garb should be discontinued forthwith.”
New scientific studies—including a comprehensive report by the U.S. National Research Council in 2009—support the criticism by opponents of GM crops that the intrinsic yields of the crops themselves are not increased at all. To the contrary, some farmers have experienced slightly lower intrinsic yields because of unexpected collateral changes in the plants’ genetic code. Selective breeding, on the other hand, was responsible for the impressive and life-saving yield increases of the Green Revolution. New research by an Israeli company, Kaiima, into a non-GMO technology known as “enhanced ploidy” (the inducement, selective breeding, and natural enhancement of a trait that confers more than two sets of chromosomes in each cell nucleus) is producing both greater yields and greater resistance to the effects of drought in a variety of food and other crops. Recent field trials run by Kaiima show more than 20 percent yield enhancement in corn and more than 40 percent enhancement in wheat.
The genetic modification of crops, by contrast, has not yet produced meaningful enhancements of survivability during drought. While some GM experimental strains do, in theory, offer the promise of increased yields during dry periods, these strains have not yet been introduced on a commercial scale, and test plots have demonstrated only slight yield improvements thus far, and only during mild drought conditions. Because of the growing prevalence of drought due to global warming, there is tremendous interest in drought-resistant strains, especially for maize, wheat, and other crops in developing countries. Unfortunately, however, drought resistance is turning out to be an extremely complex challenge for plant geneticists, involving a combination of many genes working together in complicated ways that are not yet well understood.
After an extensive analysis of the progress in genetically engineering drought-resistant crops, the Union of Concerned Scientists found “little evidence of progress in making crops more water efficient. We also found that the overall prospects for genetic engineering to significantly address agriculture’s drought and water-use challenges are limited at best.”
The second wave of GM crops involves the introduction of genes that enhance the nutrient value of the plants. It includes the engineering of higher protein content in corn (maize) that is used primarily for livestock feed, and the engineering of a new strain of rice that produces extra vitamin A as part of a strategy to combat the deficiency in vitamin A that now affects approximately 250 million children around the world. This second wave also involves the introduction of genes that are designed to enhance the resistance of plants to particular fungi and viruses.
The third wave of GM crops, which is just beginning to be commercialized, involves the modification of plants through the introduction of genes that program the production of substances within the plants that have commercial value as inputs in other processes, including pharmaceutical inputs and biopolymers for the production of bioplastics that are biodegradable and easily recyclable. This third wave also involves an effort to introduce genes that modify plants with high cellulose and lignin in order to make them easier to process for the production of cellulosic ethanol. The so-called green plastics have exciting promise, but as with crops devoted to the production of biofuels, they raise questions about how much arable land can safely or wisely be diverted from the production of food in a world with growing population and food consumption, and shrinking assets of topsoil and water for agriculture.
Over the next two decades, seed scientists believe that they may be able to launch a fourth wave of GM crops by inserting the photosynthesizing genes of corn (and other so-called C4 plants) that are more efficient in photosynthesizing light into energy in plants like wheat and rice (and other C3 plants). If they succeed—which is far from certain because of the unprecedented complexity of the challenge—this technique could indeed bring about significant intrinsic yield increases. For the time being however, the overall net benefits from genetically engineered crops have been limited to a temporary reduction in losses to pests and a temporary decrease in expenditures for insecticides.
In 2012, the Obama administration in the U.S. launched its National Bioeconomy Blueprint, specifically designed to stimulate the production—and procurement by the government—of such products. The European Commission adopted a similar strategy two months earlier. Some environmental groups have criticized both plans because of the growing concern about diverting cropland away from food production and the destruction of tropical forests to make way for more cropland.
The opponents of genetically modified crops argue that not only have these genetic technologies failed thus far to increase intrinsic yields, but also that the weeds and insects the GM crops are designed to control are quickly mutating to make themselves impervious to the herbicides and insecticides in question. In particular, the crops that are engineered to produce their own insecticide (Bacillus thuringiensis) are now so common that the constant diet of Bt being served to pests in large monocultured fields is doing the same thing to insects that the massive and constant use of antibiotics is doing to germs in the guts of livestock: it is forcing the mutation of new strains of pests that are highly resistant to the insecticide.
The same thing also appears to be happening to weeds that are constantly sprayed with herbicides to protect crops that have been genetically engineered to survive application of the herbicide (including principally Monsanto’s Roundup, which is based on glyphosate, which used to kill virtually any green plant). Already, ten species of harmful weeds have evolved a resistance to these herbicides, requiring farmers to use other more toxic herbicides. Some opponents of GM crops have marshaled evidence tending to show that over time, as resistance increases among weeds and insects, the overall use of both herbicides and pesticides actually increases, though advocates of GM crops dispute their analysis.
Because so many weeds have now developed resistance to glyphosate (most commonly used in Roundup), there is a renewed market demand for more powerful—and more dangerous—herbicides. There are certainly plenty to choose from. The overall market for pesticides in the world represents approximately $40 billion in sales annually, with herbicides aimed at weeds representing $17.5 billion and both insecticides and fungicides representing about $10.5 billion each.
Dow AgroSciences has applied for regulatory approval to launch a new genetically engineered form of corn that tolerates the application of a pesticide known as 2,4-D, which was a key ingredient in Agent Orange—the deadly herbicide used by the U.S. Air Force to clear jungles and forest cover during the Vietnam War—which has been implicated in numerous health problems suffered by both Americans and Vietnamese who were exposed to it. Health experts from more than 140 NGOs have opposed the approval of what they call “Agent Orange corn,” citing links between exposure to 2,4-D and “major health problems such as cancer, lowered sperm counts, liver toxicity and Parkinson’s disease. Lab studies show that 2,4-D causes endocrine disruption, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, and immunosuppression.”
Insecticides that are sprayed on crops have also been implicated in damage to beneficial insects and other animals. The milkweed plants on which monarch butterflies almost exclusively depend have declined in the U.S. farm belt by almost 60 percent over the last decade, principally because of the expansion of cropland dedicated to crop varieties engineered to be tolerant of Roundup. There have been studies showing that Bt crops (the ones that produce insecticide) have had a direct harmful impact on at least one subspecies of monarchs, and on lacewings (considered highly beneficial insects), ladybird beetles, and beneficial biota in the soil. Although propo
nents of GM crops have minimized the importance of these effects, they deserve close scrutiny as GM crops continue to expand their role in the world’s food production.
Most recently, scientists have attributed the disturbing and previously mysterious sudden collapses of bee colonies to a new group of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has caused deep concern among beekeepers and others since the affliction first appeared in 2006. Although numerous theories about the cause of CCD were put forward, it was not until the spring of 2012 that several studies pinpointed the cause.
The neonicotinoids, which are neurotoxins similar in their makeup to nicotine, are widely used on corn seed, and the chemicals are then pulled from the seed into the corn plants as they grow. Commercial beekeepers, in turn, have long fed corn syrup to their bees. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, “Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination.”
Bees, of course, play no role in the pollination of GM crops, because the engineered seeds must be purchased annually by farmers, and the bees’ pesky habit of pollinating plants can introduce genes that do not fit into the seed company’s design. According to The Wall Street Journal, the growers of a modified seedless mandarin threatened to sue beekeepers working with neighboring farms for allowing their bees to “trespass” into the orchards where the seedless mandarins were growing, out of worry that the seedless mandarins would be cross-pollinated with pollen from citrus varieties that have seeds. Understandably, the beekeepers protested that they couldn’t control where their bees fly.
