72 — village July - August 2012
Calm please - it’s
not all about the
environment
Cormac Sheridan replies to Frank Armstrong’s
article about GMOs in the last edition of Village
T
HE recent furore over a proposal from the
agricultural research agency Teagasc to
conduct field trials of genetically-modi-
fied (GM) blight-resistant potatoes was
wholly predictable, but, given the parochial nature
of the debate that ensued, also pretty lamenta-
ble. It exemplified the zero-sum, either-or kind of
thinking that has made any balanced public dia-
logue on the role of biotechnology in agriculture
almost impossible. Fourteen years after this coun-
try last considered the technology -that debate
fizzled out when saboteurs disrupted Monsanto’s
field trials of genetically-modified sugar beet - it
seems that little has changed, even if the wider
context has changed utterly. The last issue of
Village (May-June 2012) published a report on
climate change by Michael Smith that made no
mention of how the globe’s agricultural systems
can or will adapt to the unfolding crisis and a sci-
entifically-flawed report by Frank Armstrong
slamming GM crops that made no mention of cli-
mate change. We in Ireland may not have - and may
never have - any need for GM potatoes but, given
the pressing concerns about global food-security,
population growth and the continuing obscenity
of one billion people not having enough to eat, we
cannot afford to cast aside any approach—biotech,
organic, low intensity or conventional—that can
play a role in increasing food production.
Legitimate concerns about the ownership
and control of genetic-modification technology,
have always been indiscriminately lumped in
with Domesday scenarios of GM crops unleash-
ing environmental meltdown and undefined,
but nevertheless catastrophic, effects on public
health. The notion that genetically-modified crops
- all of them, regardless of crop, trait or habitat
- represent a grave threat to human health, the
Äò®ÙÊÄÃÄã
The other side of
Frankenstein
73
environment and the security of the global food
chain is as reductive and simplistic as the claim
that genetic-modification technology will feed the
world. Scientific truth, to the extent that it can be
established, is a frequent casualty of these rhetori-
cal clashes. Writing in the Indian journal Economic
& Political Weekly in May N Chandrasekhara Rao,
an Indian development economist, and Ronald
Herring, a US anthropologist, describe the
dynamic thus: “Corporate interests in biotech-
nology promise miracle seeds; opponents have
interests in demonstrating technology failure.
There are markets for both narratives and inter-
ests in their production”.
In India, adoption of Bt cotton (it carries a
gene from a bacterial species, Bacillus thuring-
iensis, which confers resistance to several insect
pests) has been a significant and widely-docu-
mented success, in improving farmer incomes and
health due to lower pesticide use. (See ‘Measuring
the Contribution of Bt Cotton Adoption to India’s
Cotton Yields Leap, International Food Policy
Research Institute Discussion Paper, 5 April 2012,
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publica-
tions/ifpridp01170.pdf). Nevertheless popular
narratives propagated by opponents of GM crops
wrongly cast Bt cotton as the main cause of farmer
suicide, a real and tragic phenomenon in India
that long predates the introduction of Bt cotton.
“The catastrophe narrative”, Rao and Herring note,
“is widely distributed but devoid of evidence. Field
studies of Bt cotton hybrids in India demonstrate
variance in outcomes, but fail to support claims
of technology failure”.
Genetic-modification technology is a tool that
may offer farmers economic and environmental
benefits. It is not a panacea, and its adoption
has been far from perfect. For example, farm-
ers in some parts of the US who indiscriminately
embraced Monsanto’s ‘RoundUp Ready’ user-
friendly soyabean cropping system, which is based
on engineering into seeds resistance to a herbi-
cide called glyphosate, are now facing significant
problems with the emergence of glyphosate-
resistant weeds. The issue is more accurately
framed as a crop-management problem rather
than the end of civilisation as we know it - it does
not represent a death knell for the technology. A
range of solutions is available, including grow-
ing cover crops and employing crop rotation. It
does, however, represent a very significant loss
of credibility for Monsanto among advocates of
GM crops (obviously it never had any among its
opponents). The biotechnology firm had played
down concerns about the emergence of resistance
before the introduction of the RoundUp Ready
system, which it has licensed to over 200 other
seed companies.
Although there appears to be no slowdown in
the adoption of genetic-modification technology,
some plant-breeders regard its contribution to
agriculture as overstated. Thus far, only simple
traits, based on a single gene, have been incorpo-
rated into GM crop varieties. Complex traits, such
as drought-resistance or salt-tolerance, which
could benefit farmers working in arid regions, for
example, are not easily defined at a genetic level
and cannot be readily transferred into crop varie-
ties. Some scientists place more faith in alternative
approaches, chief among them being marker-as-
sisted selection (MAS), which does not result in
the development of genetically-engineered crops.
Although MAS is decades old, advances in plant
genomics have boosted its utility and have allowed
plant breeders to pin-
point desirable genetic
traits with increas-
ing levels of precision.
Others are focussed on
fundamental questions
about plant biology,
such as unpicking the
molecular mechanisms
underpinning hetero-
sis, or hybrid vigour,
a poorly-understood
phenomenon that plant
breeders have never-
theless exploited for
a century. Tweaking
this could result in
new varieties with
enhanced perform-
ance. Rewiring the photosynthetic machinery of
major crop plants, such as rice, is another long-
term project.
The evolution of genetic-modification tech-
nology in agriculture is now nearing a significant
juncture. Patents covering the first generation
of GM crops will expire shortly, and Monsanto’s
RoundUp Ready system will become a public-
domain technology after 2014. Open-source
innovation concepts, which have already reshaped
software development, are slowly beginning to
infiltrate the world of biotechnological innovation
as well. Cambia, an Australian not-for-profit social
enterprise founded by plant biologist Richard
Jefferson, has played an influential role in setting
the agenda, although the extent to which these
ideas will kick-start a major open-source move-
ment in crop development remains unclear.
Ireland is insulated from many of the climatic,
ecological and economic problems that threaten
to undermine agriculture elsewhere. We’re not fac-
ing the hard choices that many other countries are
grappling with. But any serious consideration of
how agriculture will unfold in the coming decades
must surely look beyond the “half a rood of rock”
that we occupy—and acknowledge that there is no
single solution, agricultural or otherwise, to the
deeply complex problem of ensuring food security
for all in the coming decades.
Complex
traits, such
as drought-
resistance or
salt-tolerance,
are not easily
defined at a
genetic level
¨

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