Green-tinted spectacles

GM agriculture is part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Jonathan DG Jones, Guardian Unlimited (London), March 28, 2007,
(Presented for its public issue and information importance)

We live in a strange world. The so-called greens are opposed to a technology that substantially reduces the environmental impact of agriculture. Consider the following:

• Thanks to GM cotton, thousands of tons of insecticide have not been sprayed in fields, and fewer farm workers are poisoned by insecticides.
• Of the 8.5 million farmers growing GM crops in 2005, 90% are in developing countries, yet European consumers try to dictate to them that they cannot use an environmentally benign GM method to control insects.
• Insect-resistant GM maize means that levels of dangerous mycotoxins in the human and domestic animal diet have been reduced.
• Golden Rice which could contribute to alleviating vitamin A deficiency for millions is unnecessarily delayed.
• The greens purport to oppose the power of multinationals, yet the onerous regulatory burden imposed by their posturing ensures that small companies can't compete with big companies to bring GM products to market. A startup company I co-founded in the US, now employing some 50 people, could not have been established in Britain because of investor worries about consumer reactions to GMOs.
• Drought resistance, disease resistance and nutritional benefits, from developments already available or in the pipeline, are being delayed throughout the world.
• Nobody counts the considerable cost of NOT expeditiously deploying GM crop improvements.

I have been making transgenic plants for over 20 years. It is the most benign, ecologically sound new method for crop improvement in a century. The more I do it, the less I worry about it. Provided simple and obvious regulatory precautions are taken, there are no plausible scenarios for the technology to cause serious damage. There are some known unknowns that can be tested in any new GM variety, but there are no unknown unknowns.

How did we get into this impasse? The opponents of the technology recklessly damage the public interest by ignoring some obvious truths.

First, agriculture is not "natural" any more than it is "natural" to talk to someone miles away on a mobile phone. For readers in London, a natural state would be for most of them to be reading this in a dense swampy oak forest; most readers would not like the "natural" state for long. Converting wild areas to agriculture is about the most damaging thing we can do; we should maximise agricultural productivity in order to minimise the extent to which such conversion is required. Breeds of domestic animals and plants are all unnatural; consider the diversity of dogs, all descended from wolves. It is absurd to suggest that GM represents a quantum shift in unnaturalness.

Second, farmers have to solve practical problems. What is the least bad way to control weeds in their crops? Or insects, or diseases? Very few of those who lecture farmers on how to solve these problems without modern methods have any experience of doing so themselves. Hand-weeding millions of acres is not an option. Ploughing is damaging to the soil and promotes release of CO2 from agricultural land. If you're going to use herbicides, what is the least bad herbicide? It turns out that for cheapness, low mammalian toxicity, lack of persistence and lack of tendency to contaminate groundwater, glyphosate (Roundup) is hard to beat. The trouble is, it kills the crops. Solution? GM Roundup-Ready crops. Those who think this is a bad way to control weeds have yet to propose a better alternative.

Third, with decreased affordability of oil, the competition between food and biofuels will intensify. A ton of grain requires a thousand tons of water; is it any wonder that China, which is experiencing water shortages, is importing grain? We cannot afford to waste land and water by growing organic wheat with a 50% reduced yield compared to conventional.

Organic agriculture was originally envisaged as a cultural practice to nurture soil health. For organic farmers to rule out GM approaches to disease and pest resistance is irrational, a matter of doctrine rather than logic. The arguments about contamination are about imaginary hazards. It is as if a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church were next door to each other, and the Protestants objected to the smell of incense from the neighbouring church as "contamination". It boggles the mind that the "greens" are opposed to a late blight resistant potato developed with GM techniques when organic methods for blight control involving copper compounds are more toxic, environmentally damaging and less effective. David Miliband is right to call organic "a lifestyle choice" that is justified neither on reduced environmental impact nor food quality.

During the last century the human population increased four-fold and is expected to rise by another 50% to nine billion people. Humans already intercept about 30% of all terrestrial photosynthesis; for any species to be so greedy is unprecedented. We need to reduce our footprint on the earth; by increased use of renewable sources of energy, by minimizing the waste of water, by maximizing recycling and by controlling our population.

A GM blight-resistant potato will require less agrichemical applications, fewer tractor trips and less CO2 emissions. No damaging effects have been documented for GM crops or GM food. Never before have such expensive and onerous regulations been established in response to purely hypothetical anxieties. GM agriculture is part of the solution, not part of the problem.