The New Republic

Nice graphic. Cute "legs" on the corn. Yee haw!

Separately, could hte E&E blog please pay more attention to Norman Borlaug's approach, his achievements, his recommended approach, and his enviro-zealot enemies' efforts at preventing his GMO innovations from saving even more hundreds of millions of lives and turning around agriculture in Africa as they've done in other 3rd=world regions.

- teplukhin2you

April 25, 2008 at 2:36pm

It does make sense that a one-size-fits-all approach may not best way to handle transgenic crops.

- Peter.k

April 25, 2008 at 6:29pm

Norman Borlaug's "GMO" innovations?  None of the plant introduction work for which Borlaug was directly responsible was in any way related to what are now called "GMOs."   He used traditional plant breeding methods using wild relatives and hybridization to create dwarf, disease resistant, and fertilizer responsive varieties and hybrids.

Borlaug has advocated recently for the use of genetic engineering, but the green revolution was not based on genetic engineering as the word is commonly understood and he is not responsible for genetic engineering technology.  No significant voices in Europe are campaigning against the wheat varieties Borlaug did help develop.

Nor, even with Borlaug out of the picture, is there any compelling case that GMOs have significantly increased yields compared to convential varieties, that I am aware of.  The widely planted GMOs in the US and Canada (by far the heaviest users of this technology) add herbicide resistance or natural insecticide production to genomes otherwise created entirely by traditional breeding methods.  The former (herbicide resistance) clearly reduces net herbicide use (just ask Monsanto's competitors in the chemical industry), but affects yields marginally if at all; the latter (adding insecticide genes to plants) likewise reduces use of synthetic pesticides, but again, compared to killing the insects synthetically, it does not significantly increase yields.

In fact, most of of the green revolutions yield increases came from creation of dwarf or stiff-stalked varieties that could stand increased fertilizer application, or from disease resistance that permitted denser more consistent monocropping.   The first is important, because fertilizer is not a cheap resource.  Nitrogen fertilizer production is extremely energy intensive, and phosphate productiion requires mining a relatively limited, finite resource, and large shipping costs.  Teaching Borlaug's approach is fine, but you ignore the fertilizer and energy cost at your peril.

- sdemuth

April 25, 2008 at 6:36pm

But, separately, I love the Dr. Strangelove allusion in the picture - and she's way cuter than Slim Pickens.

- sdemuth

April 25, 2008 at 6:37pm

To me opposition to GMO crops has always been part of the anti-science religious impulse of the environmental movement.  Opposition to nuclear power, insistence upon recycling even when inefficient and wasteful,  the elevation of "natural" as always superior to "artificial"---these are all policies that feel good but hurt both people and the environment.

Should there be some regulation of GMO?  (I accept the name only under protest---all the breeding and hybrid techniques used for centuries produce GMO as well).   Probably.   But not as a special hazard.  A very small number of new strains may pose some allergy problems.   But as a person with severe allergies to eggs and nuts, I can tell you that there is much greater risk to my life from restaurants that experiment with recipes than from any of the crop improvements I have heard discussed.

- novaman2000

April 25, 2008 at 7:44pm

Informative post sdemuth. My gut told me it wasn't a case of Us vs Them with Borlaug, but I'm lazy and rather thick.

Great clarification. There are issues with GM, not least the dubious, corporate research that most of it is based on.

Many thanks.

JC.

- The Ignorant Populist

April 25, 2008 at 7:48pm

See www.rowett.ac.uk/.../OVERVIEW.html novaman for independent reseach on GM crops novaman.

It was at the Rowett Institute in Scotland. Rats feed GM showed serious brain growth problems. Dr Pusztai, who conducted the research, went on Morning TV and DOWNPLAYED the dangers, in fear of sparking a panic.

Monsanto called Clinton who called Blair who called the the Institute Director (who initially supported Puszati's work) who fired Puszati and broke up his team to save the Institute's funding.

This isn't hysterical, or conspiratorial, or even conjecture. It's all there in the public record.

See here for a good summary of the non-reported story:  www.grain.org/seedling

Fund the public, independent, non-corporate study of these products and let's cut the partisan nonsense.  

- The Ignorant Populist

April 25, 2008 at 8:01pm

Yes it is the new nuclear. It is the new wonder technology with incredible promise to increase the prosperity of mankind that is quiashed by millenarian retards.

- cthulhu2008

April 25, 2008 at 9:13pm

I think it's dishonest to refer to the study as an evaluation of transgenic crops.

The study involved transgenic potato and by lumping different crops (monocots and dicots, many plant families) that have different end products (sugars, oils, lubricants) into a single category seems far reaching.

There is a need for independent evaluations for foods that are directly consumed, but uses should dictate the evaluations, not just transgenic yes or no.

- Peter.k

April 25, 2008 at 10:21pm

I sit corrected. Thanks, sdemuth. Please post more.

- teplukhin2you

April 26, 2008 at 3:42am

novaman said: "Should there be some regulation of GMO?  (I accept the name only under protest---all the breeding and hybrid techniques used for centuries produce GMO as well).   Probably.   But not as a special hazard."

You have to fudge facts pretty aggressively to argue that GMOs as a class are no different from traditionally bred plants.  In the long history of human modification of plants, most breeding was done by selection for particular traits from a naturally pollinated pool of plants.  This is a purely "natural" process that basically accelerates the Darwinian selection found in the rest of nature.  In the first 3/4 of the 20th century, we expanded that basic technique by very deliberate crossing with wild relatives of existing food crops, and by hybridization (deliberate crossing of two distinct inbred populations), but innovative as this was, it still meant that the genes and thus gene products that ended up in a plant came from the same species or genus as the plant itself.  In other words, we crossed wheat with other wheat, even if it was wild, to make new wheat.  The process was very largely natural, if, again, purposely manipulated.

GMOs change the rules significantly, in two ways: first, you are mixing genes that come from VERY different parts of nature's overall genom, in a direction that nature rarely if ever mixes them.  Round-up Ready corn adds a bacterial gene to corn to make it herbicide resistant, and BT-corn does the same to make corn deadly to butterfly and moth larva, when eaten.  Bacteria and corn's last common ancestor lived on earth well over a billion - probably close to three billion - years ago.  Bacteria don't routinely share genes with corn.  Second, the gene is incorporated into the plant in a very different fashion than with breeding - it's basically spliced into the DNA at random using viral or mechanical means, often along with a antibiotic resistance marker gene.  This is radically different from normal seed production.

Do these things matter to the final outcome?  I don't think anyone knows, really.  There is a strictly reductionist viewpoint, opined by many agri-business (and some laboratory science) minded people that "genes are genes," and where the come from and how they are incorporated into a plant are silly details.  There is an alarmist viewpoint that says it's all "so unnatural" it has to be deadly.  I'd class both views as dogmatically blindered.

Then there are those who think that before we assume such major changes are benign, we ought to study and understand the possible repercussions better.  By any standard I know, our knowledge about the potential agricultural, ecological, and human and animal metabolic outcomes is woefully inadequate.

To reduce this to the personal level, I'm about as far from being anti-science as you'll find a lay person to be.  I'm a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,  and I read Science and Nature regularly.  I frankly think genetic engineering holds great potential promise for improving agriculture.  But I don't think it is adequately considered, or regulated, anywhere on earth, and I find the "all for the greater profit of Monsanto, damn the risks, full speed ahead" mentality that drives the present (almost non) regulatory regime in this country to be downright stupid.

- sdemuth

April 26, 2008 at 9:51am

"But I don't think it is adequately considered, or regulated, anywhere on earth, and I find the "all for the greater profit of Monsanto, damn the risks, full speed ahead" mentality that drives the present (almost non) regulatory regime in this country to be downright stupid."

Exactly right. People calling for real, actual, independent research over the minimum of two years that constitutes a long term study are PRO-SCIENCE and could potentially even be, pro-GMO.

- The Ignorant Populist

April 26, 2008 at 12:45pm

One other broader point. Due to GATT and WTO, the rest of the world is now very dependent on the FDA doing it's job.

It's effectively the FDA for the world, and I for one have no confidence, whatsoever in it.

- The Ignorant Populist

April 26, 2008 at 12:46pm

Look at a toy poodle and tell me it isn't a GMO.

- cthulhu2008

April 26, 2008 at 12:54pm

sdemuth's intelligent, circumspect, fact-based analysis represents the best of TNR commentary.

Would that this cautious and non-dogmatic approach were applied to the issue of anthropocentric global warming.

- teplukhin2you

April 26, 2008 at 2:44pm

No discussion of "neutered" patented food stocks?

- waroberts

April 27, 2008 at 1:55pm