Organic agriculture's recently recognized benefits for improving food security don't depend on a boost from genetically modified (GM) technology. While the chemically-based systems that GM requires could be cleaned up with organic techniques, there's no clear reason to degrade organic standards to accept the downsides that come with biotech-produced crops as they are currently managed.
Recently, there have been renewed efforts to pressure organic agriculture to abandon one of its foundational principles and accept genetically modified crops. While there may be nothing inherently wrong with contemplating a theoretical overlap between biotech crop genetics and organic farming systems, there's not a compelling set of reasons to do so, either.
Alleging the principled barrier between the two is merely a quirky philosophical sticking point of "hard core resistance" within the organic community diverts attention from real questions as to the net value of this pairing.
Real question #1: Why bother?
To this point, biotech crops have not produced the yield advantages or biological resilience to multiple stressors. If we're looking for reliable, multi-benefit, future-oriented farming options in an input-limited world, biotech is not a player.
The question is rather: Why spend the time, money and scientific ingenuity manipulating a handful of genetic materials to end up with a specific new attribute when we should, and could, be rigorously advancing regionally adapted varieties and building up soils organically to achieve enduring nutrient content cycling and resistance to drought, flood and disease resistance.
This organic activity is sustainable in the long term, improves water-holding capacity in soil for all crops -- not just those that happen to have a gene with drought resistance, leaving the other crops at risk.
Real question #2: Who benefits?
Why have patented seeds good for a single planting when what most farmers in the world need are replicable, open-pollinated varieties that thrive in the particular mix of soil, degree days, weather and pest pressure where they are grown? The patented seed path is entirely under the control of a company and requires substantial chemical inputs to survive. The latter path, relying on finding the optimum fit with natural systems and fluctuation (thanks to climate change) over time, is controlled much more by sustainable farmers and the heroic seed companies dedicated to their service.
Real question #3: Is the stuff safe to eat? And who knows?
There is no data from independent, long-term studies on the human health impacts from eating GM crops. There's lots of research, but it's all tucked within the files of the companies that paid for it. The same companies prevent independent research on the efficacy and health impacts of their crop seeds. Many of the handful of intrepid researchers who do manage to carry out studies and dare to publish results showing problems with the GM approach face amazingly virulent reactions from the biotech community, and the institutional systems that depend on them for funding.
I think this quote from the editorial in the recent issue of Scientific American tells how little we really are allowed to know about GM crops:
Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers.
Dr. Judith Carman of Australia is conducting one of the few long-term, independent animal feeding studies with GM materials. She says recent Australian and Italian studies finding reduced fertility and immune function, respectively, in mice are disturbing. Here she talks about extreme difficulty of doing meaningful research into this area. She is a PhD in medicine in the areas of metabolic regulation, nutritional biochemistry and cancer.
To us, it does not make biological sense that you can create brand-new proteins through genetic engineering in food and expect that our bodies will have the enzymes and capacity to break them down. These novel proteins are foreign to our immune systems because they have never before existed in nature.
Given how much we are not being allowed to know, our scientific, agricultural and food safety leaders need to take the reasonable step of following the precautionary principle until we have the knowledge we need. Organic agriculture proponents are eager for more high-quality research on biological systems, because the promise for improving soils, sequestering carbon and feeding more people with healthier diets is so great all around the world.
Simply, this means that, facing irreversible potential harm, the onus for generating the proof of scientific consensus falls upon those seeking to take the action. With biotech crops and our long-term health and ecological well-being, that's a pretty big onus.
The organic community may eventually be open to biotech crops if long-term, independent studies would some day show there are no ecological or human health impacts. Because there is no research available to prove that yet, who needs them? Why risk it?
Rodale Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that improves the health and well-being of people and the planet. We were founded in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, in 1947 by organic pioneer J.I. Rodale.
Our research findings are clear: A global organic transformation will mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere and restore soil fertility. Our mission: We improve the health and well-being of people and the planet.
Follow Timothy LaSalle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RodaleInstitute
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15287056/Bacteria-Biofilm-and-Biopesticide-BT-Bacillus-Thuringiensis-a-new-hypothesis-relevant-to-autism
We do not know what the effect of eating beef, pork, chicken etc, that has been fed with GM crops will, in turn, do to the human biology.
I've written a point by point response to this article: http://geneticmaize.squarespace.com/blog/2009/8/18/looking-for-the-truth.html.
Feel free to stop by and get a conversation going.
There is no need for biotech crops to be patented. Golden rice is an example of a public GM variety and there are more in the pipeline.
The answer to Real Question No. 2 from Rodale is paternalism. Farmers worldwide buy what they need. They do not need the Rodale vested interest in organics to tell them what to buy and how to farm.
And where is the "biological resilience to multiple stressors" in organic cropping in Africa (the last bastion on the planet of widescale organic farming)? Without half a century of aerial insecticide application to control desert locust, farmers across Africa would be destitute.
The health dangers of organic farming are major: insect-induced toxins in crops (thousands of different, unresearched chemicals - cancer-inducing nicotine is a natural insecticide) and deadly coliform bacteria from manure.
All the environmental benefits of organic can be gained from present conventional farming.
This is propaganda from a vested interest and should be read as such.
It’s a system that can work and that has some challenges, like about every other way of raising crops. Our yields in a controlled, long-term trial are about the same in the organic and chemical systems, with organic getting the advantage in dry and wet years due to improved soil structure—thanks to extra soil carbon.
We have hard data showing our organic farming practices added carbon to soil here at averages from 700 lbs carbon acre (legume organic system) to 2,300 lbs/C/ac (compost organic system) over a period of 14 years after conversion. When you look at deep-profile tests, chemical no-till can’t be relied upon to consistently add carbon to soil, even though it leaves residue on top of the chemically treated fields. It can reduce erosion compared with full tillage, but it ties farmers to using herbicides.
Can't help you with baloney, but when it comes to organic crops, soil and carbon, we've got the numbers to show what's possible in our neck of the woods.
No-till works much better, but a person needs chemical control of weeds.
Your point about the precautionary principle is spot on
A lack of data does not translate to safe-
For myself- when shopping for food I reach for local and USDA organic when convenient and affordable.
While the USDA National Organic Program is not a perfect system-
For me- it is the higher bar when looking to reduce exposures that may or may not have the potential to increase risks to human health.
In the work to raise awareness for stopping cancer at the cause -If we are to really look at prevention relative to our health and health care-we must expand our view for a greater understanding of the unnecessary and preventable exposures added to our foods and our environment.
As a consumer in the interest of precaution I avoid the added chemicals to foods when possible.
Bill Couzens, Founder Less Cancer
What a bunch of baloney. No-till farming is what does that better than anything else, and you can't no-till organic farm, because you need to control weeds by either chemicals or mechanical cultivation.