Green Options

Part 1 of this post described what you could see while riding along in the tractor on a super-sustainable farm of the near future (only text in red describes things that are not already fully available to farmers).  Our guide is Sarah, a 24 year-old intern on the Gordon family farm in Iowa.  We have already learned about the special systems employed here to improve the soil and to make it more productive and “drought proof.”

The Risk Hurdle

Sarah explains that the field we are in has been under Mark Gordon’s care for 6 years.  The first 4-5 of those years were difficult.  Until he could get the soil restored by these practices he was exposed to certain risks.  The untilled, not dark brown soil retained water better, but in a year with a cold spring that meant a soil that remained cold and wet so that there could be a challenge getting the seeds, particularly the corn seeds, germinated and growing.  After these many years of improving the soil, this field is actually suitable for planting earlier than others, but that took time. 

Transition Specialists

Mark has become somewhat of an expert on how to deal with these “transition” risks.  He specializes in converting land to this super sustainable system and that is what Sarah wants to learn to do.  The problem is that it takes 4-6 years of serious investment in time and money to improve a field to this degree.  There are very real yield risks during that time. This is why many growers that use no-till for the soybeans in their rotation go back to conventional tillage for their corn. Mark and Sarah are glad that a coalition of equipment, chemical and seed companies have pulled together to set up an insurance and technical support system to help farmers like Mark and Sarah do the hard work of transitioning conventionally farmed land into the sort of “drought-proofed” and environmentally beneficial land that is possible.

Last week as I emerged from a grocery store I was met by a young GREENPEACE campaigner.  He asked me if I would like to sign a petition to  ”help save the whales.”  I told him that as much as I like whales, I could not in good conscience support GREENPEACE as an organization.  He looked genuinely stunned and asked why?  I explained that GREENPEACE has been very successful at blocking GMO technology and that in doing so they have compromised the food supply and particularly the food supply for the poorest people on the earth.

At this point I could tell that he was quite willing to dismiss me because of his strong confidence that the anti-GMO struggle was part of the same “virtuous” calling that had him standing outside of this store. He asked me what I did for a living.  I explained that I was an agricultural scientist and that I worked with the people who strive to keep humanity fed.

He asked what that had to do with GREENPEACE and I said,

“You should read Robert Paarlberg’s book, ‘Starved for Science’ which documents how anti-GMO forces like GREENPEACE are effectively setting up places like Africa for continued food shortages that might have been addressed by GMO crops.”  He said he would look into that.

I parted by saying, “if GREENPEACE is wrong on this issue, which I believe it is, you and your organization bear a huge responsibility because of the effectiveness of your anti-GMO activities and what that means for the future of global food supply.”

A team of American and French scientists have just documented the fact that there are a lot of bacteria in cigarettes and that the bacterial population includes some human pathogens.  They don’t actually know if this leads to human disease- after all, these things are BURNED!.  Still it raises interesting issues. But at least the tobacco is not GMO!

OK, I am indulging in some irony here.  If you have shared my experience of having a wonderful dinner in Paris compromised by smoking neighbors at the closely-spaced tables you can relate.  European colonizers might have devastated native American peoples through disease and guns 500 years ago, but the original “Americans” got a little pay-back by introducing the Europeans to an addictive and carcinogenic product they had never known.

I have always found it fascinating that Europeans have mainly avoided GMO crops based on fears of theoretical problems that have not materialized over more than a decade of GMO commercialization, all the while allowing an extremely well-documented source of health problems to be widely used and imposed on non-smokers.  The “precautionary principle” that prevails in Europe does not seem to protect them from “documented risks”, only from “imagined risks”.  This new data on cigarettes should trigger precautionary responses that would say that all tobacco products should be banned until this bacterial risk can be assessed. I’m guessing that won’t happen.  

This is a followup post that will attempt to address some additional, wide-spread myths about the commercial sale of seed.  In this case the topic with be “GMO” seed improved through genetic engineering (an industry that is now 13 years old and which has been planted on well over 2 billion acres cumulatively, much of it in the developing world). As someone with substantial direct experience with this industry over the years, I’d like to try to speak to some distorted perspectives on this technology.

The First Biotech Crops

The four earliest commercial biotech crops commercialized in 1995/1996 were squash (virus resistant), corn (insect resistant), potatoes (insect resistant), and soybeans (herbicide tolerant). For the squash, corn and potatoes, commercialization was straight forward because it was already standard practice for farmers to buy new seed (tuber seed pieces in the case of potatoes) each year.

For soybeans there was a major commercialization challenge.  There was no question that the new technology was valuable — it would displace millions of pounds and hundreds of millions of dollars of herbicide sales.  It would also greatly increase the efficiency and convenience of producing soybeans. The challenge was that it was standard practice at the time for farmers to save-back some of their crop to use as seed the next year - more in some geographies than others.  If this practice were to continue with the new herbicide tolerant soybeans, it would have been very difficult for the company to recover its high risk investment in the new technology. Growers would simply buy seeds the first year, and then be set until they wanted to buy a new variety. This is not so different from the challenge that record labels with illegal file sharing via the internet.

The two standard solutions that most expected were either (a) charge enough upfront to make up for pervasive seed savings, or (b) raise the price of the herbicide to recover the genetic investment in that way. The first would have discouraged adoption; the second would have disrupted other crops and uses that also depended on the product. Instead, Monsanto tried something completely new (at least to the seed industry). They decided to charge a “technology fee” (”Tech Fee”) of a few $/bag and ask the farmers to sign a license agreement saying they would not save seed.  This was a pretty radical step at the time.  Monsanto also licensed the technology to many other seed companies and they too had to get growers to sign the licenses.

Bill Gates supports biotechnology. Is the “bug”-free Apple to blame?

[Sugar Beet Field. Creative Commons photo by Gilles San Martin]

A federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the USDA illegally approved Monsanto’s genetically modified, Roudup Ready beets.

I’ll come back to the Mycotoxin issue soon.  Instead, I’ll talk today about my serious worries about Climate Change.  

People involved in world agriculture have no patience with the supposed “debate” about climate change.  We are already seeing the effects, and the projections for the future are not encouraging.  The most troubling feature of this phenomenon (and one that occurs even if you don’t believe that it is human-driven) is that we are facing increasing variation in climatic events.  The yearly changes in average temperature or even annual rainfall may not be dramatic, but what we are anticipating is that there will be more extreme weather events.  Climate averages are not what matters for crop production - Variation is.  A few days of intense rain or heat at the wrong time can devastate a crop.  A few weeks of drought can do the same.  A single hail or frost event can make all the difference in what a farmer can harvest.  We have always had those risks for farming and only long term data will demonstrate whether there has been an increasing trend as is predicted.  For instance, It isn’t possible yet to say that the current, extended drought in Australia is caused by elevated greenhouse gasses, but some day we will know whether it was by looking back historically.  Of course that will be too late.  Our actions have to come now.  The other huge threat from climate change is that water supplies will be more limiting in many areas that are irrigated today.  Though that area is much smaller than rain-fed areas, it is very important to the food supply.

Some have predicted that “Global warming” and elevated CO2 will boost crop production in certain areas.  There might be some occasions where higher temperatures will enhance some yields in normally cold areas, but if the warmth comes with other extreme weather events, the benefits will be diminished.  It also turns out that plants can’t really take full advantage of high CO2 levels.  Basically,  there is no real “up-side” of climate change for farming.

This is a follow-up to a previous blog about a pesticide reduction commitment that McDonalds has made and why that will be challenging in terms of their potato supplies and quality.

Roundup Ready® soybeans were commercialized in 1996 and quickly came to dominate plantings in the US, Argentina and Brazil. NewLeaf® insect resistant potatoes were also introduced that year. These potatoes were genetically engineered to produce the same Bt protein insecticide that was used as a spray-on product on potatoes and which was also approved for Organic use. The second generation of GMO potatoes was on its way around 1999, which also protected against the key potato leaf roll virus, which required spraying to control the aphids that spread the virus.  Potato growers I interviewed at that time were excited about these technologies. Without having to spray for these two primary pests, biological control was largely taking care of the rest of their insect pest issues. They were also glad because they didn’t have to spend the money on most of their normal insecticide sprays.

This seemingly happy scenario came to an abrupt halt in 2000. Anti-GMO activism was starting to build and the leadership of McDonald’s got an arrogantly insufficient response from the leadership of Monsanto when they asked what was going to be done about the situation. McDonald’s defaulted to the “brand protection” mode and with three phone calls to the major frozen French fry suppliers, killed GMO potatoes in the US and Canada (Frito Lay and other brands joined in the defacto ban). That was only possible because increasing GMO potatoes was so much slower than increasing seeded crops and so only 5% of the crop was biotech. McDonald’s and all other fast food restaurants could never afford to ban the GMO ingredients that were in their frying oil or high fructose corn sweeteners because biotech adoption was so rapid for soy and corn. So McDonald’s still sells many products from GMO crops, just not potatoes because that would be much higher profile. There is absolutely no health risk issue here, but there is at least some irony.

I can’t believe what I read on Bloomberg.com, “International Paper’s ArborGen joint venture with MeadWestvaco Corp. and New Zealand’s Rubicon Ltd. is seeking permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell the first genetically engineered forest trees outside China.”  What?  International Paper?  It can’t be?  The world’s largest pulp and paper maker promotes itself as an environmentally responsible company, but now, it appears the company is following in the footsteps of Monsanto and genetically modified crops.

A polar bear is the perfect example of “Charismatic Megafauna” - the kind of animal whose image can easily be used to generate sympathy.  I care about polar bears as much as anyone, but I’m a little concerned about how images of animals like this are being used to promote Climate Change awareness and to fund-raise for environmental organizations. If we are going to make the personal life-style changes, the new business strategies, and the public policy decisions to counter this threat, we need to do it with a clear-eyed understanding of what is at stake.  The “faces” we should be thinking about are those of starving people in poor nations.

Cloned asian pears in New Zealand (photo Steve Savage)

OK, I’ll admit it.  That question and the picture caption are a little bit manipulative because few people know that all the major fruit crops are technically “cloned” because they have to be to get the varieties we want.  If you take the seed of a Fuji apple and plant it, the tree you will eventually grow will not make Fuji apples.

It will be something new because when the apple flower was pollinated there was a new combination of genes from the male and female flower.  Its the same reason our kids don’t come out exactly like either parent.  So, for millennia, people have been propagating the fruit varieties they liked by making cuttings or grafting or some other way to keep the identical genetics of the desirable fruit.

So, there really isn’t anything creepy about eating cloned fruit, but because I use the emotive term, “cloned,” I can usually get a negative response.  Why do I mess with farming-naive people this way?  I do it to make the point that if you want to understand controversial issues about food and the environment, you need to be vigilant about being manipulated by emotive terms.

I find this to be particularly true about the anti-GMO camp.  Its one thing to make an argument, but the reason that many people are afraid of these things is that they have been given a healthy dose of disinformation, often through the use of emotive terms that don’t really convey information as much as they do fear.