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.

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Due to the great popularity of “Can Diet Coke Kill You?” combined with a lot of controversy over it, I have decided to write this follow-up post.

Most of the controversy over the last article was around the fact that the documentary I referenced cited data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) but that organization itself claims there is no proven link between aspartame and cancer.

What was presented previously was a short explanation of why aspartame is expected to cause cancer and other health problems and a summary of some information presented in Sweet Misery, including findings from analyzing NCI and other data. This article, however, cites other scientific findings and discusses the economic-political history of this topic a little bit as well.

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I’d like to speak directly to this as a long-time Ag industry insider whose experience does not support these suspicions. I know that some will dismiss this perspective assuming I am biased, but one has to balance potential for bias with actually having first-hand experience from which to speak.  Over the last 32 years I’ve work for or with most of the companies, large and small, that provide agricultural technologies.  Fourteen of those years have been as an independent consultant so I get to know what is going on inside of many companies in a given year.  I have still only had direct knowledge of a subset of what happens, but in all of that exposure I’ve never witnessed an unethical decision or action - not even the consideration of one.  I’ve seen certain decisions that were short-sighted.  I’ve sometimes seen decision-making processes that are more driven by fear than by opportunity.  I’ve seen missed opportunities because vision was lacking.  I’ve occasionally seen failures to take advantage of synergies that could have been realized between divisions of large organizations. I’ve seen problems, but I believe that some level of dysfunction is inevitable in any organization involving people.  Still, unethical behavior isn’t something I’ve seen so I disagree that it is automatically likely just because of the characteristics of the company.  

On balance I’ve also seen these organizations, large and small, frequently make important contributions to society in terms of the productivity and safety of our food supply.  I’ve seen these companies continue to do that in an environment of constant activist attack and very limited public understanding because so few people farm.

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I think Bill may be a bit confused about Apple’s success…

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

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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.

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So why did the President’s scientific advisory team for last fall’s election include Sharon Long, a former member of Monsanto’s board of directors?

And why did Obama recently appoint Barbara Schaal, a plant geneticist with connections to Monsanto, to his Science and Technology Advisory Council?

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Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.

Physicians to consider the possible role of GM foods in the disease processes of the patients they treat and to document any changes in patient health when changing from GM food to non-GM food.

Our members, the medical community, and the independent scientific community to gather case studies potentially related to GM food consumption and health effects, begin epidemiological research to investigate the role of GM foods on human health, and conduct safe methods of determining the effect of GM foods on human health.

For a moratorium on GM food, implementation of immediate long term independent safety testing, and labeling of GM foods, which is necessary for the health and safety of consumers.

But why should GM producers like Monsanto be concerned with this? One Monsanto official told the New York Times that the corporation should not have to take responsibility for the safety of its food products.

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With Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser a co-producers and Omnivore’s Dilemma writer Michael Pollen one of the consultants (in addition to being on-screen participants) the film offers a solid, well presented structure that offers not only scary, gut wrenching even stomach turning scenes in meatpacking plants, chicken coops and but offers a silver lining into the future of food.

Producer/Director Robert Kenner weaves the film through the various food landscapes from the cramped chicken coops of Maryland to the aerial CAFO vistas to the open grasslands of Polyface Farms. Inside one of the chicken coops live chickens that wallow in their own filth and barely have room to move. Factory farm shots show downer cows being uplifted by forklifts to be transported to the slaughterhouse. The film makes a point of showing people how dangerous and unregulated our food system remains.

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Last month, Canada, the United States, and Australia announced unprecedented plans to join forces and commercialize genetically-engineered wheat, saying that biotechnology was crucial to the future of the wheat industry. The National Farmers Union of Canada, however, immediately refuted the tri-country claim, pointing out “the overwhelming majority of farmers in Canada are still opposed to the introduction of genetically-modified wheat.”

On June 1, fifteen organizations across Canada, the United States and Australia publicly confirmed that opposition with the release of “A Definitive Global Rejection of Genetically Engineered Wheat“, a powerful document speaking out against biotech wheat.

But the battle against GM wheat is not a simple one, nor is it restrained to select countries.

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Two conferences reveal the nature of the problem

Between 15—19 May, a Vatican organised ‘study week’ looked at ‘Transgenic Plants for Food Security in the Context of Development’ – a title that gives some idea of the expected outcome of a more pro-GMO stance, however there won’t be an official position statement on GMOs and both sides of the argument claim to have a degree of Papal support. In the no-to-GMO camp are quite a number of social justice activists who fear that native crops and native peoples could be dislodged by the cash-crop power of GMOs and they share an uneasy alliance with some bishops and theologians, whose view is that GMOs are both a threat to the environment and human health and a possible step on the path to usurping the role of God as Creator. On the opposite side are many agribusinesses, some other development campaigners and some other theologians, who see GMOs as the logical tool to destroy poverty, feed the hungry, and maintain stewardship of the environment.

Some watchers have said that several of the speakers at the conference have financial links to Monsanto, one of the world’s largest GMO producers. The counter-argument is that with GMOs being big agribusiness, it’s inevitable that most people working the field will have had funding or sponsorship from one of the very few companies at the top of the GMO tree.

Uganda seeks to change policy, and minds

And in Uganda, another conference is currently exploring  the production of GMO crops in Africa. The participants are looking at the gap between policy and research, and giving evidence on how investment in GM technology could benefit the continent. One claim being made at this event is that the widespread adoption of GMO agriculture could ‘significantly reduce’ the cost of food in developing countries by 2050. However, this could only be achieved if consumer preferences were changed, a transformation that has happened without protest in the USA and patchily and with massive protest, in much of Europe.

Vatican courtesy of David Paul Ohmer at Flickr under a creative commons licence

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Before we get to said blogger I’d like to link this passage from Wikipedia, offering a very small taste of Monsanto’s activity in the US (I have linked to much more information after the cartoon).

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Just a few days after Michelle Obama invited local fifth graders to help plant the White House Kitchen Garden, the MACA, a group which represents and is comprised of former executives from Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto and DuPont Crop Protection, sent the White House a letter (which can be viewed in its entirety here) expressing their disappointment that she had not “recognize[d] the role conventional agriculture plays in the US.”

But that’s not all. The group went on to provide a dose of propaganda educational information, including little known fact that “technology allows for farmers to meet the increasing demand for food and fiber in a sustainable manner.” Drawing a clear line between technology, undefined, and sustainability does not, in the strictest terms, suggest the group’s total disapproval of organic farming methods.

That outright statement came in an email MACA sent their members shortly after sending the first lady aforementioned letter, in which they said that the idea of an organic garden “made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder.” [italics mine].

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If that isn’t enough to make you cringe, consider the following: most of those engineered beets were Roundup-resistant, courtesy of agri-tech giant Monsanto.  Last autumn under the Bush administration, the USDA approved the Monsanto seed without preparing a standard Environmental Impact Statement.   But certainly President Obama, with an organic garden on the White House Lawn, would have done things differently.

Wouldn’t he?

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That’s right: Monsanto, the company many of us in the sustainability sphere love to hate, has entered the conversation.

That, on the surface, is a good thing.

Of course, the devil’s in the details.  As occasional contributor Max Gladwell pointed out in “10 Ways that Social Media and Sustainability Line Up,” social media can provide a high return on investment for a business… provided its efforts are grounded in transparency. I’d add that such efforts must also be based in a genuine desire to interact: social media is conversation, and all parties have to both talk and listen. Without these elements, a corporate blog will strike its intended audience as just another effort at message control.

Monsanto’s blog also seems to validate another of Max’s points: much of the content so far has consisted of responses to grassroots criticisms of the company ventures into biotechnology, particularly genetic engineering of crop seeds. As blogger and public affairs manager John Combest told the P-D, “”There was this big conversation going on (on the Internet), and we weren’t a part of it.”

So, how’s the company doing in its initial forray into the blogosphere?

At this point, I’d argue they still have a lot to learn.

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In a huge break for the United States’ anti-GMO movement, a federal judge ruled that the US Fish & Wildlife Service should not have allowed genetically modified crops to be planted within a Prime Hook, a national wildlife refuge in Delaware.

The suit, filed by the Center for Food Safety, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and the Audubon Society in Delaware, challenged that the US Fish & Wildlife Service knowingly put habitat at risk when it allowed farmers to plant GMO’s inside the 10,000-acre wildlife refuge. The results were better than anyone expected.

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As spring is in the air (when the north wind does not blow), I have begun longing for the good times my children and I have at the local farmers’ market and contemplating our participation as vendors this year.  I can’t tell you how much we look forward to our weekly adventures at the farmers’ market, and how excited we are if we happen to visit a neighboring town on the day of their market; however, that could all change.

H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 could end farmers’ markets as we know it by requiring growers to register, be subject to inspections of their gardens by federal agents, and maintain safety records related to food production or face large fines.

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We spoke about some exciting new developments in the fight against genetically modified beet sugar.

On February 12, 2009 several food safety, environmental, and corporate watchdog groups launched the Non-Genetically Modified (GM) Beet Sugar Registry.

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Dairy products are part of most American diets on a daily basis, but what is the health and environmental impact of this high demand for milk?

The production of much of the milk in this country is done in large scale-operations, some having thousands of cows.

That’s a lot of manure to be dealt with, this reduces the air quality (especially for people living near the dairy operation), and consistently finds its way into our rivers, streams, and groundwater.

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