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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Round 2 for Biotech Beets
  • Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:43:11 -0700


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/business/27sugar.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&or
ef=slogin

__________
The New York Times
November 27, 2007

Round 2 for Biotech Beets
By ANDREW POLLACK

Each growing season, like many other sugar beet farmers bedeviled by
weeds,
Robert Green repeatedly and painstakingly applies herbicides in a process
he
compares to treating cancer with chemotherapy.

"You give small doses of products that might harm the crop, but it harms
the
weeds a little more," said Mr. Green, who plants about 900 acres in beets
in
St. Thomas, N.D.

But next spring, for the first time, Mr. Green intends to plant beets
genetically engineered to withstand Monsanto's powerful Roundup herbicide.
The Roundup will destroy the weeds but leave his crop unscathed,
potentially
saving him thousands of dollars in tractor fuel and labor.

For Mr. Green and many other beet farmers, it is technology too long
delayed. And the engineered beets could pave the way for the eventual
planting of other biotech crops like wheat, rice and potatoes, which were
also stalled on the launching pad.

Seven years ago, beet breeders were on the verge of introducing
Roundup-resistant seeds. But they had to pull back after sugar-using food
companies like Hershey and Mars, fearing consumer resistance, balked at
the
idea of biotech beets. Now, though, sensing that those concerns have
subsided, many processors have cleared their growers to plant the
Roundup-resistant beets next spring.

It would be the first new type of genetically engineered food crop widely
grown since the 1990s, when biotech soybeans, corn and a few other crops
entered the market.

"Basically, we have not run into resistance," said David Berg, president
of
American Crystal Sugar, the nation's largest sugar beet processor. "We
really think that consumer attitudes have come to accept food from
biotechnology."

A Kellogg spokeswoman, Kris Charles, said her company "would not have any
issues" buying such sugar for products sold in the United States, where
she
said "most consumers are not concerned about biotech."

If some other big food companies are now open to genetically modified
sugar,
though, they are not talking about it. Both Hershey and Mars declined to
comment. "There's just nothing we have to say on the topic," a Mars
spokeswoman said.

Many sugar refiners and seed developers also refused to comment, hewing to
an industrywide plan to coordinate the introduction of the genetically
engineered beets and carefully control what is said about them.

When it comes to genetically modified crops, there is a reason to keep
one's
corporate head low - to avoid protests. Some opponents of biotechnology
are
only now getting wind that the sugar beets have been resurrected.

"When I first saw this I said, 'No, it can't be,'" said Ronnie Cummins,
national director of the Organic Consumers Association. "I thought we had
already dealt with this."

His organization issued a call to arms and thousands of identical e-mail
messages were sent to Mr. Berg at American Crystal Sugar warning that
"profit margins of your company and its supporting farmers" would be hurt
by
consumer resistance.

Mr. Berg said he received 681 messages in a 24-hour period before having
the
e-mail blocked. He said he still believed that most consumers would accept
biotech crops. Mr. Cummins, however, said he would next try to persuade
consumers to pressure food companies to boycott the sugar. "I don't think
companies like Hershey are going to want any more hassles than they
already
have," he said, referring to recent earnings pressure and management
turmoil
at the chocolate company.

About 10,000 American farmers grow sugar beets on about 1.3 million acres,
mainly in Northern states from Oregon to Michigan. That makes the beets a
minor crop compared with corn, at about 90 million acres, and soybeans, at
almost 70 million.

And yet beets account for about half the nation's sugar supply, with the
rest coming from sugar cane. The sugar from beets and cane, generally
considered interchangeable, is used in candies, cereals, cakes and
numerous
other products, although some food manufacturers have switched to
high-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper.

When genetically engineered versions of soybeans and corn - as well as
cotton and canola - were introduced in the mid-1990s, farmers quickly
adopted them. But opposition to genetically engineered crops then took
hold,
particularly in Europe. Food companies, fearing protests or loss of
customers, pressured farmers not to grow the crops.

Sugar was not the only crop affected. Insect-resistant potatoes developed
by
Monsanto were withdrawn from the market in 2001 after fast-food companies
resisted them. Monsanto gave up on developing Roundup-resistant wheat in
2004, in part because American wheat farmers feared losing exports. The
rice
industry, also heavily dependent on exports, has never grown
herbicide-tolerant varieties.

Even if the situation has now changed for sugar, however, other crops
might
still meet resistance. For one thing, sugar is a refined product that
contains no DNA or proteins, just the chemical sucrose. "While the sugar
beet is genetically different, the sugar is the same," said Luther
Markwart,
executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association and
co-chairman of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

By contrast, the foreign DNA and proteins in genetically modified wheat,
rice or potatoes can be eaten by consumers, which at least theoretically
raises food safety questions.

Moreover, only about 3 percent of American sugar is exported, Mr. Markwart
said, compared with about half of wheat and rice.

The sugar industry's organizational structure also helps. Virtually all
sugar processors - the companies that buy the beets from farmers and then
extract the sugar and sell it - are owned by the farmers themselves. That
makes them more likely to accept the biotech crops than an independent
processor might be.

Among farmers, demand for the Roundup Ready beets, as they are known, is
expected to be strong. "The sugar beet growers are going to adopt this
technology immediately," said Alan G. Dexter, the extension sugar beet
specialist at North Dakota State University and the University of
Minnesota.
In a survey he conducted, 57 percent of beet growers cited weeds as their
biggest problem, with diseases the distant runner-up at 16 percent.

The seeds will be most attractive to those with the biggest weed problems.
With a technology fee of a little more than $100 per 100,000 seeds paid to
Monsanto, the genetically engineered seeds will cost at least twice as
much
as conventional seeds. That translates to about $50 to $65 in extra seed
costs per acre.

But Duane Grant, who grows about 5,000 acres of sugar beets in Rupert,
Idaho, said the extra seed outlays would be offset by other savings. He
said
his annual herbicide costs would drop to $35 an acre, from $70, and he
would
no longer have to hire migrant workers to pull weeds by hand, at a cost of
$35 to $150 an acre.

Mr. Grant, who was designated by the national beet growers' association as
its spokesman on this issue, also said Roundup would have to be sprayed
only
two or three times during the spring-to-fall growing season, while the
existing herbicides must be sprayed five times or more. The existing
herbicides are decades old and some weeds have developed resistance to
them,
Mr. Grant said.

Some weed experts say there are also some weeds resistant to Roundup and
its
generic equivalent, glyphosate, as a consequence of the heavy use of the
herbicide spurred by the proliferation of Roundup Ready crops. But such
weeds are not found in beet fields, Mr. Grant said.

He said that with conventional beets, Roundup can be used only before the
seedlings emerge from the ground, because after that the Roundup would
kill
them.

Bringing back the biotech beets took a long, coordinated effort involving
Monsanto, seed companies, growers, processors and trade groups under the
auspices of the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

Rival seed companies all agreed to use seeds descended from a single
genetic
transformation done by Monsanto and KWS, a German seed company. That meant
the industry had to win federal approval only once. The new genetically
engineered sugar beet was reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration in
2004 and approved for unrestricted growing by the Agriculture Department
in
early 2005.

And before planting the beets, farmers have waited for approvals in other
important markets. Just last month Europe approved the beets for food and
feed use, although not for planting.

Because such foods would have to be labeled in Europe as containing
genetically engineered ingredients, some American food companies might use
cane sugar, which is not genetically modified, for products they export to
Europe. But in the United States, foods containing sugar made from biotech
beets would not have to be labeled.

The sugar beet industry conducted field trials in Idaho last year and
Michigan this year. Mr. Grant, who was part of the Idaho test, said the
biotech seeds actually had slightly higher yields and sugar output than
very
similar conventional varieties.

Some environmentalists say the use of Roundup on sugar beets could
contribute to the growing problem of Roundup-resistant weeds. But the
Agriculture Department said it expected little, if any, environmental
effect
from growing the beets.

One factor that could help keep the trait from spreading is that beets
produce seeds only in their second year, after passing through a winter.
So
beets grown in most parts of the country never produce seeds, because
farmers harvest beets every fall and plant new seeds the next spring.

But in California, beets stay in the ground through the winter and there
are
weeds that can mate with sugar beets. So growers there may be more
cautious
about the Roundup revolution.

"We have to make sure we don't cause ourselves more problems than we're
curing," said Ben Goodwin, executive manager of the California Beet
Growers
Association.







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