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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Exposed: the great GM crops myth
  • Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:47:15 -0600


Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted – the International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – concluded
that GM was not the answer to world hunger.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html

Exposed: the great GM crops myth

Major new study shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than
its conventional equivalent

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 20 April 2008

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an
authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to
the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas
in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less
food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates
of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he
started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many
farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not
as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were
asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'"

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in
the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre,
compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup –
recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the
modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the
soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya's yield to equal that of
the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which
found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest
conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya
available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes
time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional
ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM
US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead
to a "decrease" in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM
counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very
process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both
confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where
the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over. (See graphic
above.)

Monsanto said yesterday that it was surprised by the extent of the decline
found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped.
It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it
was now developing one that would.

Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires
more complex modification. And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy
Institute in Washington – and who was one of the first to predict the current
food crisis – said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits
of the productivity that could be achieved.

A former champion crop grower himself, he drew the comparison with human
runners. Since Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile more than 50
years ago, the best time has improved only modestly . "Despite all the
advances in training, no one contemplates a three-minute mile."

Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted – the International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – concluded
that GM was not the answer to world hunger.

Professor Bob Watson, the director of the study and chief scientist at the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked if GM could
solve world hunger, said: "The simple answer is no."




  • [Livingontheland] Exposed: the great GM crops myth, Tradingpost, 04/21/2008

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