Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Failure to Yield
Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failu
re-to-yield.html
Union of Concerned Scientists

For years the biotechnology industry has trumpeted that it will feed the
world, promising that its genetically engineered crops will produce higher
yields.

That promise has proven to be empty, according to Failure to Yield, a
report by UCS expert Doug Gurian-Sherman released in March 2009. Despite 20
years of research and 13 years of commercialization, genetic engineering
has failed to significantly increase U.S. crop yields.

CLICK HERE TO READ COMMON QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT FAILURE TO YIELD
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failu
re-to-yield-FAQs.html

Failure to Yield is the first report to closely evaluate the overall effect
genetic engineering has had on crop yields in relation to other
agricultural technologies. It reviewed two dozen academic studies of corn
and soybeans, the two primary genetically engineered food and feed crops
grown in the United States. Based on those studies, the UCS report
concluded that genetically engineering herbicide-tolerant soybeans and
herbicide-tolerant corn has not increased yields. Insect-resistant corn,
meanwhile, has improved yields only marginally. The increase in yields for
both crops over the last 13 years, the report found, was largely due to
traditional breeding or improvements in agricultural practices.

The UCS report comes at a time when food price spikes and localized
shortages worldwide have prompted calls to boost agricultural productivity,
or yield -- the amount of a crop produced per unit of land over a specified
amount of time. Biotechnology companies maintain that genetic engineering
is essential to meeting this goal. Monsanto, for example, is currently
running an advertising campaign warning of an exploding world population
and claiming that its “advanced seeds… significantly increase crop
yields…”
http://www.monsanto.com/responsibility/sustainable-ag/advertisements.asp

The UCS report debunks that claim, concluding that genetic engineering is
unlikely to play a significant role in increasing food production in the
foreseeable future.

The biotechnology industry has been promising better yields since the
mid-1990s, but Failure to Yield documents that the industry has been
carrying out gene field trials to increase yields for 20 years without
significant results.

Failure to Yield makes a critical distinction between potential—or
intrinsic—yield and operational yield, concepts that are often conflated
by the industry and misunderstood by others. Intrinsic yield refers to a
crop’s ultimate production potential under the best possible conditions.
Operational yield refers to production levels after losses due to pests,
drought and other environmental factors.

The study reviewed the intrinsic and operational yield achievements of the
three most common genetically altered food and feed crops in the United
States: herbicide-tolerant soybeans, herbicide-tolerant corn, and
insect-resistant corn (known as Bt corn, after the bacterium Bacillus
thuringiensis, whose genes enable the corn to resist several kinds of
insects).

Herbicide-tolerant soybeans, herbicide-tolerant corn, and Bt corn have
failed to increase intrinsic yields, the report found. Herbicide-tolerant
soybeans and herbicide-tolerant corn also have failed to increase
operational yields, compared with conventional methods.

Meanwhile, the report found that Bt corn likely provides a marginal
operational yield advantage of 3 to 4 percent over typical conventional
practices. Since Bt corn became commercially available in 1996, its yield
advantage averages out to a 0.2 to 0.3 percent yield increase per year. To
put that figure in context, overall U.S. corn yields over the last several
decades have annually averaged an increase of approximately one percent,
which is considerably more than what Bt traits have provided.

In addition to evaluating genetic engineering’s record, “Failure to
Yield” considers the technology’s potential role in increasing food
production over the next few decades. The report does not discount the
possibility of genetic engineering eventually contributing to increase crop
yields. It does, however, suggest that it makes little sense to support
genetic engineering at the expense of  technologies that have proven to
substantially increase yields, especially in many developing countries. In
addition, recent studies have shown that organic and similar farming
methods that minimize the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers can
more than double crop yields at little cost to poor farmers in such
developing regions as Sub-Saharan Africa.

The report recommends that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state
agricultural agencies, and universities increase research and development
for proven approaches to boost crop yields. Those approaches should include
modern conventional plant breeding methods, sustainable and organic
farming, and other sophisticated farming practices that do not require
farmers to pay significant upfront costs. The report also recommends that
U.S. food aid organizations make these more promising and affordable
alternatives available to farmers in developing countries.

“If we are going to make headway in combating hunger due to
overpopulation and climate change, we will need to increase crop yields,”
said Gurian-Sherman. “Traditional breeding outperforms genetic
engineering hands down.”
Last Revised: 04/14/09