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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Genetic Engineering Fails to Significantly Boost Crop Yields
  • Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:44:07 -0600


Genetic Engineering Fails to Significantly Boost Crop Yields
April 14, 2009
>From the Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Genetically-Modified-Crop
-Yields.aspx

The biotech industry claims genetic engineering was responsible for
increased crop yields in the United States over the past decade, but a new
report says traditional breeding and conventional agricultural improvements
were the true causes of the increase.

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 a new report by the Union
of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Despite 20 years of research and 13 years of
commercialization, genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase
U.S. crop yields.

“The biotech industry has spent billions on research and public relations
hype, but genetically engineered food and feed crops haven’t enabled
American farmers to grow significantly more crops per acre of land,” says
Doug Gurian-Sherman, a biologist in the UCS Food and Environment Program
and author of the report. “In comparison, traditional breeding continues
to deliver better results.”

The report, Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically
Engineered Crops, is the first 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.”

The UCS report debunks this 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.

“After more than 3,000 field trials, only two types of engineered genes
are in widespread use, and they haven’t helped raise the ceiling on
potential yields,” says Margaret Mellon, a microbiologist and director of
UCS’s Food and Environment Program. “This record does not inspire
confidence in the future of the technology.”

“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 1 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 increased
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,”
Gurian-Sherman says. “Traditional breeding outperforms genetic
engineering hands down.”





  • [Livingontheland] Genetic Engineering Fails to Significantly Boost Crop Yields, Tradingpost, 04/29/2009

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