permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [SANET-MG] Biotech Snake Oil
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:11:18 -0400
From: jcummins <jcummins@UWO.CA>
Reply-To: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group              <SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU>, jcummins 
<jcummins@UWO.CA>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

From GM Watch
 Biotech Snake Oil: A Quack Cure for Hunger
by Bill Freese
Multinational Monitor Vol. 29 No. 2, Sep-Oct 2008
http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2008/092008/freese.html

Rising global food prices reached a flash point this spring, sparking
food riots in over a dozen countries. Mexican tortillas have
quadrupled in price; Haiti’s prime minister was ousted amid rice
riots; African countries were especially hard hit. According to the
World Bank, global food prices have risen a shocking 83 percent over
the past three years. And for the world's poor, high prices mean hunger.

The global food crisis has many causes, but according to the
biotechnology industry, there’s a simple solution - genetically
modified, or biotech, crops. Biotech multinationals have been in media
blitz mode ever since the food crisis first made headlines, touting
miracle crops that will purportedly increase yields, tolerate
droughts, grow in saline soils, and be chockfull of nutrients, to boot.

"If we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of cutting
hunger and poverty in half by 2015," says Clive James, founder of the
International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications
(ISAAA), an organization whose funders include all the major biotech
companies, "biotech crops must play an even bigger role in the next
decade."

Not everyone is convinced. In fact, the UN and World Bank recently
completed an unprecedentedly broad scientific assessment of world
agriculture, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge,
Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), which concluded that
biotech crops have very little potential to alleviate poverty and
hunger. This four-year effort, which engaged some 400 experts from
multiple disciplines, originally included industry representatives.
Just three months before the final report was released, however,
Monsanto, Syngenta and chemical giant BASF pulled out of the process,
miffed by the poor marks given their favorite technology. This
withdrawal upset even the industry-friendly journal Nature, which
chided the companies in an editorial entitled, “Deserting the Hungry?”

Serving The Wealthy

Genetic engineering involves the laboratory-based transfer of DNA
derived from bacteria, viruses or virtually any living organism into
plants to endow them with a desired trait. As implemented by
biotechnology firms, critics say genetic engineering has trod the
well-worn path of previous innovations of industrial agriculture —
serving wealthier farmers growing commodity crops in huge monocultures
by saving labor through the use of expensive inputs.

Biotech proponents insist genetically modified (GM) seeds are
delivering results for farmers. “Already in its first 12 years, this
technology has made a significant impact by lifting the incomes of
farmers,” says James.

But genetically modified crops are heavily concentrated in a handful
of countries with industrialized, export-oriented agricultural
sectors. Nearly 90 percent of biotech acres in 2007 were found in just
six countries of North and South America, with the United States,
Argentina and Brazil accounting for 80 percent. For most other
countries, including India and China, biotech crops account for 3
percent or less of total harvested crop area.

Commercialized GM crops are confined to soybeans, corn, cotton and
canola. Soybeans and corn predominate, and are used mainly to feed
animals or fuel cars in rich nations. For instance, Argentina and
Brazil export the great majority of their soybeans as livestock feed,
mainly to Europe and Japan, while more than three fourths of the U.S.
corn crop is either fed to animals or used to generate ethanol for
automobiles. Expanding soybean monocultures in South America are
displacing small farmers, who grow food crops for local consumption,
and thus contribute to food insecurity, especially in Argentina and
Paraguay. The only other commercial GM crops are papaya and squash,
both grown on miniscule acreage.

Most revealing, however, is what the biotech industry has engineered
these crops for. Hype and promises of future innovations
notwithstanding, there is not a single commercial GM crop with
increased yield, drought-tolerance, salt-tolerance, enhanced nutrition
or other attractive-sounding traits touted by the industry.
Disease-resistant GM crops are practically non-existent.

“We have yet to see genetically modified food that is cheaper, more
nutritious or tastes better,” says Hope Shand, research director for
the Ontario-based ETC Group. “Biotech seeds have not been shown to be
scientifically or socially useful.”

The industry’s own figures reveal that GM crops incorporate one or
both of just two “traits” — herbicide tolerance and insect resistance.
Insect-resistant cotton and corn produce their own “built-in”
insecticide to protect against certain, but far from all, insect
pests. Herbicide-tolerant crops are engineered to withstand direct
application of an herbicide to kill nearby weeds. These crops
predominate, with 82 percent of global biotech crop acreage.

Herbicide-tolerant crops (mainly soybeans) are popular with larger
farmers because they simplify and reduce labor needs for weed control.
They have thus helped facilitate the worldwide trend of consolidating
farmland into fewer, ever bigger farms, like Argentina’s huge soybean
plantations. According to a 2004 study by Charles Benbrook, former
executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy
of Sciences, herbicide-tolerant crops have also led to a substantial
increase in pesticide use. Benbrook’s study found that adoption of
herbicide-tolerant crops in the United States increased weed-killer
use by 138 million pounds from 1996 to 2004 (while insect-resistant
crops reduced insecticide use by just 16 million pounds over the same
period).

The vast majority of herbicide-tolerant crops are Monsanto’s “Roundup
Ready” varieties, tolerant to the herbicide glyphosate, which is sold
under the brand-name Roundup. The dramatic rise in glyphosate use
associated with Roundup Ready crops has spawned an epidemic of
glyphosate-resistant weeds, just as bacteria evolve resistance to an
overused antibiotic. Farmers respond to resistant weeds by upping the
dose of glyphosate and by using greater quantities of other
herbicides, such as the probable carcinogen 2,4-D (a component of
Agent Orange) and the endocrine-disrupting weed killer atrazine,
recently banned in the European Union. Glyphosate-resistant weeds and
rising herbicide use are becoming serious problems in the United
States, Argentina and Brazil.

“Roundup continues to be the cornerstone of weed management for farms
today and provides a lot of value to farmers,” responds Darren Wallis,
a Monsanto spokesperson. “We have some online tools to help farmers
manage any weed control issues that they might have. There have been
some documented cases of weed resistance, but Roundup continues to
control hundreds of weeds very effectively.”

Critics retort that resistant weeds are spreading despite Monsanto’s
efforts, and that a technology often promoted as moving agriculture
beyond the era of chemicals has in fact increased chemical dependency
and accelerated the pesticide treadmill of industrial agriculture.
And, of course, expensive inputs like herbicides (the price of
glyphosate has doubled over the past year) are beyond the means of
most poor farmers.

What about yield and profitability? The most widely cultivated biotech
crop, Roundup Ready soybeans, actually suffers from a 5-10 percent
lower yield versus conventional varieties, according to a University
of Nebraska study, due to both adverse effects of glyphosate on the
soybean’s nutrient uptakes, as well as unintended effects of the
genetic engineering process used to create the plant. Unintended,
yield-lowering effects are a serious though little-acknowledged
technical obstacle of genetic engineering, and are one of several
factors foiling efforts to develop viable GM crops with
drought-tolerance, disease-resistance and other traits.

Monsanto says yield problems occurred only in the first year Roundup
Ready soy was introduced, and that initial problems have been cured.
“The first year we came out with Roundup Ready soybeans, there was a
slight yield drag, but we improved the [seed] in subsequent years,”
says Brad Mitchell, Monsanto spokesperson.

Critics dispute this assertion, citing a 2007 study by Kansas State
University which found that Roundup Ready soybean yields continue to
lag behind those of conventional varieties.

Clive James of ISAAA points to the Asian experience with GM cotton,
where he says small farmers are benefiting from biotech. More than 7
million farmers - representing some of the poorest in China - are
seeing yields rise by 10 percent and pesticide use decline by half, he
says. Farmer income is rising by approximately $220 a year, according
to James.

But reviews of the Asian experience with GM cotton suggest that yield
benefits are due more to good weather and other factors, not the use
of biotech crops, and that GM cotton engineered for the shorter
growing season in the U.S. sometimes fails to ward off targeted pests
in India’s longer growing season. It is true that insect resistant
crops can reduce yield losses when infestation with targeted pests is
severe. However, because cotton is afflicted with so many pests not
killed by the built-in insecticide, biotech cotton farmers in India,
China and elsewhere often apply as much chemical insecticide as
growers of conventional cotton. But because they have paid up to four
times as much for the biotech seed as they would for conventional
seed, they often end up falling deeper into debt. Debt is an
overriding problem among small farmers in developing countries, and
any policies or technologies that deepen farmer debt have drastic
consequences. Each year, hundreds of cotton far!
 mers in
India alone commit suicide from despair over insurmountable debts.

Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has found no economic
benefit to farmers from growing GM crops in most situations.

Seed Servitude

The agricultural biotechnology industry represents an historic merger
of two distinct sectors - agrichemicals and seeds. In the 1990s, the
world's largest pesticide makers - companies like Monsanto, DuPont,
Bayer and Syngenta - began buying up the world’s seed firms. These
four biotech giants now control 41 percent of the world’s commercial
seed supply. Two factors drove this buying spree: the new technology
of genetic engineering and the issuance of the first patents on seeds
in the 1980s. Biotech firms saw that they could employ genetic
engineering to develop herbicide-tolerant crops to exploit "synergies"
between their seed and pesticide divisions. Seed patents enable owners
to exert monopoly control over seeds, in part by enabling biotech
firms to prevent farmers from saving seeds.

While patents on biotech seeds normally apply to inserted genes (or
methods for introducing the gene), courts have interpreted these "gene
patents" as granting biotech/seed firms comprehensive rights to the
seeds that contain them. One consequence is that a farmer can be held
liable for patent infringement even if the patented gene/plant appears
in his fields through no fault of his own (e.g. cross-pollination or
seed dispersal). Another consequence is that farmers can be sued for
patent infringement — as well as for infringing sales contracts — if
they save and replant seeds from their harvest, so-called
“second-generation” seeds.

In the United States, industry leader Monsanto has pursued thousands
of farmers for allegedly saving and replanting its patented Roundup
Ready soybean seeds. An analysis by the Center for Food Safety
documented court-imposed payments of more than $21 million from
farmers to Monsanto for alleged patent infringement. However, when one
includes the much greater number of pre-trial settlements, the total
jumps to more than $85 million, collected from several thousand farmers.

Spurred on by the biotech multinationals, the U.S. and European
governments are pressuring developing nations to adopt similar gene
and seed patenting laws. This effort is being pursued through the
World Trade Organization, which requires member nations to establish
patent-style regimes for plants, as well as through bilateral trade
agreements. Since an estimated 80 percent to 90 percent of seeds
planted in poorer nations are produced on-farm (that is, they are
saved from previous crops), the revenue to be gained from elimination
of seed-saving in connection with the introduction of GM crops is
considerable — conservatively estimated at tens of billions of
dollars. If biotech/seed firms have their way, what farmer advocates
call the "seed servitude" of U.S. farmers could soon become a global
condition.

Biotech firms also have so-called Terminator and Traitor technologies
waiting in the wings. Terminator is a genetic manipulation that
renders harvested seed sterile, and represents a biological means to
achieve the same end as patents: elimination of seed-saving. Traitor
technology is similar, except that the second-generation seed
sterility can be reversed upon application of a proprietary chemical.
In this scenario, farmers would be allowed to save seed, but would
have to purchase and apply a chemical to bring them back to life.
While international outrage has thus far blocked deployment of
Terminator, Monsanto recently purchased the seed company (Delta and
Pine Land) that holds several major patents on the technology
(together with the USDA). And while Monsanto has "pledged" not to
deploy Terminator, the pledge is revocable at any time.

As the biotech multinationals tighten their stranglehold on the
world's seed supply, farmers' choices are diminishing, and
high-quality conventional seeds are rapidly disappearing from the
marketplace. Biotech seeds presently cost two- to four-times as much
as conventional varieties, or more. The price ratchets up with each
new "trait" that is introduced. Seeds with one trait were once the
norm, but are rapidly being replaced with two- and three-trait
versions. As Monsanto put it in a presentation to investors, its
overriding goal is "trait penetration" and investment in "penetration
of higher-[profit-]margin traits." Monsanto and Dow recently announced
plans to introduce GM corn with eight different traits (six
insecticides and tolerance to two different herbicides). Farmers who
want more affordable conventional seed, or even biotech seed with just
one or two traits, may soon be out of luck. As University of Kentucky
agronomist Chad Lee puts it: "The cost of corn seed keeps!
  getting
higher and there doesn't appear to be a stopping point in sight."
While "trait penetration" is now chiefly a U.S. phenomenon, it is
likely to be pursued throughout the world wherever GM crops become
prevalent.

The Many Uses of Biotechnology

The tremendous hype surrounding biotech crops as a response to the
food crisis does serve at least two purposes: as a "carrot" to
persuade developing nations to adopt strict patent-style regimes for
plants; and to divert attention from the underlying causes of the food
crisis.

In 1991, the U.S. government and Monsanto funded development of a
genetically modified virus-resistant sweet potato in collaboration
with the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute. Thirteen years later,
the $6 million project was pronounced a dismal failure — the GM sweet
potato did not resist the targeted virus, and yields were poor.
However, it did help foster an atmosphere enabling introduction of
other GM crops, and likely helped persuade Kenyan legislators to pass
the Industrial Property Act in 2001, which according to patent expert
Robert Lettington “may actually place very little restriction on the
patenting of life forms at all.” While the Kenyan project failed, a
conventional breeding program in neighboring Uganda successfully bred
a high-yielding, virus-resistant sweet potato in just a few years at a
fraction of the cost. Many other biotech crop projects have also
failed, including GM potatoes and tomatoes in Egypt, and GM corn and
cotton in Indonesia.

Biotech mania has also diverted attention from the underlying social
causes of the food crisis, which include diversion of food crops to
make biofuels, and "trade liberalization" policies that have crippled
developing country agriculture and made these nations dependent on
subsidized surpluses from rich nations. "The structural causes" of the
food crisis, says Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland
Institute, "lie in policies of international financial institutions
over the last 20 to 30 years, which have made developing countries so
vulnerable in the first place." International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
World Bank policies, she says, "eroded state and international
investment in agriculture," as well as farmer support mechanisms such
as state grain marketing agencies and subsidized agricultural services.

The IMF and World Bank also "promoted cash crops instead of domestic
production of food for domestic consumption. All of those policies
have basically removed the principle of self-sufficiency. At the same
time, you have had the lowering of tariffs which has resulted in the
dumping of cheap, subsidized commodities from rich countries. With all
of those policies, you find an erosion of the agricultural base of
developing countries and their ability to feed themselves," says Mittal.

Eliminating agricultural self-sufficiency was an explicit objective of
rich-country policies. As Reagan's agriculture secretary John Block
expressed it with uncharacteristic candor in 1986: "The idea that
developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a
bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on
U.S. agricultural products, which are available in most cases at lower
cost."

The global food crisis underscores the bankruptcy of such policies.
The flood of subsidized U.S. corn into Mexico facilitated by NAFTA has
thrown at least 1.3 million Mexican farmers out of work. Haiti and the
Philippines, once nearly self-sufficient in rice production, are now
among the world’s largest rice importers. Africa, a net food exporter
in the 1960s, now imports 25 percent of its food. With the sharp rise
in international grain prices, the reduced ability of poor nations to
feed themselves presages increased hunger and poverty for many years
to come. In fact, the food crisis recently prompted University of
Minnesota food experts C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer to double
their projection of the number of the world’s hungry by the year 2025,
from 625 million to 1.2 billion. The UN-World Bank IAASTD report
advocates "food sovereignty," defined as "the right of peoples and
sovereign states to democratically determine their own agriculture and
food policies."

True Solutions

Another IAASTD recommendation is promotion of agroecological farming
techniques suited to small farmers. Ever since the Green Revolution,
the agricultural development establishment has focused primarily on
high-tech crop breeding and expensive inputs (e.g. fertilizers,
pesticides and “improved seeds”). These input-centered schemes offer
potential market opportunities to multinational agribusinesses, but
have generally favored wealthier growers over small farmers. In
contrast, agroecology minimizes inputs, and relies instead on
innovative cultivation and pest control practices to increase food
production. A 2001 review of 200 developing country agricultural
projects involving a switch to agroecological techniques, conducted by
University of Essex researchers, found an average yield gain of 93
percent.

Control of insect pests through the introduction of natural predators
has also achieved enormous success at low cost in Africa. One striking
example is the introduction of insect predators to control a
devastating cassava pest, which averted mass hunger in Africa in the
1980s and 1990s. A new dryland rice farming technique called the
System of Rice Intensification dramatically increases yield, and is
spreading rapidly in rice-growing nations, despite dismissal by the
agricultural development establishment. Besides being low cost,
agro-ecological techniques typically benefit smaller farmers.

GM Reality Check

The tremendous hype surrounding biotechnology has obscured some basic
facts. Most GM crops feed animals or fuel cars in rich nations; are
engineered for use with expensive weed killers to save labor; and are
grown by larger farmers in industrial monocultures for export.

"GM crops have nothing to do with feeding hungry people and nothing to
do with sustainability," says Shand. "With the consolidation of the
seed industry, seed companies’ primary objective is to increase
profits by restricting farmers' reliance on saved seeds."

Bill Freese is science policy analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based
Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group that supports sustainable
agriculture and opposes harmful food production technologies.