Oddly, in trying to rebut the established scientific consensus with regard to the safety of biotech crops, the Center for Food Safety analyst Gurian-Sherman linked to a “statement” issued in October 2013 by the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility asserting that no such consensus exists. Who is ENSSER? A collection of longtime foes of agricultural biotechnology. The disingenuous statement has so far been signed by fewer than three hundred scientists, including such anti-biotech luminaries as Charles Benbrook, Vandana Shiva, Gilles-Éric Séralini, and Gurian-Sherman himself. Referring to this declaration as evidence against biotech crop safety is akin to citing a statement from tobacco company scientists asserting that cigarette smoking isn’t a risk factor for lung cancer.
Environmental activists regularly accuse those who question the climate change consensus of bad faith and worse. But aren’t they exhibiting a similar bad faith when they reject the broad scientific consensus on genetically modified crops? It is just pathetic that major environmentalist organizations reject mainstream science with regard to biotech crop safety, and further, it is a colossal betrayal of the trust of their members.
Biotech Crops and Pesticide Use
Another oft-heard claim by activists is that GMOs increase herbicide use. First, so what? This claim is simply an attempt to mislead people into thinking that more herbicide use must somehow be more dangerous. As a US Department of Agriculture report has noted, planting herbicide-resistant biotech crops enables farmers to substitute the more environmentally benign herbicide glyphosate (commercially sold as Roundup) for “other synthetic herbicides that are at least 3 times as toxic and that persist in the environment nearly twice as long as glyphosate.” Glyphosate has very low toxicity, breaks down quickly in the environment, and enables farmers to practice conservation tillage, which reduces topsoil erosion by up to 90 percent. So the net environmental effect is quite positive.
However, it must be admitted that there are few honest brokers when it comes to this issue. Most of the research on biotech crops and herbicides is underwritten by either activist groups or industry. I have drawn my own conclusions, but I provide a fairly comprehensive review of the various studies on this question below.
When it comes to biotech crops and pesticide use data, the go-to guy for anti-biotech activists is Charles Benbrook. After a long career with various anti-biotech groups, Benbrook now serves as a research professor in the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University. He has an extensive history of publishing studies allegedly showing that the adoption of biotech crops boosts the use of pesticides. Four years after commercial biotech crops were first planted in the United States, for example, he concluded in 2001 that herbicide use had “modestly increased.” Benbrook’s article contradicted research published the year before by scientists with the US Department of Agriculture, who had found that biotech crops had reduced pesticide applications.
In a 2004 report funded by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Benbrook asserted that “GE [genetically engineered] corn, soybeans, and cotton have led to a 122 million pound increase in pesticide use since 1996.” In contrast, a 2005 study in Pest Management Science, by a researcher associated with the pesticide lobby group CropLife, reported that planting biotech crops had “reduced herbicide use by 37.5 million lbs.” A 2006 study done for the self-described nonadvocacy think tank National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, founded in 1984 with a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, reported that planting biotech crops in the United States had in 2005 reduced herbicide use by 64 million pounds and insecticide applications by about 4 million pounds. Another 2007 study, by a team of international academic researchers led by Gijs Kleter from the Institute of Food Safety at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, concluded that in the United States, crops genetically improved to resist herbicides used 25 to 30 percent less herbicide per hectare than conventional crops did. In 2009, Benbrook issued a report for the anti-GMO Organic Center claiming that “GE crops have been responsible for an increase of 383 million pounds of herbicide use in the U.S. over the first 13 years of commercial use of GE crops.”
Benbrook’s latest study, issued in 2012, found that the adoption of pest-resistant crops had reduced the application of insecticides by 123 million pounds since 1996 but increased the application of herbicides by 527 million pounds, an overall increase of about 404 million pounds of pesticides. The media—including Mother Jones’s ever-credulous anti-biotech advocate Tom Philpott—reported these results unskeptically.
Benbrook largely got his 2012 results by making some strategic extrapolations of herbicide use trends to make up for missing data from the US Department of Agriculture.
Meanwhile, a 2012 study by Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot at the PG Economics consultancy found planting modern biotech crop varieties had globally cut pesticide spraying by 997 million pounds from 1996 to 2010, an overall reduction of 9.1 percent. Brookes and Barfoot calculated the amount of pesticide used by multiplying the acreage planted for each variety by the average amounts applied per acre.
In May 2014 the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service issued its comprehensive Pesticide Use in U.S. Agriculture: 21 Selected Crops, 1960–2008 report updating national herbicide and insecticide usage trends. The USDA finds that herbicide usage peaked at 478 million pounds in 1981—a decade and half prior to the introduction of the first biotech crop varieties—and fell to 394 million pounds in 2008. By the way, farmers applied 409 million pounds of herbicides to their crops in 1996. So instead of a massive increase in herbicide spraying, as claimed by Benbrook, the USDA actually reports a modest decline. Insecticide applications peaked in 1972 at 158 million pounds, dropping to 29 million pounds in 2008. It’s worth noting that the insecticide DDT accounted for 11 percent of all agricultural pesticides used in 1972. Since biotech crops can protect themselves against insect pests, there is far less need for farmers to spray their crops.
This conclusion was further bolstered in a November 2014 study by German university researchers that reviewed 147 agronomic studies of pesticide use trends in biotech crops. They reported that genetic modification (GM) technology has increased crop yields by 21 percent, largely by lowering crop damage from pests. In addition, biotech crops “have reduced pesticide quantity by 37 percent and pesticide cost by 39 percent.” While noting that biotech seeds are more expensive than those of conventional varieties, those costs are more than compensated for through savings in chemical and mechanical pest control. Consequently, they found that “average profit gains for GM-adopting farmers are 69 percent.” More yield and lower pesticide applications means less potential damage to the natural environment. And more profits for farmers too! What’s not to like?
Biotech Crop “Side Effects”
The anti-biotech Institute for Responsible Technology claims, “By mixing genes from totally unrelated species, genetic engineering unleashes a host of unpredictable side effects.” Not really.
All types of plant breeding—conventional, mutagenic, and biotech—can, on rare occasions, produce crops with unintended consequences. The 2004 NAS report cited earlier includes a section comparing the unintended consequences of each approach; it concludes that biotech is “not inherently hazardous.” Conventional breeding transfers thousands of unknown genes with unknown functions along with desired genes, and mutation breeding induces thousands of random mutations via chemicals or radiation. In contrast, the NAS report notes that biotech is arguably “more precise than conventional breeding methods because only known and precisely characterized genes are transferred.”
The case of mutation breeding is particularly interesting. In that method, researchers basically blast crop seeds with gamma radiation or bathe them in harsh chemicals to produce thousands of uncharacterized mutations, then plant them to see what comes up. The most interesting new mutants are then crossed with commercial varieties, which are then released to farmers. The Food and Agricul
ture Organization’s Mutant Varieties Database offers more 3,000 different mutated crop varieties to farmers. Many of these mutated varieties are planted as organic crops. Among the more recent new mutant offerings are two corn varieties, Kneja 546 and Kneja 627. Whatever genetic changes have been wrought in these corn varieties by induced mutagenesis, they must be far less known to researchers than any changes made to standard-issue biotech crops, yet these mutants get practically no regulatory scrutiny or activist censure.
The contention here is not that mutation breeding is inherently dangerous. Given its solid record of eighty years of safety, it’s not. The point is that the more precise methods of modern gene splicing are even safer than that.
The Institute for Responsible Technology warns that producing biotech crops can produce “new toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and nutritional deficiencies.” There is no evidence for any of this. Consider the panic back in 2000 over StarLink corn, in which a biotech variety approved by the EPA as feed corn got into two brands of taco shells. Some twenty-eight people claimed that they had experienced allergic reactions to eating “contaminated” tacos. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested their blood and found that none reacted in a way that suggested an allergic response to StarLink.
The Union of Concerned Scientists cites a 1996 experiment in which researchers added a Brazil nut protein to a soybean variety that did produce allergic reactions. The company naturally did not proceed and that variety never made it out of the laboratory. One would think that that would actually be an example of the care with which biotech crop researchers test their products to make sure that they are safe before they are commercialized.
As far as cancer goes, it is worth noting that even as Americans have chowed down on billions of biotech meals, the age-adjusted cancer incidence rate has been going down (see Chapter 4). In fact, research shows that biotech corn engineered to resist insects is much lower in potent cancer-causing mycotoxins.
Biotech Crops and the Environment
The Institute for Responsible Technology recycles the fable that biotech crops harm monarch butterflies. This particular meme had its origins in 1999 when a researcher at Cornell University poisoned monarch butterfly caterpillars in his laboratory by forcing them to eat milkweed leaves coated with pollen from an insect-resistant corn variety. Of course the larvae died, since the Bacillus thuringiensis gene inserted into the corn specifically targets caterpillar pests like rootworms.
Countering misinformation takes a lot of work, but eventually the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a series of articles evaluating the effects of biotech corn on monarch butterflies in the wild. The researchers described the product’s impact on monarch butterfly populations as “negligible.” A 2011 review of more than 150 scientific articles found that “commercialized GM crops have reduced the impacts of agriculture on biodiversity, through enhanced adoption of conservation tillage practices, reduction of insecticide use and use of more environmentally benign herbicides, and increasing yields to alleviate pressure to convert additional land into agricultural use.”
Consider also the comprehensive 2010 report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences that analyzed the effects of biotech crops on farmers and the environment. “Many U.S. farmers who grow genetically engineered (GE) crops are realizing substantial economic and environmental benefits—such as lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields—compared with conventional crops,” notes the study. Although the report does discuss the problem of increasing pest resistance to biotech crops, the development of weeds resistant to herbicides is not a problem peculiar to biotech crops, but is likely exacerbated by the fact that so many biotech varieties incorporate resistance to a single herbicide, glyphosate. The good news is that new varieties are including tolerance to other herbicides. Mixing and matching these crops will better control the development of herbicide-resistant weeds.
Some environmentalist critics claim that genes from genetically modified crops will “contaminate” the natural environment and conventional crops. A 2003 report by the International Council for Science (ICSU) found that “there is no evidence of any deleterious environmental effects having occurred from the trait/species combinations currently available.”
Meanwhile, no matter what effects either conventional or GM crops have on biodiversity in crop fields, they pale in comparison to the impact that the introduction of modern herbicides and pesticides sixty years ago had on farmland biology. Thanks to GMOs, farmers’ fields became dramatically more productive and comparatively weed- and pest-free.
Biotech Crops and Feeding a Hungry World
In 2009, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report, Failure to Yield, by chief scientist Doug Gurian-Sherman claiming that modern biotechnology had not increased “intrinsic” crop yields—that is, the highest yield possible under ideal conditions. This assertion is a red herring. Current varieties of biotech crops boost yields chiefly by preventing weeds from using up sunlight and nutrients and insects from destroying them. In other words, biotech crops increase operational yields, the yields actually obtainable in the field taking into account factors such as pests and environmental stresses.
Keep in mind that farmers are not stupid, especially not poor farmers in developing countries. The UCS report acknowledged that American farmers had widely adopted biotech crops in the previous thirteen years. Why? “The fact that the herbicide-tolerant soybeans have been so widely adopted suggests that factors such as lower energy costs and convenience of GE (genetically engineered) soybeans also influence farmer choices,” noted the report. Indeed. Surely a UCS advocacy scientist should view saving fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases as an environmental good. And what does Gurian-Sherman mean by “convenience”? Later, he admits that biotech herbicide-resistant crops save costs and time for farmers. Herbicide resistance is also a key technology for expanding soil-saving no-till agriculture, which, according to a report in 2003, saves 1 billion tons of topsoil from eroding annually. In addition, no-till farming significantly reduces the runoff of fertilizers into streams and rivers.
The UCS report correctly observed, “It is also important to keep in mind where increased food production is most needed—in developing countries, especially in Africa, rather than in the developed world.” Which is exactly what is happening with biotech crops in poor countries. Currently, 18 million farmers around the world are planting biotech crops. Notably 90 percent of the world’s biotech farmers—that is, 16.5 million—are small and resource-poor farmers in developing countries such as China, India, and South Africa. Gurian-Sherman is right that biotech contributions to yields in developed countries are comparatively modest.
Farmers in the United States and Canada already have access to and can afford to deploy the full armamentarium of modern agricultural technologies, so improvements are going to be at the margins. Nevertheless, it is instructive to compare the rate of increase in corn yields between the biotech-friendly United States and biotech-hostile France and Italy over the past ten years. University of Georgia crop scientist Wayne Parrott notes, “In marked contrast to yield increases in the U.S., yields in France and Italy have leveled off.”
Biotech Crops Are Pro-Poor
Yield increases are much greater in poor countries. In 2004, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization declared that crop biotechnology can be a “pro-poor agricultural technology.” The FAO pointed out that crop biotechnology “can be used by small farmers as well as larger ones; it does not require large capital investments or costly external inputs and it is relatively simple to use. Biotechnologies that are embodied in a seed, such as transgenic insect resistance, are scale neutral and may be more affordable and easier to use than other crop technologies.”
A 2006 study found that biotech insect-resistant cotton varieties boosted the yields for India’s cotton farmers by 44 to 63 percent. Exasperatingly, some anti-biotech activists
counter that these are not really yield increases, merely the prevention of crop losses. Of course, another way to look at it is that these are increases in operational yields. Yield increase or crop loss prevention, this success led in 2013 to nearly 90 percent of India’s cotton fields being planted with biotech varieties. Similarly, biotech insect-resistant corn varieties increased yields (or prevented losses) by 24 percent in the Philippines.
More recently, a 2010 review article in Nature Biotechnology found that “of 168 results comparing yields of GM and conventional crops, 124 show positive results for adopters compared to non-adopters, 32 indicate no difference and 13 are negative.” With regard to feeding the world, yield increases are greater for poor farmers in developing countries than for farmers in rich countries. “The average yield increases for developing countries range from 16 percent for insect-resistant corn to 30 percent for insect-resistant cotton,” the Nature Biotechnology article notes, “with an 85 percent yield increase observed in a single study on herbicide-tolerant corn.”
In 2013 the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey published a working paper that looked at the agronomic, environmental, and socioeconomic impacts of biotech crops since they were commercialized in 1996. The researchers found, “Overall, the impact of GM crops has been positive in both the developed and developing worlds.” The adoption of biotech crops increased yields and used less energy. “Ecologically, non-target and beneficial organisms have benefitted from reduced pesticide use, surface and ground water contamination is less significant and fewer accidents occur to cause health issues in farm workers,” they noted.
The Centre for Environmental Strategy basically confirmed the earlier findings of a 2011 study by four agronomists at the University of Reading. Those researchers reported, “A considerable body of evidence has accrued since the first commercial growing of transgenic crops which suggests that they can contribute in all three traditional pillars of sustainability, i.e. economically, environmentally and socially.” With respect to social and economic aspects of sustainable agriculture, the researchers found that the adoption of biotech crops can increase farmers’ incomes. “The increase in income to small-scale farmers in developing countries can have a direct impact on poverty alleviation and quality of life, a key component of sustainable development,” they noted.
The End of Doom Page 17