GMOs and organics can alleviate food crises
Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei, a prolific blogger who I adore for her articulation of science issues, has posted an article about a new book on how crop genetic engineering - combined with organic farming - can enhance global food sustainability.
The book titled, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetic, and the Future, is written by two renowned experts in agriculture: Pamela Ronald of University of California - Davis and R. A. Adamchak. (By the way, Pamela Donald has a new blog called Tomorrow’s Table which I wrote about two weeks ago.)
Their book argues that the world stands to gain a lot from judicious incorporation of crop genetic engineering and organic farming. I’m very excited by this statement and I totally agree with them.
“We are not suggesting that organic farming and genetic engineering alone will provide all the changes needed in agriculture,” the two researchers say in the book.
What a powerful statement! Since I started authoring this blog three years ago, I’ve been arguing that every option must be explored to ensure each one of us has enough food to eat.
I underscored this point three weeks ago when I participated in a BBC World Have Your Say program on how to handle the current food crisis. In the program, I said there’s no silver bullet to solving the current food crisis. I criticized people who want to demonize agricultural biotechnology and corporations that make genetically modified organisms (GMOs) such as Monsanto and DuPont. I said their argument miss the point because it negates the need for industrializing our agriculture. Additionally, they don’t usually base their such argument on any provable science.
On the same breath I stated that if organic agriculture will prevent a family in Africa from going to bed hungry, let it be it. It’d would be wrong, I said, to ridicule people who feel organic farming will solve their problems. Entitled they’re to their views: their freedom to choose what to eat ought to be respected.
The trouble is, the very same people I defended want those of us who don’t agree with them to throw crop genetic engineering under the bus and embrace, enmasse, organic food. This can’t and won’t happen. It’s pure fantasy. We need both approaches to deal with food shortages.
Genetically modified crops have their supporters. If you look at statistics, there is quite a good number of people – and the number is increasing – cultivating genetically modified crops (Read my earlier post on this issue.)
There are, I am sure, farmers who are gravitating towards organic farming. They should be allowed to do so. Unfortunately, proponents of organic farming want the world to believe that there is nothing good that can come out of crop genetic engineering. That’s why they’ve been waging a relentless campaign to make food from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) look bad. Isn’t it the time for these folks to tone down their rhetoric and allow people choose what they want to eat and plant?
Organic foods have their own flip sides. A recent article in the New York Times, for instance, detailed how these foods have become out of reach for ordinary people because of their high prices. We need to be open-minded when debating the future of food. Let’s not engage in indoctrination where we tell the public this or that agricultural technology will be the only solution to today’s food crisis. To ensure future food sustainability, every option must be put on the table.
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May 3rd, 2008
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1. GMO Africa » GMOs and or&hellip | May 4th, 2008 at 2:50 am
[…] GMOs and organics can alleviate food crises […]
2. M | May 7th, 2008 at 5:41 am
Yes then the corporate industries will make them pay for their beans. The problem is not the absence of food, but rather the unequal distribution of wealth. GM foods will ruin the environment. They’ll ‘bite back’ in the future.
The vast majority of genetically engineered crops currently on the market have been modified to either withstand herbicide (so that more can be sprayed) or produce their own insecticide.
Nice, yeah?
3. Robert Shepherd | May 7th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
M, you’re throwing the baby out with the bath water.
GM foods are less likely to “ruin” the environment (what does that really mean in the current situation of accelerating global climate change?) than the rampant denial of a portion of the food and agricultural technologies currently available. Are you aware of how many far more immediate threats to the biodiversity and sustainability of farming practice are already being practised out of necessity? For every plant that is able to be farmed at a higher density without the application of herbicide, there is a decrease in energy consumption making, shipping and administering the far more toxic and bioaccumlatory herbicides currently in use. For every plant that is able to inherently defend itself by producing a compound toxic only to insects (of which plants have evolved many, many other mechanisms that have been bred out of our commercial crops since the start of agriculture), there is increased yield and decreased reliance of fossil fuel intensive insecticides currently in use.
Organic food production is fantastic as it generally ties in great farming practice with people that are passionate about food and its place in society. However, the ability of foods produced in the manner to scale to the larger production volumes required to meet global needs has not yet been shown. You are absolutely correct that we don’t have so much as a global production shortage as we do a distribution shortage, yet for every 50% increase in yield from a crop field, there is 50% of additional wild land that is not required to be turned over into farmland. GM (or better put in this argument, ‘transgenic’) technologies are not the panacea of the worlds food problems, but they are a far better approach that sticking our heads in the sand and waiting for our problems to solves themselves.
4. Mahdi Ebrahimi | May 7th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
until now the use of GMO seed in organic agriculture is forbidden .
5. Dr. Shanthu Shantharam | May 15th, 2008 at 3:36 am
There was a news report in Times of India datelined May 3, 2008 under the title “GM food silently taking over the menu?” It seems Greenpeace, a global, die-hard anti-GM activist group sampled some corn chips from some shop in Delhi and got them tested in a German laboratory, and found to contain GM corn ingredient. According to the claim, these sampled chips contained GM corn MON863 and NK 603, which according to Greenpeace is considered unsafe. Greenpeace quotes an independent study on the safety of these GM corn. Since GEAC has not approved the importation of these corns, chips containing this unapproved GM corn have gotten entry into the country.
6. F. L. | June 30th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Corn and sterilty.
Sorry, GM foods not safe.
Try again.
If there is any justice left in the world, GM foods must be labelled.
Period.
7. F. L. | June 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
By the way, the Public Relation tactics on this site disgusts me.
I have stopped being so politically correct because the majority of politicians could care less around the world. They listen to what facts you have to say and to your personal story,,,they nod,,,act compassionate,,,then laugh at you when the door closes.
Money not Morals.
If I believed that God could save us from these perils, then I would be praying. Unfortunately, plans of human annihilation are going to destroy us, not Iraq. Give us a break America and your ignorant allies.
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