Editorials

Originally published in The MOF&G, September, 1999

What’s Wrong With Genetically Engineering Crop Plants?

"When you insert a gene into a DNA by using genetic modification, you have no idea where the gene goes--it’s absolutely a shot in the dark. These random mutagenic events can cause plants or crops to produce new toxins, new allergens, or they can reduce the nutritional value of the food...there’s no way to predict their effects. --John Fagan, founder, Genetic ID Inc.

Let Me Count the Problems...

• Pollen from corn that was engineered to resist corn borers was toxic to Monarch butterfly larvae in lab tests. Aphids and lacewings, both beneficial insects that help reduce populations of crop pests, were killed or otherwise harmed when they ate pests that had eaten genetically engineered (GE) crops. As with pesticides, toxic effects of engineered crops may magnify up and throughout the food chain.
• Pollen from GE crops can spread to wild relatives of those crops, creating "superweeds."
• GE herbicide resistant crops promote monocultures and sterile fields, limiting biodiversity and possibly limiting the food sources for insects, birds and other organisms in the food chain.
• The primary method of engineering plants to resist insects is to insert the gene that makes the toxin produced by the soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis. The toxin is expressed in every part of every plant in the field. No one knows the effects of spreading this toxin far and wide in the environment--i.e., effects on soil organisms, on nontarget pests, on field workers who breathe pollen, on consumers who eat the crops.
• Immune systems and several internal organs were damaged in rats who ate potatoes that were engineered to express the a lectin protein from snowdrops.
• A gene for antibiotic resistance is normally inserted into GE crops--possibly leading to the further spread of antibiotic resistance, which is already a problem for human health.
• Effects of GE on the nutrient value of crop plants is generally unknown, but in one study, concentrations of two phytoestrogens were reduced in GE soy. Phytoestrogens are plant estrogens that some women consume to try to lower their risk of breast cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis.
• Soy, one of the most common GE crops grown, is a common ingredient in formula for babies, yet the health effects of GE soy have not been studied. Our babies are industry’s guinea pigs.
• Engineered crops have not shown the increased yields promised by the biotech industry, nor have they reduced pesticide use.
• Farmers are prohibited from saving seed of GE crops--saving seed has long been a basic tenet of agriculture.
• Farmers never asked for this new technology treadmill.
• The biotech industry’s claim that GE will help feed a starving world is a sham. Hunger is related to problems with the distribution of wealth and of food, not to an insufficient supply of food.
• Widespread adoption of this high-tech, industrial agriculture will force small growers out of the market and will further consolidate the world’s food production in the hands of fewer, larger corporations.
• GE crops are not reviewed for safety unless they have "novel" proteins in them. Even then, the FDA relies on industry’s research for data.
• GE crops are not labeled, so consumers’ basic freedom of choice is eliminated. Consumers who want to know what they’re eating for health, religious or philosophical reasons are not allowed to know. This year, an estimated 40% of the U.S. corn crop and 30% of the soy crop is engineered.
• The farm economy has suffered as Europeans refuse to buy engineered soy and corn, two of the main export crops of the United States.

Let Me Count the Solutions...

• Consumers can buy organic foods and can lobby their legislators to demand that GE methods be studied further before they are unleashed on the environment.
• Industry and government should fund more research into and teaching of organic growing methods.

Put a Farm Tour on Your ‘To Do’ List

How many times have you put "Have tea with John and Jane" at the head of your ‘To Do’ List? How many of you figure into your work day time spent exchanging barnyard bulletins with your neighbors? The most local news items happen right on our small farms and homesteads, and the pieces of information we share without rehearsing or thinking about them are the gems that keep our farm and garden systems dynamic. Informal information swaps keep us all abreast of what weather is rolling in and what pests and pollinators have alighted upon our crops. The camaraderie of talking with another concerned grower can sometimes solve or at least help us cope with the cutworm blues, terrible germination and other dilemmas of farm life.

Farmers and apprentices in the Midcoast/Capitol area have, in fact, scheduled time to talk with one another. For the last three years, spring and early summer potluck dinners have been held at our farms on a rotating basis. The evenings always include a walking tour of the farm, during which the resident farmers inevitably endure a barrage of questions and rank opinion.

Bambi Jones of Alna says that these meetings also offer "a great chance for apprentices to meet each other and make connections that grow throughout the season." Bambi also noted that farmers who have known each other for years but have never visited each other's farms have at long last been able to experience the lay of the land and have a look at the systems of other growers. "It is always so interesting to see how another person handles a similar challenge that I am working with," says Bambi.

These gatherings have no set agenda but provide, instead, just a loose and relaxing climate in which interest and advice flow freely. The challenge to these meetings is, of course, not how or what to discuss but rather when. Finding the time may seem impossible, but we seldom realize how much we glean from seeing another person's farm system. Why not call the farmers and gardeners in your neck of the woods and invite them to a potluck dinner and farm walk? The food for thought and for the body are both bound to be great.

--Polly Shyka

Guest Editorial

The Other Side of the ECHO Story

Some thoughts on reading "Hope for Alleviating International Hunger" in the June-August issue of The MOF&G, about the ECHO farm in Fort Myers, Florida, where "development" workers from other agencies learn about tropical food gardening, and where hard-to-get tropical seeds are sent to groups that need them: There is another side to this "international hunger" story that we should be aware of.

We are often told that overpopulation is the cause of hunger in "under-developed" countries, which may well be the case in the future, and with accelerating climate change, but, until now, according to World Watch and other watchdog agencies, the problem is distribution and access to land, not lack of food. People who do not get enough food are excluded from land on which to grow it and do not have the money to buy what food is available. The good land is used to produce cash export crops for us, here, in North America and Europe: tropical fruits (bananas, citrus, etc.), tropical oils for our processed foods, cotton, coffee, tea, chocolate and flowers (!), all shipped to the "developed" world and eagerly and ignorantly bought by us in our supermarkets. An historical example of this situation is the Irish "potato" famine, when the British were shipping grain and beef out of Ireland while the indigenous people starved.

The people back where these commodities come from are pushed into ballooning cities, up erodable mountain sides (to be washed out by Hurricane Mitch), and into forests that belong to other peoples. Shrimp aquaculture, tourist development, mining and oil operations, and big dams that flood the good bottom land to electrify cities and irrigate export crops all have a like effect. These peasants who are forced off good land often had great skill in gardening and cultivated intricate, very productive, multilayer tropical gardens. (The Mayan "back yards" are, were, year-round tropical edens of food.) But their skills can be lost in a generation of city or fugitive life.

So now, ECHO is learning and teaching what is being lost in these threatened areas because of our own purchasing, investment and political policies. (Our government supports the companies that ship us all this stuff, and often the political regimes in which they function.)

We should be teaching ourselves the skills that are being lost by our economic choices, of how to grow wonderful tropical and temperate gardens, and how to respect the people who do. ECHO is teaching us this lesson.

Another very important service that "development" workers provide, even unintentionally, is to witness the injustice of land ownership and political power in the countries where they work, and to provide some little protection by their very presence, for peasants who might otherwise be bullied or worse under military and oligarchic regimes. (Perhaps political innocence makes them less likely to get into trouble themselves.)

To be in touch, to educate yourselves and help with the political side of "international hunger," contact:

• Food First (Institute for Food & Development Policy), 398 60th St., Oakland CA 94618; Tel. 510-654-4400; foodfirst@foodfirst.org; www.foodfirst.org (Read: Food First, Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, for solid, massively documented background.)
• Global Exchange, 2017 Mission St., Rm. 303, San Francisco CA 94110; Tel. 415-255-7296; www.globalexchange.org; info@globalexchange.org
• Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, 2105 1st Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55404; iatp-info@iatp.org
• Oxfam, 26 West St., Boston MA 02111-1206; 800-77-OXFAM; www.oxfamamerica.org
• Public Citizen, Global Trade Watch Project, 1600 20th St. NW, Washington DC 20009-1001; 612-870-0453
• Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis MD 21403-7036; info@rachel.org; www.rachel.org
• The World Watch Institute, 1776 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington DC 20036; 800-555-2028; wwpub@worldwatch.org; www.worldwatch.org (Magazine: World Watch; Annual reports, State of the World and Vital Signs; and World Watch Papers [reports])