www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

We live in a strange world. The so-called greens are opposed to a technology
that substantially reduces the environmental impact of agriculture, April
2007 by Jonathan DG Jones.

Consider the following:
Thanks to GM cotton, thousands of tons of insecticide have not been sprayed
in fields, and fewer farm workers are poisoned by insecticides.
Of the 8.5 million farmers growing GM crops in 2005, 90% are in developing
countries, yet European consumers try to dictate to them that they cannot
use an environmentally benign GM method to control insects.
Insect-resistant GM maize means that levels of dangerous mycotoxins in the
human and domestic animal diet have been reduced.
Golden Rice which could contribute to alleviating vitamin A deficiency for
millions is unnecessarily delayed.
The greens purport to oppose the power of multinationals, yet the onerous
regulatory burden imposed by their posturing ensures that small companies
can't compete with big companies to bring GM products to market. A startup
company I co-founded in the US, now employing some 50 people, could not have
been established in Britain because of investor worries about consumer
reactions to GMOs.
Drought resistance, disease resistance and nutritional benefits, from
developments already available or in the pipeline, are being delayed
throughout the world.
Nobody counts the considerable cost of NOT expeditiously deploying GM crop
improvements.
I have been making transgenic plants for over 20 years. It is the most
benign, ecologically sound new method for crop improvement in a century. The
more I do it, the less I worry about it. Provided simple and obvious
regulatory precautions are taken, there are no plausible scenarios for the
technology to cause serious damage. There are some known unknowns that can
be tested in any new GM variety, but there are no unknown unknowns.

How did we get into this impasse? The opponents of the technology recklessly
damage the public interest by ignoring some obvious truths.

First, agriculture is not "natural" any more than it is "natural" to talk to
someone miles away on a mobile phone. For readers in London, a natural state
would be for most of them to be reading this in a dense swampy oak forest;
most readers would not like the "natural" state for long. Converting wild
areas to agriculture is about the most damaging thing we can do; we should
maximise agricultural productivity in order to minimise the extent to which
such conversion is required. Breeds of domestic animals and plants are all
unnatural; consider the diversity of dogs, all descended from wolves. It is
absurd to suggest that GM represents a quantum shift in unnaturalness.

Second, farmers have to solve practical problems. What is the least bad way
to control weeds in their crops? Or insects, or diseases? Very few of those
who lecture farmers on how to solve these problems without modern methods
have any experience of doing so themselves. Hand-weeding millions of acres
is not an option. Ploughing is damaging to the soil and promotes release of
CO2 from agricultural land. If you're going to use herbicides, what is the
least bad herbicide? It turns out that for cheapness, low mammalian
toxicity, lack of persistence and lack of tendency to contaminate
groundwater, glyphosate (Roundup) is hard to beat. The trouble is, it kills
the crops. Solution? GM Roundup-Ready crops. Those who think this is a bad
way to control weeds have yet to propose a better alternative.

Third, with decreased affordability of oil, the competition between food and
biofuels will intensify. A ton of grain requires a thousand tons of water;
is it any wonder that China, which is experiencing water shortages, is
importing grain? We cannot afford to waste land and water by growing organic
wheat with a 50% reduced yield compared to conventional.

Organic agriculture was originally envisaged as a cultural practice to
nurture soil health. For organic farmers to rule out GM approaches to
disease and pest resistance is irrational, a matter of doctrine rather than
logic. The arguments about contamination are about imaginary hazards. It is
as if a Protestant and a Roman Catholic church were next door to each other,
and the Protestants objected to the smell of incense from the neighbouring
church as "contamination". It boggles the mind that the "greens" are opposed
to a late blight resistant potato developed with GM techniques when organic
methods for blight control involving copper compounds are more toxic,
environmentally damaging and less effective. David Miliband is right to call
organic "a lifestyle choice" that is justified neither on reduced
environmental impact nor food quality.

During the last century the human population increased four-fold and is
expected to rise by another 50% to nine billion people. Humans already
intercept about 30% of all terrestrial photosynthesis; for any species to be
so greedy is unprecedented. We need to reduce our footprint on the earth; by
increased use of renewable sources of energy, by minimizing the waste of
water, by maximizing recycling and by controlling our population.

A GM blight-resistant potato will require less agrichemical applications,
fewer tractor trips and less CO2 emissions. No damaging effects have been
documented for GM crops or GM food. Never before have such expensive and
onerous regulations been established in response to purely hypothetical
anxieties. GM agriculture is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

[www.guardian.co.uk]