GENETICALLYMODIFIED

CONSERVATIONAugust 27, 2010 Agriculture 16 Comment

It sounds like an oxymoron, butgenetic engineering is already

ushering in a new brand ofagriculture that slashes pesticide

use and thrives in a warmer, wetterworld.

By Erik Vance

In the mid-1940s, Norman Borlaugstarted the Green Revolution on asmall farm in southern Mexico. Hisidea was simple. As the humanpopulation skyrocketed, he wouldgrow a new kind of wheat with athicker stem and bigger seedheads, thus increasing its yield andallowing farmers to grow morewheat—and feed more people—peracre.

The results were staggering. Withintwo decades, Mexico’s wheatharvest had swollen six-fold,thanks to crops descended fromBorlaug’s original modified wheat.Borlaug then turned his talentstoward rice in the Philippines, andhigh-yield crops spread into almostevery major food staple. In all,Borlaug’s revolution helped feedmillions of people in poor and

Ronald envisions a futuredominated not byMonsanto-like corporationsbut by small partnershipsbetween farmers andscientists.

developing countries who wouldotherwise have starved—anachievement that earned him the1970 Nobel Peace Prize.

But the Green Revolution wasn’t“green” in the modern sense of theword. In fact, it exacted a hugeenvironmental toll. Its crops requireliberal use of fertilizer andpesticides that bleed into the landand sea, poisoning wildlife andcreating nitrogen-rich dead zonesin the oceans.

Now, with climate changethreatening to upend many of theworld’s crops, a new generation ofresearchers is poised to correctsome of the original revolution’sflaws and rethink agriculture onceagain. One of its newestspokespersons is Pam Ronald, aUniversity of California, Davis,researcher who sees a futuredominated not by Monsanto-likecorporations but by smallpartnerships between farmers andscientists.

By combining genetically modifiedcrops with organic farming andother eco-friendly practices, Ronaldbelieves, we can create a systemthat slashes pesticide use,insulates crops against floods anddrought, and protects thelivelihoods of poor farmers in thedeveloping world. To many, theidea of using genetic engineeringas a conservation tool is anoxymoron, but the scales mayfinally be tipping in Ronald’s favor.

Her ideas have drawn attention atthe highest levels and become afavorite of opinion makers such asMichael Pollan and Bill Gates.What’s more, they serve as a starkreminder that genetically modifiedfoods are here—whether we like itor not. Which means that, at a timewhen we need to reinvent the

world’s food supply, the criticalquestion may be: can we get itright?

Ronald is an unlikely genetic-engineering advocate. Pullinginto her driveway, I see that heryard looks like that of any eco-foodie. Her garden—a tangled mixof herbs and native plants—has ahappy, New Age feel. Her barnsports a mural that is “Diego Riverameets Cesar Chavez.” And herhusband, Raoul Adamchak, is anorganic farmer.

But Ronald, a plant geneticist, isalso an unabashed supporter ofgenetically modified (GM) crops.Her recent book on the benefits ofbioengineered organic crops,Tomorrow’s Table (which she co-wrote with Adamchak), has startedreshaping the way we look at GMfoods. (1)

While the GM debate hastraditionally been focused ongenetically modified corn and otherlucrative foodstuffs, Ronald hasbeen doing pioneering work on acrop that is largely ignored: rice. Infact, while companies such asMonsanto pour billions into GMcrops, rice research is almost solelythe province of publicly fundedacademics. “The big companiesaren’t working on broccoli orcarrots—there’s just not enoughprofit in that,” she says. “And theydon’t work on rice. It feeds half theworld, but it doesn’t feed thewealthy half.”

Sitting in her eclectic, pesticide-free garden, she says rice could bethe ideal proving ground for

genetic engineering to improve theenvironment while preparing for awarmer world.

Take flooding, for instance. No oneknows for certain how muchflooding will increase as the planetwarms, but scientists believe it willbecome more frequent and lastlonger in places such as SoutheastAsia, where it already causesaround $1 billion in annual damageto rice crops.

That’s why Ronald’s lab teamed upwith colleague Dave Mackill in thelate 1990s to create a species ofrice that could be submerged forweeks during a flood and stillsurvive. Unlike many crops, ricehas a dizzying number of varieties(as many as 140,000), all withdistinct genetic codes. Mackill hadfound one from eastern India withan unusual ability to liveunderwater for long spans. SoRonald’s team undertook thepainstaking task of sorting throughthe genome until they found asingle gene that seemed to act as a“master switch” for flood tolerance.

It was a neat trick, but theresearchers wanted something thatcould be used easily by poor ricefarmers. One method would havebeen to slice the gene out andsimply slide it into a commercialcrop, making it “geneticallymodified.” However, they finallydecided to simply breed the oldwith the new while targeting thatspecific place in the gene that heldthe precious submergence trait.This so-called “marker-assisted”breeding blends genetic work withold-school, dirty-fingernailsfarming. Because the actualgenetic transfer was done in ricefields rather than labs, the newstrain is not considered modifiedand is thus under less scrutiny fromgovernment agencies.

In a 2006 paper in Nature, the teamannounced a new strain of rice thatcould survive two weeks totallyunderwater. What’s more, it waseasy to grow. By the end of thisyear, the new, flood-proof rice willcover 125,000 acres in fourcountries. Next year that’s

projected to jump ten-fold. (2)

And Ronald says this is just thebeginning. Flooding is one ofclimate change’s three key threatsto agriculture—drought and pestoutbreaks are the other two—andRonald believes lab-aided rice canbe designed to resist them all. Sheis just beginning to work ondrought-tolerant rice, and shebelieves a bug and weed resistantrice could slash the amount ofpesticides rice farmers spew intothe environment.

For Ronald, it’s an example ofhow genetic engineering hasaccomplished exactly what manyenvironmentalists and organicfarmers want. Genetically modifiedcotton is a prime example. Littlemore than a decade ago, farmersin China started using “Bt cotton,”a genetically engineered varietycontaining a protein that kills pestsbut is nontoxic to mammals. (TheBt protein is a favorite insecticideamong organic farmers.) Withinfour years, the Chinese cottonfarmers reduced their annual useof poisonous insecticides by 70,000metric tons—almost as much as isused in all of California each year.

Of course, not everyone agrees.Opponents of genetic engineeringworry that GM food carries somestill-undiscovered health risks orthat it’s just a tool for bigcorporations to sell morepesticides. And Doug Gurian-Sherman, with the Union ofConcerned Scientists, worries thatexpensive GM research siphonsmoney from less-sexy techniques.He says he likes marker-ledbreeding but wants to see moremoney spent on organic techniquesthat reduce sprawlingmonocultures and mix togethercrops, more like a naturalecosystem.

For Ronald, the danger ofpesticides far outweighs that ofswitching a few base pairs in theDNA. She frequently notes thatthere’s no record of anyone everbecoming sick from a GM crop. Onthe other hand, pesticides kill 200to 1,000 Americans a year,

according to the World HealthOrganization.

Ronald also points out that thedebate over GM revolves aroundseveral false dichotomies. Whilenaysayers declare geneticmodification to be a new and evilpractice, for example, Ronald saysthe line between “geneticallyengineered” and “traditional” cropsreally exists only in the media andpolitics. For scientists, she says, it’smore of a continuum—withtraditional breeding on one endand crops with genes borrowedfrom vastly different creatures onthe other. “It’s not the process thatis good or bad, it’s the product,”she says.

Another false trade-off is the ideathat embracing GM means doingaway with other environmentallyfriendly agriculture practices. If weare to feed the world withoutdestroying the planet, Ronaldbelieves, we must incorporate notjust GM but also many ideaspromoted by organic farmers, suchas crop rotations and cropdiversity.

To explain what might finally tipthe scales in GM’s favor, Ronaldpoints to the situation in thedeveloping world. As globalwarming grinds forward, poorsubsistence farmers will bedevastated by food insecurity farmore than the wealthy West. “Iffarmers don’t change the seedthey’re planting now, in 25 yearsthey’re going to be getting half theyield,” Ronald says. She believesaltering rice and other crops—suchas strains of bananas crucial tosmall African economies—couldhelp prevent future famine, muchin the way that Borlaug’s wheatspared millions of people fromstarvation. If we’re going toaccomplish that, environmentalistsneed to think more broadly. “Youdon’t have to choose betweenproductivity and sustainability,”she says, leaning back and lookingaround her ecclectic garden. “Youcan have both.” ❧

Literature Cited:

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1.Ronald, P.C. and R.W. Adamchak.2008. Tomorrow’s Table: OrganicFarming, Genetics, and the Futureof Food. Oxford University Press,New York.

2. Xu, K. et al. 2006. Sub1A is anethylene-response-factor-like genethat confers submergencetolerance to rice. Nature.doi:10.1038/nature04920.

Erik Vance is a freelance writerbased in Berkeley, California. Hiswriting has been featured in TheChronicle of Higher Education,Nature, Mental Floss, and the UtneReader.

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Tags: food, Summer 2010

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