See if you can spot the flawed reasoning in this paragraph, which is from an opinion piece in the Irish Farmer’s Journal, regarding the results of a three year field-trial conducted by Teagasc (the Irish Agriculture and Food Development authority) on genetically-modified (GM) potatoes:
Conventional potato-growing normally needs more than 12 fungicide sprays per season to control the blight that gave us the potato famine. This spraying programme is by far the main contributor to the environmental effect of conventional potato growing being measured as having over 700 environmental impact points. The GM-engineered potato – the so-called cisgenic variety – had less than 10 environment impact points, just over 1% of the original. It is incredible given the hugely beneficial environmental impact of the genetic engineered change involving the introduction of no genetic material from a non-related species that the objections to the technology can be so deep-rooted and intransigent.
So, growing genetically modified potatoes (as opposed to those grown conventionally) involves a lowering of environmental impact points from 700 to 10, and from this, the author extrapolates four words: hugely beneficial environmental impact.
Hmmm.
True, the number of environmental impact points has reduced, but not to zero, and certainly not to below zero, which it would need to do in order to move from harmful to beneficial.
It’s as if a school bully is regularly beating up on you, and one day he tells you that the routine is going to change. “Every day, instead of punching you ten times, I’m just going to slap you once or twice.” You would have to admit that things have got better, but that doesn’t mean they're good. Good would be if he said, “I’m going to stop hitting you, and I’ll tell others to leave you alone too, and if you want to borrow my bike anytime, just ask.”
It may seem like I’m nit-picking but it’s important to keep an eye on this kind of slippery logic, especially since it forms the basis of most arguments that defend GM engineering. Yes, they say, it’s a little bad, but nowhere near as bad as what we were doing before, ergo it’s good. A heavy reliance on this argument is why trials of GM foods generally involve comparisons with industrial monocropping and even organic monocropping, but noticeably do not involve comparisons with agroecological methods.
Agro-eco-what?
A 2014 National Geographic article describes this model of agriculture and gives the reasons why, rather than looking to multinational agribusinesses to feed the world, we should be following the examples of small-scale farmers around the world who are using low-tech but sustainable agricultural techniques in order to adapt to a warming climate.
Some of these low-tech approaches include agroforestry (which integrates trees and shrubs into crop and livestock fields), solar-powered drip irrigation (which delivers water directly to plant roots), intercropping (planting two or more crops near each other to maximise the use of light, water and nutrients) and the use of green manures (quick-growing plants that help prevent erosion and replace nutrients in the soil). In Guatamala, farmers are adding vegetables to traditional corn and bean fields, and rotating coffee with other crops to fight a deadly leaf fungus.
Isn’t that one of the major claims in favour of GM farming, that their crops have been modified specifically to fend off disease? Turns out they don't even do that very well. In Stuffed and Starved, which is required reading if you want to understand the world food system, Raj Patel points out some GM flaws:
In China, Bt crops [Bt cotton which has an insecticide produced by a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, engineered into the plant itself] were introduced in 1997, and farmers found themselves spending less on pesticides because the Bt in the plants fended off the bollworm. By 2004, however, farmers found themselves spraying three times as much as before, almost as much as with conventional seed, because a secondary pest unaffected by the Bt had found a new ecological niche, now that bollworm numbers had been temporarily depressed.
In India in 2005, the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (population 75 million) banned Monsanto from licensing its genetically modified cotton seed on the grounds that they had been ineffective. Yields were lower, and more prone to disease, than non-genetically modified cotton.
Meanwhile, a major UN review, uncompromisingly titled, Wake Up Before It’s Too Late, demonstrates that agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% for all African projects. Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years.
There was a time when comparing our situation here in Ireland to farming in Africa would have seemed ridiculous and irrelevant, but not anymore. As this summer shows, drought can all too easily become an issue here, and GM crops soak up water every bit as thirstily as conventional crops.
Not only is agroecology resilient in the face of extreme weather and other climate impacts, it also sequesters carbon in the soil, avoids the need for fossil-fuel based fertilisers and increases biodiversity of insects, birds, animals and plants.
The idea of famine is terrifying, and those who want to push for GM engineering are not averse to invoking the spectre of such a fate, as we read in the opening paragraph. And who knows, maybe if we found ourselves in that horrific situation again here in Ireland, we might be grateful for GM potatoes.
Or maybe not.
A paper by Noah Zerbe, at Humboldt State University, USA, analyses a famine situation that was a lot more recent than that in our Irish history. In the spring of 2002, Southern Africa was rapidly slipping into a food crisis as some 15 million people across the region faced critical food shortages. NGOs and international relief bodies mobilised to prevent famine and the World Food Program appealed to the developed world for financial resources.
The relief effort took an unexpected turn, however, as the governments of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe rejected US food aid because of concerns over the inclusion of GM maize.
As the food crisis persisted, some countries agreed to accept milled food aid (which would prevent further cultivation) but Zambia continued to resist. Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa said, “I am not prepared to accept that we should use our people as guinea pigs”, and Zambia ultimately weathered the crisis without the GM food aid.
Potato blight was not the cause of the Irish famine. On the surface, sure, it was the reason the food became inedible, but, as in the situation quoted above, the myriad causes were more complex. One problem was the complete lack of crop diversity. We had a population that relied almost exclusively on one variety of potato, that which had no resistance to blight.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation say that large-scale monoculture farming, with its heavy use of synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, and genetically modified seeds, has contributed to the disappearance of about 75% of plant genetic diversity over the last century.
Groups like Irish Seed Savers, as well as farmers and growers around the world, are fighting against this drastic annihilation of plant biodiversity. The importance of their work, their vocation, cannot be overstated.
So, developing a truly robust famine-resistance strategy doesn't really require GM potatoes that can resist blight (because the continued indiscriminate use of fungicides may well result in a super-blight, the way insecticides have bred super-pests) but rather pursuing paths that increase the biodiversity of our crops and food supply, and utilising agroecological methods.
Incidentally, although we’re not growing GM crops here, that doesn’t mean we’re GM-free. Much of our food contains GM ingredients. Unless you’re buying organic, any soya lecithin (an emulsifier) or indeed, sugar in your food is very likely to have come from GM crops.
Even our famed golden butter doesn’t qualify as GM-free. The Irish Farmer's Journal reported in May that:
The discussion around GM-free products has been ongoing in the dairy community with Ornua's German CEO Gilbert Kuglar, asking Irish co-ops last year to consider making GM-free butter to cater to consumers in the German market, where there is a growing trend for GM-free products.
However, Irish farmers rely heavily on imported feedstuffs, over 50% of which is from GM crops, and this causes issues for a potential Irish GM-free market.
Professor Gerry Boyle, the director of Teagasc is quoted in the same edition of the paper: "What I am really saying is I think we probably took our eye off the ball in relation to the environmental measures the last time around in CAP…I think it’s probably something, in fairness, that we have neglected collectively within the agricultural community.”
No kidding.
Of course it would be commendable if farming authorities starting paying attention to environmental issues, but please don’t insult us by asking us to believe that GM engineering is one such measure.
Not when there is such a powerful alternative. To quote Raj Patel again: “There are thousands of successful experiments, worldwide, showing how climate-smart agriculture can work. They’re characterised not by expensive fertilizer from Yara and proprietary seeds from Monsanto, but knowledge developed and shared by peasants freely and equitably. In its finest moments, agroecology gets combined with ‘food sovereignty’ with democratic control of the food system, so that not only is more food produced but it’s distributed so that everyone gets to eat it too.”
My money - if the government weren’t already spending it on field trials for genetically-modified potatoes - would definitely be on that.