151Savior_or_MonsterThe_Truth_about_Genetically_Engineered

1 Savior or Monster?

The Truth about Genetically Engineered Agriculture

Margaret Mellon

I first became aware of biotechnology early in the 1980s, when the field was in its infancy. Biotechnology arrived in Washington, D.C., on a wave of enthusiasm backed by the U.S. government, big corporations, and the scientific community. All of these entities had direct interests in the success of biotechnology: profits and influence for industry; global trade and eco- nomic clout for government; and grants and prestige for scientists. Citizens, too, were interested in the technology, not only in its potential benefits but also in its impacts on the environment and human health. But in those early days the optimism was high and the criticism was muted. During the last thirty years much of that initial euphoria surrounding biotechnology has waned. In particular, North Americans and Europeans are in the midst of a heated debate between the concentrated power of the direct stakeholders in the adoption of biotechnology, and a more diffuse set of stakeholders who are affected by the technology and who want a say in how it is used, or whether it should be used at all. Most of this debate over biotechnology is to be found in the domain of food, and the use of genetically engineered crops in particular.

Agricultural Genetic Engineering

Biotechnology is a broad term that can be applied to virtually any practical use of any living organism. Most uses—beer-brewing, beekeeping, and so on—are not controversial and many do not involve genetic modification of individual organisms. In this chapter, I will focus on techniques that are controversial because they involve modification of traits that can be passed onto subsequent generations and employ sophisticated molecular-level

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16 Margaret Mellon

techniques to achieve modifications. Such techniques are referred to inter- changeably as genetic engineering (GE) or genetic modification (GM). I prefer the term “genetic engineering” because it is narrower than “genetic modification” and more clearly excludes classical breeding and other time- tested methods of modifying organisms. Genetically engineered organ- isms that harbor combinations of traits that cannot be produced in nature are also sometimes referred to as transgenic. Genetic engineering can be applied to any organism—from a bacterium to a human—and the earliest commercial applications of genetic engineering, microorganisms modi- fied to produce human pharmaceuticals, were not very controversial. How- ever, this chapter will focus on genetic engineering of agricultural crops, a topic that has been, and for the foreseeable future will remain, hugely controversial.

My Introduction to Biotechnology

I was first introduced to biotechnology in the mid-1980s while working on the problem of environmental toxins at the Environmental Law Institute. Few in the environmental community could escape the excitement of the new technology that promised to transform industrial agriculture from a frequently toxic into an environmentally benign activity. As a scientist, I was naturally curious about the technology and predisposed to welcome it. Because of my background in molecular biology, many colleagues came to me with questions about it. I attended lectures and workshops on the issue and was invited by Monsanto to visit its headquarters in St. Louis, where I toured labs and greenhouses and heard the company lay out its vision for the new technology.

And a breathtaking vision it was: an agriculture that was no longer dependent on herbicides or insecticides; crops that could fix nitrogen and no longer need chemical fertilizer; crops that were innately high yielding; crops that could tolerate drought or cold; foods that could prevent disease; and agriculture so productive it would end world hunger. I heard the siren call. Without knowing much about agriculture, I expected that the technol- ogy would work, albeit with some unexpected or downside effects. I believed that regulation would help unearth and avoid such effects and was essential if the technology was to achieve its promise. I was not naive. I understood that regulation would not emerge without strong advocacy, but still I assumed that the technology would bring about big and benign changes. I decided to become a scientist-advocate in this field.

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The Truth about Genetically Engineered Agriculture 17

National Wildlife Federation

In 1992, I founded the National Biotechnology Policy Center at the National Wildlife Federation, an organization steeped in the mission of environmental conservation and protection, and committed to citizen activists as agents of change and government regulation as a way of facilitating input into import- ant decisions. As I went into this work, I understood that industry, science, and citizens had different, but vital, roles to play in policy contests. I firmly rejected the idea that any players in this pageant were evil. My side and your side, for sure—but not villains and heroes.

At the policy center at the National Wildlife Federation, we accepted GE technology, regarding it as neither immoral nor uniquely dangerous. At the same time, we also rejected assertions that GE was inherently safe or necessarily better than alternatives. We felt free to accept some applications (drugs) while passing on others (many crops). We evaluated applications on three factors—risks, benefits, and the availability of alternatives. This position put the National Wildlife Federation in the middle of the advocacy spectrum—neither cheerleader nor adamantly opposed. Unlike those at the polar extremes, our middle position required data intensive evaluations of benefits, risks, and alternatives.

Benefits assessments quickly became the most challenging parts of our analyses. We came to understand that benefits depend on one’s vision of agriculture. Herbicide-resistant crops, for example, were said to be benefi- cial because they encouraged farmers to use glyphosate, an herbicide less toxic than the more commonly used atrazine. To those who accepted that U.S. agriculture would continue to be structurally dependent on chemical pesticides, the replacement of one herbicide by a less toxic one counted as a benefit. However, because our goal was the minimization of chemi- cal herbicides by using methods like cover crops and conservation tillage to control weeds, we believed that the substitution of one herbicides for another, without a commitment to overall herbicide use reduction, was not beneficial.

From my days as a lawyer, I was familiar with corporate influence and resources and understood that many public policy debates played out on an unequal field. But I was stunned by the clout that the preeminent biotech- nology company, Monsanto, brought to the biotechnology debate. In order to promote its interests, Monsanto mounted major museum exhibitions, sponsored scholarships and fellowships at research universities, funded an entire wing at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, and more. It influenced

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domestic and international regulatory and political arenas, sometimes in dis- arming ways, and sometimes more aggressively. Despite its power, or perhaps because of it, Monsanto eventually lost the debate for the hearts and minds of consumers and others outside of mainstream agriculture, science, or gov- ernment. In a 2015 Harris Poll of corporate reputations,1 Monsanto ranked 97 out of 100 corporations. Recently, Monsanto admitted its problems2,3 and initiated efforts to spruce up its image, including new approaches to social media.4

Union of Concerned Scientists

In 1993 I took a job at Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), where I founded a program focused on agriculture rather than biotechnology. Because of the issues UCS took on, it was important for advocates at UCS to maintain scientific credibility. In that regard I was pleased to be named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1994 and a Distinguished Alumnae of Purdue University in 1993, which established my scientific bona fides. My experience at UCS taught me about the role of science in big societal debates. UCS’s signature issue was nuclear power plant safety. Questions on how to build and run a plant or what safety mea- sures might work are purely scientific questions, the necessary bedrock of the debate. But the debate was about more than science. Questions of how much risk to take in exchange for the benefits of nuclear power, or whether nuclear power is preferable to coal or wind power, cannot be answered by science alone. They require societal judgments on which reasonable people can and do disagree. Both sides in the nuclear power debate make arguments based on science. But, a favorable view of nuclear power does not make one pro-science; nor do concerns about the safety of nuclear power make one anti-science.

In contrast, the biotechnology debate I became involved in at UCS has been cast as a debate between science and anti-science. Critics of genetically engineered crops are labeled Luddites and arguments against the technology are called emotional and sidelined as illegitimate. But the genetic engineering debate involves economic, health, and safety issues that are rife with societal judgments. Societal questions of how much risk is appropriate for the supposed benefits of the technology, for example, involve far more than scientific considerations. Not surprisingly, simplif y- ing and polarizing the genetic engineering debate in this way has seriously distorted it.

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One reason the genetic engineering debate is so intensely contentious is that it sits at the juncture of many overlapping issues: food safety; environ- mental safety; control of the food system; international trade; wariness of technology; deep-seated mistrust of government; and animal welfare. Sci- ence can be a component of all of these issues, and getting the science right is crucial to productive debates. But science per se does not have a position on environmental safety or control of the food system. Like nuclear power plant safety, the safety and appropriate use of GE crops raise societal issues on which reasonable people can and do disagree.

Tensions of Science Advocac y

Scientific advocacy organizations like the National Wildlife Federation and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) seek to change the world for the better, often through the legislative process. At NWF and UCS scientists work closely with lobbyists and media experts to carry out legislative campaigns. In so doing, they need to communicate with and motivate citizens who have much else to think about. One of the best ways to mobilizing citizens is with short, compelling messages. Such messages are often stylistically incompatible with the highly qualified language of science, which values precision and abhors overstatement. Crafting such messages—for action alerts, for example—routinely leads to lively dis- cussions between scientists and media professionals in advocacy organi- zations. In the genetic engineering debate, some opponents of genetically engineered foods have mobilized supporters with scary images like skulls and crossbones, scarecrows, or evocative terms like “Frankenfood.”

While I worked closely with the media professionals in my organiza- tions to craft strong messages, I drew a line well short of using the term “Frankenfood” or Halloween imagery in communications with the public. I believed these images conveyed a degree of risk not warranted by the early products of the technology and that they preclude the practical and the fact- based debate we need about the impact of the technology in food and agri- culture. However, I soon found that critics of genetically engineered crops are not the only ones to use short, evocative—and misleading—messages in these debates. Proponents do the same. The most egregious example is the campaign to convince the public that genetic engineering is necessary to “feed the world,” a message delivered with images of smiling farmers from developing countries. The implication is that use of genetic engineering in the United States and elsewhere is essential to meeting the challenges of

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world hunger and that critics of genetic engineering are impeding the only solution to the problem. But scientists understand that the root causes of world hunger are complex and, for the most part, grow out of poverty, not out of challenges in agricultural productivity.5 To suggest that genetic engi- neering by itself is the magic solution to world hunger is just as misleading as suggesting that it is inherently scary. On both ends of the spectrum, these communications strategies are a major challenge to nuanced, scientifically sound debate.

Looking at Benefits and Alternatives

The policy thrust of my early advocacy focused on the risks of products of genetic engineering and the need for government regulation to control those risks. The scientific analyses I and my collaborators produced in my early career, assessed the ecological risks of genetically engineered crops;6,7 the threats to the efficacy of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)—a biological pesticide— posed by resistance;8 gene flow of GE traits within agricultural crops,9 and the uncontrolled movement of pharmaceutical traits in cultivated and wild environments.10

By the earlier 2000s, biotechnology ’s most popular crops had a track record that could be evaluated both against a sustainable vision of agri- culture and the grand early promises of the proponents. In 2009 and 2011 my talented friend and colleague Doug Gurian-Sherman produced land- mark studies asking what GE technology had accomplished in three key areas—yield,11 nitrogen use efficiency,12 and drought tolerance13—all of which were among the dramatic improvements promised by genetically engineered crops. In each study, Dr. Gurian-Sherman assessed the per- formance of alternatives to genetic engineering like classical breeding, agroecology, and an enhanced version of classical breeding called marker- assisted breeding. Gurian- Sherman’s careful analyses of the benefits of GE crops led to a big surprise.

Despite wide adoption and commercial success, overall biotechnol- ogy has a disappointing track record. As an agricultural technology, it had not achieved even a modicum of what it had promised. Beyond that, Gurian- Sherman’s analyses showed that in the very areas where biotech- nology had stumbled, classical breeding and agroecology had succeeded. For me, as well as for many other scientists in the field, Doug’s work was

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an eye-opener that prompted many questions. As an early enthusiast for the promises of genetically engineered crops, I had to face the reality of its disappointing performance. So, in midcareer, I refocused my interests on the articulation of alternative, more sustainable visions for agriculture and strategies for achieving them (e.g., in the 2013 Vision Statement of the Union of Concerned Scientists).14 And it is to that subject which I will now turn.

Chemical -Free Agriculture?

Let’s start with perhaps the biggest promise of all: genetic engineering will allow us to achieve chemical free agriculture. Has this been achieved? Not even close, although there have been a few bright spots. There are no GE nitrogen-fixing crops,15 and while the herbicide-resistant crops reduced her- bicide use initially, the trend is now heading in exactly the opposite direction because weeds, like all organisms, can adapt to stress.

Among herbicide resistant crops, Roundup Ready ™ crops are the com- mercial stars in the biotechnology pantheon. Companies have introduced commercially successful varieties of most of the important commodity crops: soybeans, corn, cotton, alfalfa, and canola. These crops were widely adopted because—at the beginning—they saved time and reduced costs, especially on large industrial farms. As a result, one herbicide—glyphosate—has been used on tens of millions of acres of American farmland, year after year. Pre- dictably, such intensive use encouraged the growth of weeds able to with- stand glyphosate, and soon such weeds began to show up in fields all over farm country.16 Farmers responded by using more and more glyphosate and adding other chemical herbicides to the mix. Thus, the early dip in herbicide use was soon reversed and herbicide use skyrocketed. Over its first sixteen years, the evolution of resistant weeds led to a 527-million-pound increase in herbicide use in the United States.17 Because farmers continue to plant the GE crops, and resistant weeds continue to emerge, herbicide use is still rising.

The industry’s response has been to engineer resistance to additional herbicides, 2,4-D and dicamba, into crops, so those chemicals can be applied along with glyphosate.18 In sum, widespread use of herbicide-resistant crops, by far the dominant application of agricultural biotechnology, has lead to an unfolding environmental and agronomic disaster: more and worse weeds, higher farm costs, exploding use of herbicides, and the evolution of multi-herbicide-resistant weeds.19 These concerns are heightened by the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s recent determination that

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glyphosate is a probable human carcinogen20 and that 2,4-D, whose use will increase with the next generation of herbicide-resistant corn and soybeans, is a possible carcinogen.21

The second major application of genetic engineering has been crops modified to produce their own insecticidal toxins.22 The toxins were origi- nally found in soil microbes called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). The family of Bt toxins contains slightly different molecules that kill different classes of insect pests. Like herbicide-tolerance traits, Bt toxins have been engineered into a variety of crops, most importantly corn and cotton. Over the first sixteen years of the biotechnology era, insecticide use in this country was reduced by 123 million pounds.23 Although the decline was offset by the dramatic rise in herbicide use, the environmental benefits of lower external insecticide use in Bt crops have been impressive.24 And until recently the emergence of Bt resistance was held at bay. One big reason for this success has been the implementation of sophisticated refuge strategies developed by entomologists to delay resistance.

But trouble is brewing in Bt crop fields. Farmers did not heed entomol- ogists’ advice on a major pest of corn—the Western corn rootworm—and now fields are teeming with these rootworms despite being planted with Bt corn varieties.25 Belatedly, the Environmental Protection Agency has developed plan for companies and farmers to manage resistance in the root- worm,26 but it may be too late. In addition, the introduction of Bt crops has coincided with the increased use of other insecticides in corn systems, most ominously the neonicotinoids or “neonics.” These chemicals, first introduced in the early 1990s, are now the most widely used insecticides on earth. Neon- ics are highly toxic to insects, including honeybees and other pollinators at very low doses, and their nearly ubiquitous use is a suspected cause of the decline of bee colonies around the world.

The rise in neonic use was missed initially because the pesticides were sold as seed coatings and as such were not counted by the government in sur- veys of pesticide use. While not a direct result of GE technology, the demand for neonics certainly belies the promise that biotech crops would usher in an era of chemical-free agriculture. In sum, while deserving credit for substantial reductions in insecticide use in corn and cotton, Bt crops have not staved off ever-increasing use chemical insecticides in those crops. Instead, fields full of genetically engineered crops are saturated with chemical poisons.27,28

Having said that, genetic engineering has had success with crops engi- neered to be resistant to viruses, but the total acreage of virus-resistant crops is tiny in comparison to herbicide-resistant and Bt crops. A virus-resistant

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variety of papaya has been widely adopted by Hawaiian papaya growers and continues to account for 70% of the Hawaiian papaya crop.29 Varieties of virus-resistant squash have also been approved for sale in the United States, although there are no mechanisms for determining how much of the seed has been sold.

What then can be said about the dream of chemical free agriculture that was envisioned by proponents of genetically engineered crops some thirty years ago? Despite a few bright spots, large-scale adoption of GE crops has led to dramatic increases in pesticide use that are likely to continue to increase in the future. Put another way, however hopeful our dreams may have been, GE in practice has turned out to be a chemical and environmental nightmare.

High-Yielding Crops

Another claim made in the salad days of biotech agriculture was that genet- ically engineered crops would produce much higher yields. In fact, that has not been the case. But first it’s important to understand that crop yields are of two types. The first type of yield refers to performance in the presence of pests or stress. Herbicides and insecticides increase yields when weeds or insects are present, but have little effect when pests are absent; those are called operational yields. The second, more fundamental kind of yield is innate or potential yield, the yield possible under the ideal conditions—with no pests, no stress, adequate nutrients, and benign climate. Innate yields represent the upper limit on agricultural productivity, and increasing them is essential to keeping pace with increasing human populations.

Classical breeding is the stellar technology in this realm. It is responsi- ble for virtually all the increases in innate yield in crops since the dawn of agriculture. Dramatic examples of the power of classical breeding are the shorter, sturdier versions of wheat and corn yields that were the backbone of the Green Revolution.30 Less dramatic, but no less important, are the steady, ongoing 1–2% a year annual increases in U.S. corn yield that are attributable to classical breeding and agronomic practices. By contrast, as of 2015, there is only one new GE crop pending in the commercial pipeline that claims to increase the innate yield of a crop. This dismal performance on innate yields is often missed because of confusion with increases in operational yields— yields measured in the presence of pests—that have been produced by Bt crops.31 Nevertheless, GE’s failure to produce crops with increased innate yields severely undercuts the claim that GE is essential for fundamentally improving agriculture.

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In a similar vein, scientists once hoped and predicted that crops could be genetically engineered to resist various forms of stress. Alas, genetic engineering has produced only one commercialized stress- resistant crop, Monsanto’s DroughtGard™ Hybrids, corn varieties resistant to mild drought. No commercialized GE crops are resistant to being flooded (important in rice production), to cold, or to salt. Sometimes confused with drought tolerance, water use efficiency is the ability to maximize yields from a given amount of water, often irrigation water.32 Again, there are no GE crops on the market in this category. Monsanto’s public relations materials include posters asking, “How Can We Squeeze More Food from a Raindrop?” The answer is, if we rely on current GE technology to produce water-use-efficient crops, we can’t.

Foods a s Medicine

Of all the promises of genetically engineered crops, perhaps the most exciting was that they could be engineered to prevent human disease. In this regard, GE so far has been a disappointment, although not for lack of trying. Right now, there are no GE crops on the market engineered to prevent disease. There are some products that claim more nutritious oils and one that reduces acrylamide levels,33 but there are no studies demonstrating health benefits from consumption of these foods. Perhaps most famous of all disease preven- tion crops is golden rice, a rice that has been genetically engineered to com- bat vitamin A deficiency and the nearly 700,000 annual childhood deaths that result from this deficiency each year. However, after almost twenty years of effort, golden rice has still not gotten the green light from its sponsor, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). According to IRRI, the yields of the rice still lag behind comparable varieties in Philippine fields.34 Moreover, golden rice has yet to be shown to increase vitamin A levels in target populations, perhaps because the diets of extremely poor people lack sufficient fat to enable the absorption of the vitamin.

Ending World Hunger?

Finally, what can we say about the claim that genetically engineered crops would improve agriculture in developing countries and alleviate, if not even eliminate, world hunger? There have been successes with genetically engi- neered crops in the developing world, primarily with a fiber crop, Bt cotton.

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But the promise that the technology alone could produce necessary changes in the complex arenas of developing country agriculture and world hunger (a phenomenon not confined to the developing world) has not been fulfilled. The only large consensus international study of developing-country agri- culture concluded that agroecological approaches have more potential than GE crops for meeting future food and agricultural challenges.35 This conclu- sion should not be surprising. It is common sense that a crop- breeding tech- nology whose major successes after twenty-five years are confined almost entirely to the realm of pest management cannot be counted on for the broad array of products needed to improve agriculture worldwide. It is possible that the situation will change in the future; genetic engineering may one day deliver a robust array of crop varieties with traits like increased innate yield, stress tolerance, and a host of other benefits. But right now the development pipeline in the United States is dominated by pest management products, primarily more combinations of Bt and herbicide-resistance genes. This is hardly what we once believed GE crops could do.

The Implications of Genetic Engineering a s a Limited Technology

The performance of GE in its first several decades has fallen short of origi- nal expectations, primarily because of technical challenges. So far the major applications of genetic engineering have been based on the transfer of one or a few independently operating genes. Herbicide tolerance and Bt toxin pro- duction are essentially one-gene traits. A number of the herbicide tolerance and Bt genes can be added successively to crops as so-called stacks, but the genes do not interact with one another. Yet many important crop traits like innate yield and stress tolerance require multiple interacting genes. Unable to move interacting sets of genes, genetic engineers, for the most part, have failed to improve such traits.

Another barrier to the success of genetically engineered crops is the imprecise nature of the processes for delivering new genetic material to crop plants. The most popular methods carry pieces of genetic material into plant cells and integrate them into chromosomes where they can function. But this method inserts the new genetic material more or less randomly along the length of chromosomes, and often at more than one location. The inability to control the number and location of gene insertions makes genetic engi- neering a hit-and-miss—and expensive—process.

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Summary of Benefits of Genetically Engineered Crops after T went y-Plus Ye ar s

Although it has succeeded with a very limited set of pest control applications, agricultural biotechnology has produced substantial economic benefits for a handful of entities. Sales of herbicides, insecticides, and seeds have generated huge profits for technology companies. And until resistance sets in, farmers benefit economically from reduced input costs for weed and insect control and increased convenience, especially in large commodity crop operations. As mentioned above, availability of the virus-resistant GE papaya reinvig- orated the Hawaii papaya industry that was previously threatened by the ring-spot virus.36

There have also been some public benefits stemming from the use of genetically engineered crops. By public benefits, I mean improvements in the quality of shared resources like air, water, soil, or health. Public benefits of Bt crops have included reduced insecticide use on the Bt crops, including so-called halo effects in nearby non-Bt crops, which can benefit indirectly from suppressed pest populations.37 Adoption of herbicide-resistant crops also led to reduced herbicide use in the early days before the appearance of resistant weeds. Herbicide-resistant crops may encourage adoption of con- servation tillage, including no-till, wherein a new crop is planted through the remnants of the previous year’s crop. Conservation tillage helps to prevent water erosion and at one time was credited with sequestration of carbon in soil, but careful scientific studies have shown that that is not the case.38,39 In any case, the majority of the increase in the use of conservation tillage pre- dated the introduction of the GE crops.40 In short, the public benefits of GE crops should not be dismissed, but they are hardly overwhelming.

Crop Improvement Alternatives Superior to Genetic Engineering

A key fact often lost sight of in the biotechnology debate is that genetic engineering is not the only way to improve agricultural crops and animals. Classical breeding; marker-assisted breeding, which is an enhanced version of classical breeding using molecular biology to identify parental organisms (also called marker assisted selection); and agroecology, a scientific disci- pline that uses ecological theory to design and manage agricultural systems that are productive and resource conserving, are all powerful alternatives to genetic engineering.41 More importantly, in many cases these techniques

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have been scientifically proven to be superior to GE in improving agro- nomic traits across the breadth of crop varieties. In fact, most of what GE has claimed to have done, or is trying to do, has already been done using one of these approaches.42,43,44 There are areas where classical breeding faces challenges, like the production of vitamin A precursors in rice (the goal of golden rice), but they are relatively few.

To cite a few examples of success, classical breeding routinely turns out crops with increased innate yields—indeed it is the only technology that ever has. Let me repeat: classical breeding is responsible for virtu- ally all increases in innate yield since the beginning of agriculture. The same is true for crops with increased nitrogen use efficiency and water use efficiency—there are no GE varieties, but many classically bred variet- ies.45,46 Even where GE does work, it is often slower and more expensive than classical breeding. A project launched by the International Maize and W heat Improvement Center in 2012 was reported in 2014 to have developed twenty-one classically bred varieties of nitrogen-use efficient crops adapted to African soils, while the single comparable GE variety to come out of the project was at least ten years away.47 Classical breeding has also produced a ring-spot resistant variety of papaya,48 carotene-rich sweet potatoes,49 and a nonbrowning apple.50 Classical breeding, enhanced by marker assisted breeding, has also been successful in producing flood-resistant rice varieties now found in rice paddies all over Asia.51

Agroecology: Crop Rotation Cover Crops and Other Agronomic Practices

Crop rotation, cover crops, and other agronomic practices help prevent the emergence of pests in ways that are superior to engineered crops aimed at only one or two pests. These practices exemplify an agroecological as opposed to an industrial approach to agriculture. Agroecology uses ecologi- cal science to design systems that minimize or prevent pest problems, while industrial systems usually address pests with toxic chemicals. Planting differ- ent crops in the same field in successive years deprives many potential pests of reliable food sources and prevents their buildup, reducing the need for pesticides from the get-go. Scientists concerned about the emergence of the resistant corn rootworms have noted that three- or four-crop rotations would make it unnecessary to use either Bt corn or chemical pesticides. One group of public interest entomologists commenting on the EPA resistance manage- ment plan for corn rootworm recommended that crop rotation be the sole

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course of action in response to evidence of resistant rootworms.52 Unlike industrial systems, which are characterized by the evolution of resistance and the subsequent need to turn to new pesticides (the so-called pesticide treadmill), properly implemented agroecological approaches are robust over time. Insects have a hard time developing resistance to them, so they preserve rather than erode the efficacy of chemical pesticides.

When Facts Don ’t Matter

My biggest personal disappointment over the course of my career has been how stubbornly the biotechnology debate has resisted recognition of classi- cal plant breeding and agroecology as plausible, if not preferable, alternatives to genetic engineering. In light of the solid science supporting the broad potential of such approaches, it seems that facts just don’t matter. Over the years I have tried many times to interest the media in the performance of crops produced by classical breeding, but was always rebuffed. GE’s vitamin A rice made it onto the cover of Time magazine on the strength of a mere whiff of potential to help hungry people with nutritional deficiencies. Mean- while the hundreds of classically bred rice varieties produced by IRRI that are already in the ground, boosting health, nutrition, and farmer incomes, stir very little media interest. Similarly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) seems unmoved by track record of classical breeding. My sugges- tion that the USDA produce a brochure touting the vital role classical breed- ing plays in U.S. agriculture was met with a big yawn.

Some of this reaction is certainly due to the power of commercial inter- ests in modern agriculture. Industrial systems are dependent on chemical inputs and chemical companies, like Monsanto, have tremendous influ- ence with media and governments. Producers of pesticides, whether placed inside or outside a crop, have little interest in pest management solutions that reduce pesticide use.

But I believe the preference for GE comes from a deeper place in our history. For many Americans, new technologies embody the idea of prog- ress, a central idea of both the Enlightenment era in which our nation was born, and of the liberal capitalism that we have historically practiced. This conception of progress is rooted in the belief that scientific discoveries and technological advancements are necessarily superior to that which came before. Thus, we look forward to a constant stream of innovation to achieve better lives and more vibrant societies. Our faith in progress leads us to prefer new to existing technologies even when the new ones aren’t

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working particularly well. We tend to give new technologies the benefit of the doubt. If they don’t perform this year, they may do so next year. Faith in progress even overrides concerns about harm. To make omelets, we must break eggs.

Progress is one of the many mental frames that allow people to organize and respond to facts and arguments, and frames are notoriously resistant to facts. I believe the progress frame blocks the acceptance of the truth of the GE technology’s relatively poor performance. But reality matters. Or at least it should. We gave transgenic technology a chance to prove itself, and it did not. That was a reasonable but costly miscalculation that has deprived the world of more effective technologies available to confront agricultural challenges.

So I happily acknowledge Peter Coclanis’s point in this volume that industrial agriculture is highly productive and historically fueled the indus- trialization of the rest of the American economy. But the relentless drive toward productivity and the belief in technologically fueled progress has overshot its mark. Only 2% of the population now is engaged in commercial farming, yet the United States can feed itself many times over. The challenge in agriculture is no longer producing enough to feed ourselves, but what to do with our enormous agricultural overproduction. That’s why we devote huge swaths of fertile midwestern farmland to energy crops, not food crops.

But the intense focus on productivity and the faith in new technologies have had other important consequences as well, including environmental problems that are growing in magnitude. Toxic pollution of air and water, loss of soil fertility, production of climate gases, loss of pollinators, and the disruption of the nitrogen cycle and the destruction of coastal ecosystems can no longer be dismissed as mere externalities to be managed or ignored. Taken together, they are becoming existential threats to the planet.

Innovators have developed new sustainable systems of agriculture that can dampen threats to the environment without undermining productivity but they require a fundamental shift away from our current system based on enormous monocultures of a handful of crops. That move will require bold new ideas: reintegration of plant and animal agriculture, multiyear crop rota- tions, reducing our consumption of meat, and much else.

It won’t be easy. As Rachel Laudan lays out in her essay (chapter 13), agri- culture and food are complicated issues—environmentally, culturally, and economically. Coclanis underscores how a willingness to change has been an important element in the past success of U.S. agriculture. This is certainly true. Unfortunately, however, rather than chart a course for change, most

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of the current agricultural establishment has battened down the hatches, defending the status quo by belittling creative entrepreneurs like organic farmers. The biggest obstacles to the improvement of agriculture today are the inability to admit its environmental shortcomings and the failure to envi- sion fundamentally new ways of doing things.

Just a Tool in the Toolbox

Yet all is not lost. An accommodation to reality is under way. Many propo- nents of biotechnology have abandoned the early grand claims of a trans- formational technology and now modestly present GE as just a tool in the toolbox. The argument now is that because society faces momentous chal- lenges, we need every available tool to solve them; so, although not a panacea, GE is still important. And I agree, we do need all the tools in the toolbox. But we need to take seriously GE’s poor track record. Yes, GE is a tool, but the evidence shows it to be a limited one. Meanwhile, it is taking up most of the room in the box, pushing bigger and better tools to the side. Resources for agricultural research, extension, and trade promotion continue to go dis- proportionately to GE products.

If we are serious about taking on the challenges of burgeoning popu- lations, environmental degradation, and climate change, we need to make room for the big tools: classical breeding, marker-assisted breeding, and agroecology—and fund them commensurate with their importance. And we need help from the media to talk about the big tools. How about a front- page story in the New York Times on the contribution of classically bred crops in developing-country agriculture?

To be clear, in my view, GE crops do have a role in the future of agri- culture, but the role will be relatively small—primarily as niche products in the few areas where classical breeding falls short. Putting the cart of genetic engineering before the horse of sustainable systems has impeded society’s ability to produce sufficient food in a warming, polluted world. Our great- est progress will be made not by reflexively adopting new technologies but by choosing wisely from among the technologies available to us, especially those with proven track records of success.

Here We Go Again?

What then of the future of genetic engineering? I just said that I think GE should be a small tool in the agricultural toolbox, and I’ve tried to make it

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The Truth about Genetically Engineered Agriculture 31

clear that the transgenic techniques that drove the early biotechnology rev- olution are beginning to run out of steam. The combination of the technical challenges and the paucity of new useful proteins is putting a damper on the era of transgenes.

However, moving new genes into crops is not the only GE technique. The next wave of genetic engineering will probably be based less on adding new genes and more on editing and modifying the genes already in place in the target crops. These techniques are emerging from exciting new discov- eries about the elegant but complicated ways gene expression is controlled in cells.53 Scientists have learned that noncoding stretches of DNA can give rise to a variety of RNA molecules that determine which genes produce proteins and when. Double-stranded RNAs are key molecules in these pro- cesses, which have given rise to two general categories of techniques—gene silencing and gene editing. Gene silencing, or RNA interference (also called RNAi), turns genes off by inactivating or degrading messenger RNA mole- cules that code for proteins.54 Gene editing can snip into DNA and stimulate repair processes that introduce small or large changes in the DNA sequence at specific locations.55

The ability to produce changes at particular locations in DNA molecules offers a big advantage over techniques that insert new genetic material into chromosomes at random locations. Both editing and silencing have proven to be powerful research tools for deciphering the secrets of gene expres- sion and scientists are working diligently to employ them in agriculture and human medicine. Gene editing and gene silencing, however, have down- sides. They cannot restrict their snipping activities to the target site and often cause off-target effects.56 These are significant problems.

Nevertheless, the future of these techniques looks to be exciting, and once again we are hearing the siren song of new technologies that will change everything.57 This may well happen, and the possibility of new technologies able to address agricultural and health problems should be welcomed. But our experience with agricultural transgenesis should temper our enthusi- asm. This time around, we can no longer afford to be blinded by the light of promises and possibilities. Instead, we need to invest resources to understand and assess the risks and benefits of these new techniques. We also need to ask questions early on about whom the technologies benefit and what the alternatives are. Even if gene silencing can control a single pest, is it a better approach to pest management than crop rotation, which can control many pests? If gene editing and silencing are directed to agricultural productivity,

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will they deliver innate yield or stress tolerance any better than classical breeding or agroecology do?

Dealing with new technologies is a central challenge of modern life. We need to find the balance between the hype and enthusiasm that fuels innovation and the hard-nosed evaluation of risks, benefits, and especially alternatives. So, while I don’t call genetically engineered crops Frankenfood, neither do I call them the future.

Notes

In 2014, at the invitation of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center, I had the privilege of delivering a public lecture at North Carolina State University exploring the history debate around biotechnology in the United States. I welcomed the opportunity to reflect on issues I have worked on for most of my career. They have turned out to be more fundamental and far-reaching than I ever imagined when I first encountered them. This essay is adapted from that lecture.

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