Farmers have been breeding fruits, grains and vegetables for thousands of years to produce better-tasting, higher-yielding hybrids, but it wasn't until the 1970s that scientists used bioengineering to transfer genes from one organism to another, producing “genetically modified” crops.
When these genetically modified crops (GMOs) first hit store shelves in the 1990s, they were called Frankenstein foods. Resistance to GMO crops was based on the continuing public fear that they were harmful to human health, even though long-term studies have shown that eating GMO crops is just as safe as conventional crops.
Now in the 2020s, a new “genetic revolution” that allows plants to genetically “edit” DNA without incorporating genes from another organism is helping the biotech crop industry claim it can ensure food security for a world population approaching 10 billion by 2050.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), a consistent supporter of genetic engineering, says research into new varieties of rice, maize, wheat, potato and cassava, for example, would better help these important staples withstand extreme weather and “emerging climate-driven diseases” in a warming world.
The paper also points to emerging bioengineering techniques that could help plants and soils more effectively capture and store global-warming carbon from the atmosphere.
By optimizing photosynthesis, a US-based research project is helping staple plants such as corn and rice convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into energy more efficiently, improving crop yields and reducing atmospheric carbon.
“We have the knowledge and tools to usher in the next green revolution, enabling farmers to achieve the highest yields in human history this century,” says the Enabling Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency website, which has received some $115 million (107 million euros) in funding since 2012 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Biotech companies are developing new crop varieties that promise higher yields and resistance and mitigation of climate change. Image: Colourbox
Critics say industrial-scale GMOs perpetuate climate change
Many scientists and environmentalists don't buy the idea that genetically modified crops promise food security or help combat extreme droughts and floods caused by climate change that are devastating agriculture.
Anneleen Kennis, lecturer in political ecology and environmental justice at Brunel University London, told DW that the new GMOs will perpetuate “an agri-industrial system that is hugely responsible for the climate crisis.”
Currently, the food system produces about one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change, and in the United States, more than half of all harvested farmland is produced with genetically modified seeds.
Kennis's research argues that genetically modified crops often involve “large-scale monocultures” of only a few different crops, which also require large amounts of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation.
“This is a very energy-intensive system in terms of the inputs it requires to function. There is nothing sustainable about further intensifying this system,” the researchers said, adding that GMOs are driven by the same “agricultural giants” that control and profit from “large portions of the seed, food, pesticide and fertilizer markets.”
Kennis argues that so far the system has also failed to “feed large parts of the world's population.” According to the World Food Programme (WFP), at least 250 million people in around 60 countries suffer from crisis-level food insecurity.
Technology and Tradition: The Future of Agriculture – Eco India
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Activists Move to Ban GMOs
Similar criticism of GMOs was behind a successful campaign in the Philippines in April to suspend the production of GMOs golden rice and eggplant. Golden rice, which is partially genetically modified with corn protein to produce beta-carotene, which supplements vitamin A, was approved for cultivation in 2021.
The court enforced the ban based on “the need to protect the constitutional right to health and healthy ecosystems,” explained Lea Guerrero, country director of Greenpeace Philippines, which led the campaign.
The court found that “there is no scientific consensus on the safety or harmfulness of golden rice and eggplant,” Guerrero told DW.
But many Filipinos with vitamin A deficiency would die without access to the fortified rice, said Matin Kaim, a food economics expert and director of the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn in Germany, who is also on the Humanitarian Committee that advocates for genetically modified golden rice.
Rice is an important staple food in the Philippines and has been genetically modified to boost its vitamin content. Photo: Greenpeace/Ziggy Cruz-Chi
But Greenpeace's Guerrero argues the ban is a victory for crop diversity and ecosystem resilience over genetically modified crop monocultures that tend to benefit food and agriculture corporations such as Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina Syngenta and BASF, which control more than 60 percent of the global seed market.
Advocates support the GMO revolution
Jennifer Thomson, professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, is developing drought-tolerant genetically modified corn by adding genes from the “resurrection plant,” Xerophyta viscosa, which can survive up to 95 percent dehydration.
“There's a lot of controversy and it's still ongoing,” said Ms. Schneider, who has advised the World Economic Forum and the United Nations on GMOs for decades.
But in the context of South Africa's smallholder farmers, she believes bioengineered “pest-resistant” crops are “a godsend for farmers”.
Philippine rice farmers battle drought
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Australian scientists are spearheading a bioengineered cowpea production project that “embeds” the pest defences of cowpea, a legume that has been a staple food across Africa for millennia.
“Without pest resistance, in many cases the crop will not yield,” said Jennifer Thomson, adding that farmers in some Africa have doubled their yields by growing genetically modified maize.
Could non-GMO ecological crops also be a solution to food security?
Despite the growing promise of new GMOs, resistance to genetic engineering continues, as does skepticism: a 2020 poll found that roughly half of people around the world believe GMOs are unsafe to eat.
Greenpeace Philippines claims that local scientists are struggling to develop environmentally friendly non-GMO seeds, foods and nutritional systems for a warming world because, according to Lea Guerrero, “much of the research is backed by large agricultural biotechnology companies.”
Meanwhile, agricultural science researchers have pointed to flaws in a risk assessment of genetically modified cowpea developed by Australian researchers that has been approved for cultivation in Nigeria. They worry that the genetically modified plants produce toxins to protect them from pests, thereby reducing the need for pesticides, but that safety risks remain due to “enhanced toxicity.”
Thomson argues that consumers of GM maize in Africa have not raised any health concerns, while Annelene Kennis believes biotech companies are too often “playing the climate card”, even though most GM crops currently in development are not actually aimed at climate resilience.
Instead, they're developing fruit and vegetables that stay fresh over long distances, with one goal being to reduce climate-damaging food waste – but for Kennis, this benefit is offset by the high food miles and carbon footprint.
Sustainable and environmentally friendly crop alternatives should not only aim to “produce non-toxic food”, but also to foster “biodiverse soils” that can resist and mitigate climate change, she says.
Editor: Jennifer Collins
source:
“GMOS and Health,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, July 2022, https://www.fda.gov/media/135280/download
“From the Green Revolution to the Genetic Revolution: Technological Advances in Agriculture to Feed the World,” May 2022, https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/11/10/1297
“Explanation: How engineered crops can fight climate change” https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/engineered-crops-can-fight-climate-change/
