Oct 22, 2013 (4 years and 6 months ago)



Manjula V. Guru & James E. Horne

Crop genetic diversity is not just a raw material for industrial agriculture; it is the
key to food security, and sustainable agriculture because it enables farmer=s to
adapt crops suited to their own site specific ecological needs and cultural traditions.
Without this diversity, options for long term sustainability and agricultural self -
reliance is lost. The type of seed sown to a large extent determines the farmers need
for fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. Communities that lose community bred
varieties and indigenous knowledge about them, risk losing control of their farming
systems B thereby restricting their markets - and becoming dependent on outside
sources to satisfy those needs, and for the inputs needed to grow and protect them.
reliance in agriculture is impossible. In this paper the advantages, disadvantages,
and concerns associated with the loss of biodiversity and the advent of the
biotechnological age are explored.

KEY WORDS: Biotechnology; Diversity; Genetic; Sustainability.


1.1 Background.1.1 Background.
One of the newest developments in US agriculture is the advent of biotechnology,
which seems to be leading us into a sudden new biological revolution. It has brought us to
the brink of a world of "engineered" products that are derived from the natural world rather
than on chemical and industrial processes. The term "biotechnology" was coined in 1919 by
Karl Ereky, a Hungarian engineer. At that time, the term meant all the lines of work by
which products are produced from raw materials with the aid of living organisms. Ereky
envisioned a biochemical age similar to the stone and iron ages.

1.2 Objective of this paper.1.2 Objective of this paper.
Genetic engineering is now bringing to agriculture novel varieties of crops, animals,
and microorganisms. It offers many potential benefits in medicine, industry and

Manjula V. Guru & James E. Horne, The Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Inc., P.O. Box 588,
Hwy. 271 South, Poteau, Oklahoma, USA B 74953,


agriculture. The biotechnology industry touts these products as a major contribution
toward sustainable agriculture, but it is not clear whether agriculture will in fact benefit.
This paper therefore looks into the risks as well as benefits of biotechnology.


2.1 The two sides of the same coin.2.1 The two sides of the same coin.
Biotechnology has been described as "Janus-faced." This implies that there are two
sides. On one, techniques allow DNA to be manipulated to move genes from one organism
to another. On the other, it involves relatively new technologies whose consequences are
untested and should be met with caution. Many traditional biotechnologies are
uncontroversial, such as the fermentation of microorganisms to produce wine, beer, and
cheese. But genetic engineering, a powerful new technology that involves the artificial
transfer of genes across species lines, has provoked intense public interest and scrutiny.
Despite its many benefits, genetic engineering has caused concern among some people.
Some oppose genetic engineering because they fear that harmful, uncontrollable bacteria
might be produced accidentally. Others worry about possible environmental damage by the
deliberate introduction of organisms whose heredity has been altered.
In addition, some

2.2 Environmental and ecological consequences. 2.2 Environmental and ecological consequences.
Thousands of different and genetically distinct varieties of our major food crops owe
their existence to thousands of years of evolution and to careful selection and improvement
by our farmer ancestors. This diversity protects the crop and helps it adapt to different
environments and human needs. The potato, for instance, originated in the Andes, but can
be found today growing below sea level behind Dutch dikes, or high in the Himalayan
mountains. One variety of rice grows in 7.5 meters of water, while another survives on just
60 centimeters of annual rainfall. Today, much of this diversity is being lost.



Many unique varieties are disappearing and becoming extinct. The FAO estimates
crops have been lost.
Maintaining distinct strains of agricultural crops is important
because these strains may contain genes useful in the continuing fight against pests and
diseases, even those strains with overall characteristics that may not be attractive

Industrialized agriculture favors genetic uniformity. Vast areas are typically planted
and diseases. A pest or disease that strikes one plant spreads quickly thoughout the crop.
The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s is a dramatic example of the dangers of genetic
uniformity. Potatoes originated in the Andes mountains of South America. In the 1500s,
when New World potatoes were introduced into Europe, none of the introduced varieties
were resistant to a fungus that struck Ireland's potato crop in the 1840s. When the disease
struck, the potato crop was wiped-out. Over 1.5 million people died in the famine. The
potato blight is not merely an historical footnote in a long list of crop epidemics. The same
fungus, in new and more virulent forms, today poses a grave threat to food security. In
1970, genetic uniformity in the United States maize crop was responsible for destroying
almost $1 billion worth of US maize, and reducing yields by as much as 50%. The problem
was that over 80% of the commercial maize varieties being grown in the United States at
that time carried a gene that made them genetically susceptible to a virulent disease known
as southern leaf blight. Further catastrophe in maize was averted due to intensive breeding

In China, for example, nearly 10,000 wheat varieties were cultivated in 1949. By the 1970s, only about
1,000 varieties were in use. In Mexico, genetic erosion of maize is well documented. Only 20% of the maize
varieties reported in 1930 are now known in Mexico. [].


The epidemic and its consequences for food security drew worldwide attention to the
problem of genetic vulnerability in major food crops. For this reason, scientists involved in
genetic engineering have developed safety guidelines to guard against accidental release of
such organisms.
It should be borne in mind that bioengineered crops could have
unpredictable social, economic, and ecological consequences. Traditional crop breeding
programs have relied on the time element to determine if a cultivar will be useful under
various environmental conditions such as drought, high rainfall and pest challenges.
Biotechnology and the companies pursuing the life sciences are in a race for profits without
adequate testing and again the time element prevails. There is a strong possibility that
genetically engineered crops could be important to the sustainability of agriculture if they
are developed ethically, for the public good, and we understand ramifications. But that may
not be the case if the technology is primarily promoted for short-term economic gain. There
are two issues that need consideration in this aspect: (1) Who is profiting from the current
wave of "biogenic" crops? (2) Are there unintended ecological impacts?

Problems can arise, as in 1997, when thousands of acres of supposedly Roundup-
resistant cotton were killed in Mississippi by the herbicide. Monsanto says it has reached
settlements with two dozen farmers. Furthermore, glyphosate drift could affect plants
outside fields. And the advent of Roundup-resistant poplar trees has raised the specter of
vast tracts of diverse northern forests being converted to huge monocultures. To some
extent, plants can transfer pollen B and genes -- to related plants. That creates the potential
for transferring inserted genes from the crop to other plants. The idea got a boost when
Norman Ellstrand, a professor of genetics at the University of California, Riverside, showed
that weeds hybridized with radish plants in 1994. The problem traits could include
herbicide and insect resistance, and tolerance to cold, drought or salinity.

1999 World Book. Multimedia Encyclopedia.


Among the problems that researchers and regulators face with regard to
bioengineered seeds is that continual exposure to Bt proteins in bio-engineered crops will
result in selection for new strains of insects that can withstand the bacteria's toxic proteins.
To counteract this problem, seed companies are asking farmers to plant a small portion of
their fields, sometimes as little as 4%, with standard seeds to create a refuge for Bt-
susceptible insects. The hope is that the rare Bt-resistant insects that survive feeding on Bt
crops will mate with Bt-susceptible insects in the refuge and that the Bt susceptibility trait
will predominate in their offspring. Computer models predict that, without such refuges, Bt
resistance will be widespread within ten years. If refuges are used, however, more than 50
years might pass before Bt resistance becomes a major problem.

Another issue is that genes for Bt or for herbicide resistance could be passed, via
cross-pollination, to related weed species. Such cross-pollination is a normal mechanism in
plant evolution. Many plant species produce fertile hybrids, and genes have regularly moved
between crops and their wild and weedy relatives. Thus resistance to a particular herbicide
may appear in some strains of weeds. Furthermore, an engineered organism may produce
unanticipated harmful impacts on other species in its new environment.
A group of scientists at Oregon State University, for example, engineered a variety
of Klebsiella planticola, a bacteria known to reside in the soil and contribute to the
decomposition of plant material. Their goal was to engineer a product that would efficiently
convert agricultural wastes to ethanol fuel. Although the project was successful in meeting
this goal, the scientists discovered in late stages of testing that the new product also
destroyed much of a beneficial mycorrhizal fungus essential to the recycling of nitrogen
through plant roots -- which could lead to desertification throughout the range of use of the

2.3 Possible human impact.2.3 Possible human impact.
Biodiversity and species integrity is inextricably linked. Transgenic technology
transgresses both species integrity and species boundaries, leading to unexpected, systemic
effects on the physiology of the transgenic organisms produced as well as the ecological



community into which the transgenic organism is introduced. Allergenic and toxic products
have arisen in transgenic organisms and recent evidence suggests that transgenic resistance
to pests and diseases may be associated with increased allergenicity.



Recent evidence also suggests that vectors carrying transgenes may spread
horizontally via microorganisms, animals and human beings in an uncontrolled and
uncontrollable manner. The teeming microbial populations in the terrestrial and aquatic
environments serving as a horizontal gene transfer highway and reservoir, facilitate the
multiplication and recombination of vectors and infection of all plant and animals species.

It has already been seen that genetic engineering of crops can backfire. For example, an
effort to insert a protein-producing gene from a Brazil nut into soybeans was short-
circuited when people who were allergic to the nuts showed an allergic reaction to the beans
in skin and blood tests.
Pioneer Hi-Bred International
, the seed company which had sponsored the tests
as a way to create a high-protein soy feed for animals, decided not to proceed with further
development of this product since there was no easy way to completely exclude these
soybeans from human food processing and distribution system, according to Rod Townsend,
the company's director of regulatory affairs. He notes that the soybeans never entered
production, and never entered the human food chain. Yet as more genes are transferred
across more species lines, without any requirement for warning labels, such problems could
become more common. An estimated 2% of adults and eight percent of children have food
allergies, which can be deadly.



between 1993 and 1997. And Horizontal gene transfer can effectively create new LMOs
across national boundaries. It is a runaway process that cannot be regulated. This makes it
paramount to control what is released in the first place.

2.4 Imminent impacts on the farming communities.2.4 Imminent impacts on the farming communities.
key to food security and sustainable agriculture because it enables farmers to adapt crops
suited to their own ecological needs and cultural traditions. Without this diversity, options
for long-term sustainability and agricultural self-reliance are lost. The type of seed sown to
a large extent determines the farmers need for fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation.
Communities that lose community-bred varieties and indigenous knowledge about them risk
and the inputs needed to grow and protect them. Without an agricultural system adapted to
a community and its environment, self-reliance in agriculture is impossible. Genetic
engineering techniques have made possible the extension of the private ownership and
patenting of life forms down to the level of the gene. The new patenting and intellectual
property regulations will permit corporations to continue to freely appropriate unpatented
seeds from around the world, to modify a single gene of these seeds, and then patent and
acquire exclusive rights over them.
These new patenting laws are clearly designed to transfer the ownership and control
of the world's seed diversity - most of which has been developed and maintained by
traditional farmers in the Third World B into the hands of First World corporations.



Meanwhile, seed/biotech corporations have been buying out or taking control of seed banks
and smaller seed companies in order to reduce the availability of unpatented and non-hybrid
seed varieties. It is in the interests of these corporations that farmers repurchase these
patented seeds year after year.



There are two strategies now being used to prevent farmers from being able to save
and replant their seeds from the previous year's crop. Firstly, seeds may be engineered to be
biologically sterile, like the hybrid seeds of the Green Revolution. Hybrid seeds produce high
yields but do not perform well if they are saved and replanted, ensuring that farmers
repurchase their seeds every year. Genetic engineering now makes possible the creation of
hybrid varieties of some common food crops that had previously proven too difficult or too
costly to hybridize using earlier plant breeding techniques. It will also be possible for
scientists to deliberately engineer any crop variety to be sterile or non-reproducible. This
technique, which critics refer to as 'Terminator Technology', has been patented in the USA,
and will be used to target important crops such as wheat and rice. In these ways, the logic
of 'planned obsolescence', and therefore the interests of the corporation, will be able to be
engineered directly into the seed's DNA.

Secondly, all patented seeds will now be legally sterile, as the new patenting and
plant breeding regulations give patent holders rights which enable them to prohibit farmers
from freely saving and replanting their seeds. Farmers either have to repurchase their
seeds, or pay royalties to the company to save and replant patented seeds. To help enforce
these regulations, new DNA 'finger-printing' techniques can be used to identify the genetic
structure, and therefore the ownership, of crops growing in any farmer's fields. For the first
time in history farmers are losing both the ability and the right to save and replant their
seeds. Yet it is these very practices of saving, replanting and crossbreeding seeds by farmers
that have created the enormous diversity of domesticated crops and crop varieties we have
inherited to this day.

2.5 Increasing dependence of the h2.5 Increasing dependence of the have ave -- nots on the haves. nots on the haves.
One of the consequences of the non-reproducibility of these 'static' seeds is that plants
will no longer be able to dynamically evolve within and maintain their adaptation to local
agroecological conditions, such as local climates, soils and pests. Through these processes
the seed is transformed from a self-generating and shared resource into a commodified



input of an industrialized production system. These biotechnological interventions can also
be understood as further extending the colonization and commodification of the seed.
Techno-industrial agriculture colonizes the seed in the sense that it penetrates into and
takes control of the functioning of the seed, and imposes its own logic upon it - the logic of
accelerated productivity, in-built obsolescence, and private-corporate ownership. The seed is
commodified in two senses: first, in the sense that farmers must pay for a product that they
formerly attained from the plant at no cost; and secondly, in the sense that farmers are no
longer involved in the reproduction of the seed, and therefore are not able to shape the
character of it, and are instead delivered a ready-made, pre-packaged product. In these
ways, farmers will become more dependent on the agribusiness corporations that supply the
seeds and other agricultural inputs. Genetic engineering therefore makes possible the
further growth and centralization of control of the food sector in the hands of transnational
food corporations. In this sense, genetic engineering does not so much constitute a more
precise control over nature, as make possible a more precise control over farmers. It is not
only biological processes, but also social structures and power relations that are being re-
engineered through this new technology.

Proponents of the new biotechnologies typically claim that the new seeds and
techniques will be essential for feeding a growing global population. But of course hunger
and malnutrition even today are not the result of food scarcity. Rather they are due to
people being denied access to land to grow food or an adequate income with which to
purchase food. Global hunger already exists on a wide scale in the context of a global over-
supply of food. Much of this excess food (one third of all global grain production) is wasted
by being fed to livestock during their last four months to produce a choice beef for those of
us able to afford it. Genetic-industrial agriculture will, in fact, most likely exacerbate global
poverty and malnutrition given the way it will favor large-scale producers over small
producers and undermine local agricultural markets. In this sense, techno-industrial
agricultural systems directly create food scarcity for many people given the way they



transform the culture and structures of food production, distribution and demand, even if
they increase the overall volume of food produced globally in the short term.



Farmers that are already locked into the techno-industrial system will find it
difficult to avoid the adoption of any new seeds or inputs that increase the 'productivity' of
their farms, regardless of how narrow, short-term and ecologically degrading these
'productivity increases' are. Farmers otherwise risk being priced out of the market due to
the downward pressure on prices that result from increased levels of output. It is small-
scale Third World farmers whose livelihoods have been most seriously affected by such
dynamics. The new biotechnologies also present a further threat to farmers where new
tissue culture techniques are used to manufacture industrial substitutes for agricultural
crops. For example, the development of artificial sweeteners replaces the need for sugar-
cane crops, thereby reducing their demand and further depressing prices. Other crops that
are currently threatened by industrial substitutes include cocoa and vanilla. Third World
communities and countries that have been forced into dependency upon these cash crops are
the hardest hit by this form of substitutionism.

Another threat is where GE accelerates the trend of substituting crops with
industrial systems based on cell culture. Corporate giants would control biosynthetic food
factories. Farmers and consumers would have little choice over what is produced.
Supplementing these factories would be contract-controlled farming, the altered states
Genetic-industrial agriculture will enable seed-chemical corporations to extend their
control over farmers and over the entire industrial food chain.

2.6 Lack of preventive research.2.6 Lack of preventive research.

So far, scientists have identified a number of ways in which genetically engineered
organisms could potentially adversely impact both human health and the environment.
Once the potential harms are identified, the question becomes how likely are they to occur.
The answer to this question falls into the arena of risk assessment. In addition to posing
risks of harm that we can envision and attempt to assess, genetic engineering may also
pose risks that we simply do not know enough to identify. The recognition of this


possibility does not by itself justify stopping the technology, but does put a substantial
burden on those who wish to go forward to demonstrate benefits.
In developing new products, scientists take plant samples from the field to the
laboratory, where the simple act of moving a single gene from one spot to another within a
cell - whether or not it causes an actual variation in the next generation, creates a "plant
variety" deemed sufficiently "new" to qualify as a patentable invention. In most cases, such
genetic engineering experiments produce nothing worthwhile. In a few cases, the variations
have desirable traits that can be reproduced and marketed. The emphasis on finding and
isolating plants with the most marketable traits leads to the decline of other plant species,
as only those required to create the new techno-varieties are cultivated. In the U.S. alone,
the focus on commercial varieties has already led to the loss of many varieties of plants in
seed bank storage. A survey of U.S. seed banks showed that some varieties of non-
commercial crops such as chufas, martynia and rampion have been lost entirely.

Commercial pressures have led to regulatory guidelines based largely on untested
mouse cell genome.

2.7 Inadequate rules and regulations.2.7 Inadequate rules and regulations.

Risk assessments can be complicated. Because even rigorous assessments involve
numerous assumptions and judgment calls, they are often controversial when they are used
to support particular government decisions. Under the current US regulatory framework
for biotechnology, some sort of risk assessment is routinely produced before decisions to


allow commercialization of products under the Federal Plant Pest Act; the Federal
Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA); and the Toxic Substances Control
Act (TSCA). In the case of the Plant Pest Act, risk assessments are done according to the
procedure specified by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These risk
assessments could lead to full blown environmental impact statements, but so far all
evaluations of engineered agricultural organisms have led to the legal conclusion that no
environmental impact statement is needed.

3.1 Conclusion.3.1 Conclusion.
For the most part, scientists and policymakers in the relevant agencies (USDA or
EPA) do risk assessments with information provided by the companies seeking the
approvals. The public often has a brief opportunity to review and comment on the risk
assessments. There is no standard set of questions that risk assessments must answer
because of the great range of potential impacts of biotechnology products. A risk
assessment for a microbial pesticide, for example, would be substantially different from a
risk assessment for genetically engineered salmon. Like all efforts at risk evaluation, risk
assessments done for regulation depend on the base of scientific knowledge for generation of
list of possible harms to be assessed.

3.2 3.2 Suggestion.Suggestion.
Therefore, a new set of rules and regulations should be developed, implemented and
impartially enforced with respect to all genetically modified products on the basis of a risk B
benefit approach.