
Doubts About the Promised Bounty of Genetically Modified Crops - paublyrne
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=image&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1&login=facebook
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rmason
I remember a famous academic study in the nineties that questioned whether
PC's really produced any appreciable return on investment.

Course that would be so laughable today that no scientific journal would
publish it. This article is similar in quality. Got to give it to the anti GMO
folks they never give up, even after its clear that they've lost.

I worked in agriculture for over twenty years as an agronomist. I wasn't in an
ivory tower, I was on the ground walking farmers fields. My customers used
less insecticides with the introduction of GMO seed. They used much safer
herbicides. Farmers work in an extremely low margin business. They continued
to buy GMO seed because it made them more money. Farmers are the original
environmentalists and the use of GMO seed was cleaning their community.

In America we spend around 11% of our income on food. In Europe it's more than
double that number. In Europe a small but loud group of activists prevented
the adoption of GMO seed. They destroyed research crops so that tests could
never be completed on the efficacy of GMO seed.

[https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/11/bbc-
panora...](https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/11/bbc-panorama-
program-blasting-anti-gmo-activists-for-ignoring-science-underscores-turning-
point-on-gmo-reporting/)

Europeans also convinced a starving Zambia to reject the generous US gift of
life saving grain. Let people starve cause hypothetically something could be
bad for them is the height of hypocrisy.

[http://www.economist.com/node/1337197](http://www.economist.com/node/1337197)

If they [the environmentalists] lived just one month amid the misery of the
developing world, as I have for 60 years, they’d be crying out for
fertilizers, herbicides, irrigation canals and tractors and be outraged that
fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny them these things.

\- Norman Borlaug, inventor of the green revolution and winner of the 1970
Nobel Peace prize

~~~
Chathamization
> Europeans also convinced a starving Zambia to reject the generous US gift of
> life saving grain. Let people starve cause hypothetically something could be
> bad for them is the height of hypocrisy.

Zambia wasn't starving; as far as I can tell there was a regional famine,
while some areas were actually experiencing an above average output. According
to government sources the main issue was getting aid to affected areas inside
the country, not the inability of the government to procure food from other
countries.

I've tried to search for any evidence that anyone starved to death, but
couldn't find any. It's telling that when searching for info about the Zambia
famine, you mostly get articles talking about GMOs and can't find any (at
least I couldn't) talking about anyone who starved.

This is one of those topics where whenever it comes up you can usually expect
a ton of disinformation thrown about from all sides.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Look harder. Stunting means malnutrition; starvation is not the only outcome
of lack of food. "4) The prevalence of stunting in children - low growth for
age - is 40 percent."

[http://m.wfp.org/stories/10-facts-about-hunger-
zambia](http://m.wfp.org/stories/10-facts-about-hunger-zambia)

~~~
BurningFrog
Malnutrition in childhood also causes lower IQ for life.

------
Laforet
This is true if not somewhat misleading. Most commercial GMO crops do not
target yield but lessens the amount of effort required to maintain production.
Similar yields are readily achievable by throwing manpower and tons of
agrochemicals at it, however that is effectively a loss of productivity and
just as bad for the environment.

Ultimately one can only fit so many plants of maize on a single acre. What is
yet to come are GM crops that actually prove the efficiency of photosynthesis
and carbon fixing by directly engineering cellular biochemistry, making them
closer to the food factory mankind has been working towards for thousands of
years.

~~~
uuilly
You're spot on. You could use human labor to control weeds very effectively.
It would just be extremely expensive.

~~~
evan_
You could never hope to use human labor to control pests, though- and
certainly not blight.

------
shoyer
Criticism that GMOs have "not accelerated increases in crop yields" misses the
point. If you pick weeds by hand, even organic farming can have great yields!

Are GMOs making food cheaper to produce? The answer is almost certainly yes --
otherwise farmers wouldn't be buying the more expensive GMO seeds, which now
dominate the market for many crops.

Also, there are some crops (e.g., the Hawaiian papaya) that wouldn't even be
viable today without GMOs.

Disclaimer: I used to work for a company that was acquired by Monsanto.

~~~
analog31
Living in central Wisconsin, one runs into a few farmers. I've heard the
opinion on more than one occasion, that roundup ready corn & beans eliminate
having to control weeds by plowing them under, thus reducing cost, fuel use,
and soil runoff.

~~~
dbcurtis
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. With the current cost of fuel, and the razor
thin margins, minimizing trips over the field is the #1 way stay profitable.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Would electric tractors and combines change the equation substantially?

~~~
analog31
I'm not sure, because it's hard to guess whether the cost advantage of
electric cars is due to efficiency or subsidy. By the same process, one could
ask why they don't just run their tractors off of ethanol produced from their
crops.

But regardless of the energy source, an extra one or two passes across the
fields is going to be an added cost.

~~~
protomyth
I do wonder if electric cars paid a tax equivalent to the gas tax what would
the cost be?

Has anyone done the calculation? If a gallon of gas gets and average of X
miles across all cars then how much electricity is that to tax the same
amount? I'd be curious since I have strong privacy and persecution of poor
people objections to a mileage tax.

------
TillE
That's remarkable. Tons more pesticides and herbicides for no actual
improvement in crop yields.

Annoyingly, the NYT article focuses repeatedly on bullshit "health"
controversies, ignoring the actual reasons that GMOs are largely banned in the
EU - namely, their environmental risks. It's extremely strange how virtually
nobody on any side of the debate in America or in the media seems to be aware
of this.

~~~
dogma1138
There is no wide ban of GMO's in the EU there is an authorization process
(which isn't technically unique for GMO's any type of new crop or livestock
has to be approved) and most of them do get authorised, only a few GMO
products those which were engineered to produce biotoxins that can act as
pesticide are actually banned.

[http://ec.europa.eu/food/dyna/gm_register/index_en.cfm](http://ec.europa.eu/food/dyna/gm_register/index_en.cfm)

And before you go and post the 19 countries that "opted out", this doesn't
mean it's actually banned.

For example Germany has "GMO Free Zones" but they are still plenty of farmers
growing GMO's.

[http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo-free-
regions/germany.htm...](http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo-free-
regions/germany.html)

This isn't a process that would take a year or even two, it is likely to take
decades and in all honesty it's more likely to be reversed than expanded.

And more importantly since the GMO ban is effectively a ban only on
cultivation this is more of a step to protect and subsidise the farmers in the
EU rather than an ecological or public health related policy.

As long as the US, China and AfriChina (read about it) produces GMO crops and
exports them it wouldn't matter.

~~~
hammock
Environmental risk of GMOs is not limited to biotoxins. I imagine parent
commenter was mostly referring to the impact of Roundup, a synthetic pesticide
used in GMO crops.

~~~
dogma1138
You do understand that normal crops require at the least as much pesticide and
herbicide as GMO's right?

The environmental impact is monoculture and even that isn't exclusive to GMO's
and the real one that effectively the farmers have to give in to the demands
of the seed companies and they often are forced to sign exclusivity deals for
their fields.

~~~
hammock
_> You do understand that normal crops require at the least as much pesticide
and herbicide as GMO's right?_

Doesn't sound like you read the article. Suggest you do. Here is a
supplementary source as well.

A paper published in the peer-reviewed Environmental Sciences Europe found
that overall, GMO technology drove up herbicide use by 527 million pounds, or
about 11 percent, between 1996 (when Roundup Ready crops first hit farm
fields) and 2011. By 2011, farms using Roundup Ready seeds were using 24
percent more herbicide than non-GMO farms planting the same crops.[1]

[1][http://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2190-4715...](http://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2190-4715-24-24)

------
slacka
> "Monsanto pitched them as a way to curb the use of its pesticides. “We’re
> certainly not encouraging farmers to use more chemicals,” a company
> executive told The LA Times in 1994..."Figures from the United States
> Department of Agriculture show herbicide use skyrocketing in soybeans, a
> leading G.M. crop, growing by two and a half times in the last two decades"

As a child, I dreamed that I would grow up to a world where genetically
modified organisms were the key to sustainable agriculture. We could have
plants that eliminated the need for petroleum based fertilizers by enriching
the soil like clover does and that are resistant to disease and insects.
Instead we get Monsanto. Where they’ve turned large tracks of fertile land
into a barren, sterile wasteland that can only grow their GMO crops. And lie
to us about their GMO's reducing the use of chemicals.

It's a shame Monsanto has abused the potential of GMO to boost profits by
selling more chemicals instead of using it for good.

~~~
witty_username
> Where they’ve turned large tracks of fertile land into a barren, sterile
> wasteland that can only grow their GMO crops.

Source?

> It's a shame Monsanto has abused the potential of GMO to boost profits by
> selling more chemicals instead of using it for good.

Is it wrong to sell more chemicals?

------
spikels
I'm not sure we should get our science from the UN. It's a political
institution. Take with a grain of salt. I'm sure the relative yields of GMO vs
non-GMO crops is a well studied topic. What's the consensus? Or is it simply
too political to even do objective research in this area. Not a good
situation.

~~~
kristopolous
So how would you test this? Have two fields with different crops? Wind and
insects lead to contamination.

...so two greenhouses. There are many ways to deal with things like soil
enrichment, what's considered a pest and what's considered a weed. Some think
that a consortium of specific "pests" and "weeds" if managed "properly" are
net beneficial for instance.

There's different ways to water crops, rotate them, and the levels of
biodiversity for a given acre over some time. There's climate differences by
location and year, multigenerational effects not only on the plant but the
soil, the insects...

How do you measure yield? What if there's 10% more product but the labor
intensive expensive harvesting season in 30% longer... What if the gmo crops
come out a different size, or aesthetically different, or having different
shelf life, or different characteristics with regard to bruising and shipment
or a different ratio of edible to non edible parts... What if there's the same
average but a different variance?

Now let's presume you have all of that and one multibillion dollar company
claims their patented seeds are better through a very expensive trial run.

Who funds the confirmations or the counter studies? What money is backing the
non proprietary strains?

What about climatological and ecological externalities? Perhaps there's a
carbon sequestration difference or toxicity not in an insect that come in
contact but with the creatures that eat those insects...

If the fundamental claim is "this is better and is how we should feed billions
of people; deploy this single strain globally at a massive scale..." Maybe
it's OK.

------
Pica_soO
The problem is with the ease of use. If you can apply roundup all-around the
season, you do so. And if you do, some undesirable plants will survive, hidden
out of sight. These will adapt and thus, genetically modified crops "breed"
multi-pesticide resistant weeds.

In the traditional approach to farming this did happen only seldom, because
the times when pesticides were applied, are severely limited. And if resistant
weeds where encountered, a change of the grown culture and apply of broad-band
pesticides could eliminate them.

TL,DR; Genetically Modified Crops grow resistant weeds that drastically reduce
the harvest.

~~~
Retric
Pesticide resistance is much harder to develop and spread than Antibiotic
resistance. Vastly smaller populations and much longer reproduction means
plants adapt/evolve much less quickly. Further, lack of horizontal gene
transfer means each species needs to evolve resistance independently.

~~~
Pica_soO
Yes and yes. But you have a Million dices, being rolled every year, and some
of those dices are loaded with sloppy applied, diluted, pesticides. And once
the Weed is in existence, it can rely on transfer by car, truck and train.

The problem is not the GMO are not financial viable (they are, as long as
there are no resistant weeds), the problem in my point of view are not health
risks (though some of the in abundance used pesticides are on the carcinogenic
watch list here in the EU)- the problem is the same with developing
antibiotics. You do, and everyone and his dog uses it for minor injuries,
resulting in a fast resistance. Meaning, this whole genetically engineering is
a constant uphill game against statistics.

------
uuilly
GMO + broadcast applied herbicides is a long term loser. For years cotton
growers in the South Eastern US applied Round Up from planes. The chemical
would dissipate on its way down and apply half doses to weeds. Some of these
weeds could metabolize the Round Up while others would die. But the next year
all that was left were the weeds that had some resistance. They bred w/ e/o
and on it went. The annual selective pressure has created some pretty
impressive weeds, most notably Palmer Amaranth. Growers I've talked to say,
"Round up just pisses it off." It can grow over an inch a day, it has over a
million seeds in its bud and once it has grown past 4 inches, no selective
chemical can kill it. You can kill 98% of it one year and its population will
be bigger the next year. Once you get an Amaranth population, you more or less
can't get rid of it. It's a one way ratchet. As such, Palmer Amaranth is
spreading.

The Dicamba story is quite interesting. Monsanto is selling Dicamba resistant
seeds even though the chemical is not approved for use on those crops. As
Dicamba is approved for other uses, growers can buy the Dicamba ready seeds
and illegally apply it. Dicamba is finicky. In many weather conditions it
volatilizes and drifts to a neighboring farm. If the neighbor doesn't have
Dicamba ready seeds, he could lose his crop and have very little legal
recourse. Today two growers got in a dispute about Dicamba drift and one shot
and killed the other. The drift problem is forcing growers that don't use
Dicamba to buy Dicamba resistant seeds as a defense mechanism. It's pretty
nuts. I feel like the herbicide resistant weed problem is like a "Global
Warming that nobody knows about."

More interesting is the fact that it takes decades to produce a gene /
chemical pairing and get it approved for use. The weeds evolve faster than the
GMO / chemical companies' ability to deliver new products.

The startup I work for, Blue River Technology, is going after this problem. We
make machines that detect the crop, detect the weeds and apply non-selective
chemicals to just the weeds. Because we target selectively we can use non-
systemic, contact herbicides will kill resistant weeds no matter what. The
grower saves on chemicals, put orders of magnitude less poison in the ground
and gets better weed control.

The problems w/ this article are numerous. The guy clearly spent more time
looking at UN stats than he did walking the fields and talking w/ growers.
Somehow he missed the rather obvious fact that GMO + roundup is more cost
effective regardless of yield. Regardless, he brought up some interesting
points and I'd rather be talking about it than not.

\-- Disclaimer -- The company I work for is partially funded by both Monsanto
and Syngenta. Not that anything I said is defending the status quo :)

~~~
mrfusion
Why use chemicals at all in your robots? Why not mechanical means like
punching them into the soil?

Microwaves might also be an interesting approach. We should chat.

~~~
uuilly
The main reason to avoid any sort of mechanical kill is time. Even if you
could deploy and retract a puncher in 100 ms, you'd travel 10 inches during
that time. The slowest operation in row crops is about 6mph. Same principle
applies to microwaves & lasers. All require time over the target. Chemicals
are nice b/c they do their work after your machine leaves and its easy to get
a solenoid that opens and closes in 5ms.

There are other issues w/ exploding seed head making the problem worse and w/
making reliable complex moving parts in the horrible ag environment.

Happy to chat. Contact in profile.

------
7sigma
Kevin folta breaks down the flaws in the article pretty well:

"1\. No genes for yield were ever installed. The current suite of biotech
traits were not meant to improve yields, they were made to ensure yields. In
other words, they help ag producers farm with lower costs, fewer insecticides,
improved weed control and virus resistance in some cases. Same yield at lower
cost = better for farmers."

[https://kfolta.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/rehashing-tired-
argume...](https://kfolta.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/rehashing-tired-
argument.html?m=1)

------
droithomme
Shun the unbeliever. Shun him.

------
atomical
The article says that their research found "genetic modification in the United
States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields." Yields have
been on an upward trend for 50+ years.

~~~
adriand
Did you read the article? The measurement is against places that do not use
GMOs. Nowhere does it say there has been no absolute increase in yields.

> An analysis by The Times using United Nations data showed that the United
> States and Canada have gained no discernible advantage in yields — food per
> acre — when measured against Western Europe, a region with comparably
> modernized agricultural producers like France and Germany.

------
twinkletwinkle
I'm not going to comment for or against GMOs or whatever. But can we all take
a minute to appreciate the staggering stupidity of the CEO of Monsanto saying:

"Every farmer is a smart businessperson, and a farmer is not going to pay for
a technology if they don’t think it provides a major benefit"

This is a) obviously more marketing than anything, pandering to his customers
b) Demonstrably false. It's simply untrue that every farmer is a smart
businessperson. c) Besides the point. What the farmers "think" is not the same
as what's real.

~~~
Laforet
Back when GMO soy was banned in Brazil, farmers simply banded together and
paid smugglers to bring seeds from neighboring Argentina. If the benefits were
not so immediate I doubt they'd bother to break the law.

~~~
cfmcdonald
Right now there are people going to lots of trouble to smuggle rhino horns for
use as an aphrodisiac. If the benefits were not so immediate I doubt they'd
bother to break the law.

~~~
Oletros
A wrong analogy is still a wrong analogy.

