James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

November 19, 2009

This is Why It’s Important to Know What bt Stands For

Filed under: Feeding the world,Politics — Tags: , , , , , — James @ 7:23 am

We’ve been hearing more about India in the news lately. Along with the decision about whether or not to approve bt eggplants (brinjal), India is also debating a set of new biotechnology intellectual property laws. As I’ve said in the past India currently doesn’t recognize genetic patents, so anybody can breed transgenes into their own seeds and sell them. Of course the only legalized GE crop in India right now is cotton but as others are legalized, the same situation would apply.

I’ll admit I disagree with this quote:

Clinton said she favoured a strong intellectual property or patent regime (IPR) to safeguard the ownership of agricultural research, as that would be in ‘everyone’s interest’.

India is faced with the question of how best to balance protection for creators, to encourage biotech research, and the rights of farmers, to make sure they get the most possible benefit from that research. It is important to strike the right balance between the two, not just cater to the desires of one side of the other. It’s the same issue faced by every country when it comes to regulating everything from pharmaceutical research to the music industry.

And I have faith India will find the right balance. After all we’re talking about a country where cheap pirate copies of movies are available cheaply and easily on every street corner sometimes before movies even make it into theaters, yet Bollywood (the Indian film industry based in Mumbai) is quite profitable, turns out twice as many films as Hollywood, and is probably the only other national film industry, other than America’s, recognized around the world.*

So given all that could the people who write about the issue please PLEASE bother to look up what bt stands for? Case in point:

First, the Indian government has yet to greenlight the commercialisation of Bt brinjal — crucial for the future of these ‘Bt brand’ companies — even after a thumbs up from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC). … the MNCs who produce ‘Bt’ seeds, as genetically modified or GM crops have come to be popularly known (patents would ensure that no one else would be allowed to produce or sell these seeds).

*Off the top of my head I’d recommend Krrish and Salaam/Namaste as examples of entertaining movies Bollywood has put out recently, and Gol Maal as a hilarious one from several decades ago.

About the herbicide application report that’s floating around

I’m sure everyone who follows the genetic engineering debate has heard about the report from The Organic Center which lays a net increase in pesticide usage at the feet of genetically engineered crops. So I finally found a link to the report itself [warning pdf, also 69 pages]. I’m neither a statistician nor an agronomist (despite my awesome ISU hat which has exactly that slogan), so I’m not qualified to confirm or refute the numbers they put forward. Hopefully we’ll see more detailed analysis on that end from someplace like Biofortified or Sustainablog. I now have some analysis of the methodology of the report itself, tracked down by gntis on the biofortified forums. What I can do is given a bit of the broader context about the context of their numbers and what they don’t mean. This post will be in the following format:

  • The 318 million pounds in context
  • Chemicals are different
  • –Different Toxicity
  • –Different Persistance in the Environment
  • Herbicide resistant weeds
  • One trait vs a technology

318 Million Pounds in Context

Example tweet:

Pesticide use has skyrocketed by 318 million lbs (in last 13 years) with use of #GMO seeds!

Let’s put that number in perspective. (more…)

November 18, 2009

Biotech Wheat

Filed under: agriculture,Feeding the world — Tags: , , , , — James @ 12:12 pm

Nature Biotechnology has an article well worth checking out (if you have journal access anyway) about the story of biotech wheat. No genetically engineered wheat is commercially grown today, nor has it been in the past.  Monsanto came close to releasing an herbicide tolerant variety several years ago, but didn’t because of fear that American farmers would lose valuable markets for our wheat exports. I speculated that genetically engineered wheat runs into more consumer opposition because we eat more wheat in recognizable forms (mostly bread and pasta) than we do crops like corn, soybeans, and canola.

Anyway, two new developments seem to have prompted this article. (more…)

November 17, 2009

Dr. Gebisa Ejeta on Investing in Agriculture

I mentioned Doctor Gebisa Ejeta before when he won the world food prize for his work developing striga resistant sorghum breeds. This is a man who began life… well his own words can say it better than I can paraphrase:

I was born of illiterate parents with little means and raised in a small village without schools in west-central Ethiopia. An only child, I was nurtured with with lots of love, but on a diet less than adequate even for body maintenance, let alone for growth and intellectual development. … I was rescued by a godsend from the United State of America…

I took that quote from his testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign relations this past spring. It was a moving call to renew the international investments in agricultural research, and the training of plant scientists around the world, something the United State and the international community as a whole have let slide for the past two decades. The whole testimony is an excellent read (h/t to mary for pointing it out on the biofortified forums). If you have a few minutes, please take the time to read the whole thing here [pdf]. If you don’t, you surely have the time to read this single paragraph: (more…)

November 15, 2009

Indian Farmers

Filed under: agriculture,Feeding the world — Tags: , , — James @ 11:45 am

Over 60% of India’s workforce still works in the agricultural sector. Most are tenant farmers living in small villages, and a recent survey says a minimum of 40% of them would rather be doing something else rather than farming. At the same time the country is facing a looming crisis with as crop yields haven’t grown much since the green revolution, and population continues to. (more…)

November 13, 2009

Greenpeace offers marker assisted breeding

Greenpeace on Friday called on the International Rice Research Institute to abandon its genetic engineering program as the environmental activist group offers marker assisted breeding as a safe alternative to bioengineering.

Source.

Dear Greenpeace,

I would like to call upon you to abandon your campaign against genetic engineering and offer up an alternative priority your organization could focus on to the greater benefit of the world we all share: Fighting man-made global warming.

-James

Now you could argue greenpeace already is opposed to global warming. And you’d be right. They are. I guess my offering it to them looks pretty stupid doesn’t it?

The same could be said of greenpeace offering marker assisted selection to the plant breeding community that pioneered the technique and is taking full advantage of it, and has been for years in both the private and public sectors. Case in point: (more…)

November 12, 2009

Genetically Engineered Crops: Papaya

Photo Reeding, Flickr (Click for photo stream)

Photo Reeding, Flickr (Click for photo stream)

Scientific Name: Carica papaya

Genetically Engineered Trait: Resistance to the papaya ringspot virus

Details of Genetic Engineering:

In the 1990s papaya ringspot virus was in the process of wiping out the Hawaiian papaya industry, then the second largest fruit industry in Hawaii. Conventional approaches such as selective breeding for resistant papayas or attempting to grow trees in isolation had failed. The virus is transmitted by small sap-sucking insects such as aphids. Infected papaya trees can be recognized by the discolored rings on their fruit (that the virus gets its name from) yellow leaves, and most importantly from a papaya farmer’s perpsective a 60-100%* loss of fruit production. (more…)

November 5, 2009

Why Don’t People Like Corn?

Filed under: agriculture,Feeding the world — Tags: , , — James @ 4:13 am
My favorite crop, but many people don't seem to care for it these days.

My favorite crop, but many people don't seem to care for it these days.

I read an interesting question on the still growing thread on the problems with CSI: Miami’s “Bad Seed” episode.

Between this episode and some other stuff I’ve heard about corn, I started wondering what all the concern is about corn lately. … Can you now help shine some light on why the corn industry has been getting such a bad reputation lately? (more…)

October 29, 2009

Crops and Colbert

I love the Colbert Report, but could somebody who knows something about agriculture and plant genetics please sit down with Stephen Colbert until he knows what he’s talking about food wise? Every so often he’ll make these incredibly uneducated jokes about food production. It’s weird to be suddenly jerked out of enjoying the episode as I remember “These guys are comedians, not experts.”

Back in April he turned the debate about Michelle Obama’s organic garden into a crack at round-up ready soybeans. Yesterday*, in the middle of a funny bit about breeding people who might actually be able to get health insurance, we got the mocking:

After all, selective breeding and genetic modification have worked miracles for our fruits, vegetables and livestock.

Yes they really have. Let’s leave genetic engineering out of the mix (after all most people having eaten a genetically engineered fruit or vegetable in their lives, unless you’re a big fan of papayas, or certain kinds of squash, and genetic engineering of livestock is way behind where we are with plants). Selective breeding of plants over thousands of years is what feeds the wold today and has for millennia. Before the advent of agriculture, which was made possible by selective breeding to domesticate plants and animals, the world supported, what, 5-10 million hunter gatherers, spread across the entire face of the globe?

Without selective breeding of crops and livestock we wouldn’t have a civilization to begin with, let alone one advanced enough to have developed not only our complex (but good) system of medicine but also our complex (and not so good) medical insurance.

I’m serious, does anyone know if there’s a way to nominate people to be interviewed on the Colbert Report? I want to nominate Pamela Ronald and Roger Beachy.

*I have to catch the Daily Show and Colbert Report the day after  the fact on Hulu.

October 26, 2009

Time to Eat The Dog

Filed under: Feeding the world,Fun With Numbers — James @ 11:37 am

With a title like Time to Eat the Dog? A real guide to sustainable living you can sure a book will sell a lot of copies, and earn the authors a fair bit of hatemail at the same time. The book itself by Robert and Brenda Vale received mixed reviews on amazon.uk. But what about the premise of the book? (Which isn’t actually that dogs make great food sources, but rather that keeping carnivores as pets is a major resource burden.)

In an article on new scientist, the authors calculate that it takes .84 hectares (that’s over 2 acres!) of farmland to support a medium sized dog. Larger dogs like German Shepherds have a footprint of 1.1 hectares (2.7 acres)  Through some calculations they then start comparing the impact of a dog to various cars, but that hinges on assigning energy production values to farmland, which in my opinion is the weak link in their calculation.

So why not look at how dog ownership compares to the land required to feed a human being? (more…)

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