Bioengineered Crops on Shaky Ground
The corn in this rooftop greenhouse bites back.
Although it looks and tastes ordinary, it can kill one of its most persistent pests, a fat brown worm called the corn borer. Its secret weapon: Each cell of the corn contains a protein that causes corn borers’ guts to explode. One bite and boom, the worm is history.
It’s natural pest control.
Except there’s nothing natural about corn endowed with that particular protein. Scientists at Monsanto here in suburban St. Louis lifted the pest-zapping protein from a type of soil bacteria, then inserted it into thousands of varieties of corn.
Farmers, for the most part, welcome this technology.
Increasingly, however, they’re wary of using it.
Not because they worry that bioengineered food is dangerous. But because they fear the public might jump to that conclusion--and might turn down their crops come harvest time.
Already, executives at Frito-Lay Inc., Seagram Co., Gerber Products Co. and H.J. Heinz Co. have announced they will not use genetically modified crops in their products. Vandals protesting the technology, meanwhile, have trashed research labs from California to Maine. On Friday, it was learned that the Clinton administration plans to seek a ban on genetically engineered grains in any food labeled organic. Toss in noisy overseas protests against “Frankenstein foods”--rejected not only by the European Union but also by Japanese breweries and a Mexican tortilla maker--and it’s clear the market is far from settled.
So as growers across the nation finalize seed orders for their spring planting they face an agonizing conundrum.
Corn, soybeans, cotton and potatoes enhanced with alien genes have yielded excellent harvests in all sorts of climates. They can make it easy to control weeds and pests. They can slash the use of chemical sprays. And by eliminating the need to churn fields to kill weeds, they can even help prevent erosion.
Which makes it all the more frustrating for farmers to pass up biotech seeds on the chance that the public backlash might mount.
“Growers’ instincts tell them [the modified crops] are a better product,” said Doug Robinson, a seed salesman from Waterloo, Neb. “But they feel very much caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
Take Lonnie Shelton, a small-scale farmer in northwestern Illinois.
Last year he planted biotech soybeans--and loved them. They were pumped up with a gene normally found in soil bacteria that renders the herbicide Roundup ineffective. So Shelton could spray his whole field with Roundup, knowing he’d kill the weeds without harming the beans. It was quick, cheap and efficient. Shelton was so pleased, he planned to branch out into biotech corn this spring.
Then he started hearing rumblings.
Shoppers were demanding labels: If their corn was tricked up with bacteria genes, by gosh, they wanted to know.
Grain elevator operators were hemming and hawing: They would probably accept biotech crops come fall, but then again, maybe they wouldn’t.
And activists everywhere were pounding out warnings that genetic engineering is a scary new world with unforeseeable consequences.
“The molehill became a mountain all at once,” Shelton said.
So he changed course, reluctantly but fully. He won’t be planting any biotech this spring. “I wish I could,” he said. “I think it’s the greatest thing we’ve ever had. But is the public going to want it?”
Such equivocation--often repeated on the corporate level-- naturally drives biotech advocates nuts.
“If I hear one more company like Frito-Lay or Gerber say: ‘We really like this technology, but we’re not going to use it in our products,’ I’m going to throw up,” said Dean Urmston, vice president of the American Seed Trade Assn.
In truth, however, it’s unclear how much effect farmers like Shelton--or even corporations like Frito-Lay--are having on the biotech market.
True, the number of acres planted in genetically modified crops will not zoom upward this season, as it has every year since the technology was introduced in 1996.
True too, many farmers who are planting biotech do so with trepidation. (Even the bankers who finance them are worried. In a recent federal survey of Midwest ag lenders, 28% acknowledged reservations about backing purchases of gene-altered seeds.)
Nonetheless, the technology remains astoundingly popular.
Bioengineered crops last year covered nearly 72 million acres in the United States, and Monsanto predicts that figure will hold steady this season. Outside the U.S., about 16 million acres are planted with bioengineered crops, according to Monsanto. Farmers in regions that export heavily to Europe may be backing away from the technology. But those who suffered through insect infestations last summer are clamoring for seeds engineered to kill pests.
“Growers have to be concerned about the market,” concludes Mike Yost, who is mixing conventional and genetically modified crops on his farm in central Minnesota. “But there’s no reason to panic.”
The way Yost looks at it, so much of the U.S. grain harvest is biotech that processors can’t get by without it. So it’s bound to sell sooner or later, even if at a discount. Indeed, genetically modified hybrids last year accounted for two-thirds of the nation’s soybeans, nearly one-third of the corn and 60% of the cotton.
Given those numbers, even if biotech acreage dips slightly this season, as a few small-scale grower surveys suggest, the altered crops still will end up in scores of everyday foods, from soda (made with corn sweetener) to French fries (cooked in cottonseed oil) to ice cream and salad dressing containing soy.
Genetically altered grain will also feed many of the animals that produce our milk, our burgers, our ham.
Federal regulators say that’s no cause for concern: While the added proteins in biotech crops kill certain insects, like the corn borer, they do not harm animals or humans. Indeed, they break down so quickly in the digestive system that it’s impossible to determine whether a pig has eaten engineered corn for dinner. And there’s absolutely no way to tell from a pork chop what the hog that produced it was fed.
Even so, agricultural economist Neil Harl of Iowa State University predicts it’s “fairly likely” that countries across Europe and Asia will restrict--or at least, label--imports of dairy products and meat from animals nourished on genetically altered crops. Because livestock feed is such a huge market--absorbing, for instance, 75% of the U.S. corn harvest--such a move would have far greater effect than individual corporate decisions to bar biotech grain from baby food or nacho chips.
“Why, that would create a problem,” said Dennis Mitchell, a South Dakota farmer who plans to cut back, although not eliminate, his genetically modified crops this season. “That would definitely change the outlook.” To forestall that kind of backlash, biotech companies plan an ad campaign touting the wonders of genetic engineering.
The United States doesn’t require labeling of foods whose chemistry is essentially unchanged, solely on the basis of genetic origin. And, at a United Nations-sponsored conference in January, exporters will have to label shipments that may contain added genetic material with the phrase “May contain living modified organisms,” but it does not force them to separate conventional and altered crops.
Scientists are working as well to design crops with traits that will directly benefit consumers instead of farmers.
It’s an arduous process; just one in 10,000 gene transfers succeeds. Yet Monsanto, convinced of the payoff, is working on dozens of projects--including cotton that grows blue fibers, so clothes could be made without chemical dyes. Also in Monsanto’s pipeline: Canola engineered to produce heart-healthy oil. Potatoes that resist bruising. Better-tasting soy.
As consumers realize the value of such products, “without a doubt, the technology will be widely accepted,” predicts Terry Wolf, a central Illinois farmer.
The question for Wolf is: When will that day come?
And when he ponders the answer, his confidence fades.
He saved money and time with genetically modified soybeans last year and had good luck with engineered corn as well. This spring, however, he’s going back to conventional crops.
“I love the technology, but the market uncertainty leaves just enough doubt in my mind that this year I’m not going to plant [genetically modified] seeds,” he said. “I hope it’s a different story in 2001. “
