GMO - OMG!

You might have heard of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), foodstuffs with their genetic material altered to make them easier to cultivate, or more nutritious. You might have heard that meat is being grown inlabs, set to become a more efficient alternative to the stuff that has to bother with being an animal before it’s a food. You may have heard the word ‘Frankenfoods’ which, to be perfectly honest, is just fear-mongering. What you probably haven’t heard is that carrots, when we originally started cultivating them, were a rather exciting shade of purple, but that some savvy European farmers bred the orange hue we know and love into them along the route to making them more nutritious. You almost certainly haven’t heard that wheat, as we know it today, is the result of centuries of cross-breeding of different grass species. And I’m sure you never heard cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale were all once the same foul-tasting yetedible plant – which ancient humans bred into several different edible yet foul-tasting plants, for some reason.

Carrots as they once were

Source: flickr user Carl Black, Cosmic Purple Carrots, 2011.

 Yes, dear readers, genetic modification of that which we put into our bodies is so prevalent that almost everything you eat has, in one way or another, been subject to it. Nothing that we farm is the same as the ancestor species we found in the wild, and adapted to our needs. Be it for taste, ease of harvest, or just to see what would happen, humans have been altering our food for thousands of years (Barrows et al, 2014). But it’s only recently that we started doing it in laboratories, and that’s when people started getting angry.

 Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been a point of much contention since they were first developed; the thought of mixing up genetic material can seem a bit frightening, verging on the mad-scientist trope we all know and love. But they’re out there already, growing in fields and sitting around in our food. Or our food’s food; soybeans are one of the most common GMOs, and one of their main uses is to feed livestock (Jacobsen et al, 2013). I, personally, have nothing against GMOs, although I won’t deny that they come with their own unique set of issues and controversies. But first, let’s talk about the positives.

 Hunger is a big issue on this planet. I’ve mentioned this before; it’s kind of hard to avoid on an agriculture blog. Around 1 billion people live without enough food (Jacobsen et al, 2013), and even more live off diets that are lacking in some important nutrient like iron or vitamin a. The fact of the matter is, with a growing population, we need to find new ways to feed everyone. And this week I’m focussing on the potential from GMOs. High-yield varieties; there’s something good. More food, less land. Intensive, yes, but less land being used means less biodiversity lost, although it does also put more stress on the land in question. And let’s not forget that, with the impacts of climate change, it is going to be harder and harder to cultivate crops; growing seasons will change, and plants may no longer be suited to the environment around them, not to mention the migration of new pests into their areas. While genetic modification does take time, what with development and field tests, it’s still faster than selective breeding in creating pest-resistant or hardier strains (Qaim and Zilberman, 2003). Not to mention nutritional improvements; genetic modification to change the nutritional contents of a crop. Some (Borlaug, 2000) are hopeful about this kind of alteration, although there seem to be few real examples out there. Golden Rice springs to mind, engineered for vitamin a, which is hardly a bad idea.

 However, GMOs have their downsides as well. Patenting of genetic material means that these strains can only be bought from their parent companies, and farmers may not be allowed to keep seeds from their yield to plant a new crop (Jacobsen et al, 2013). It leads to a monopoly, with companies like Monsanto controlling the majority of the cotton market with specialised breeds such as Bt cotton, popular in India (Qaim and Zilberman, 2003).

 But one of the biggest concerns associated with GMOs is the transfer of these modified genetics to the species’ wild counterparts. It’s all fun and games until the weeds become weed-killer resistant. The process isn’t just as simple as one bout of pollen transfer, as figure 1 shows, but nonetheless the possibility of genetic transfer is real (Stewart et al, 2003), and the notion of some of these traits getting out of hand and into the wild is somewhat concerning. One of the biggest issues with agriculture is that is changes ecosystems, having negative ecological consequences; adding rogue ‘transgenetic’ material into the mix doesn’t seem like the best of ideas, somehow.

Figure 1: Gene-flow pathways between GMOs and their wild counterparts, in the event of interbreeding leading to slow hybridisation.
Source: Stewart et al 2003.

 I’m still not opposed to GMOs, but I will admit that even my opinion of them has changed a little during my research into them. They’re a good idea; they’re already out there, feeding more people than their un-modified counterparts could, and that’s nothing to sniff at. But they’re not a perfect solution to the hunger and ecological problems facing the world, and while we should always bear them in mind as an answer to the issues of the potential agracpocalyse, we also need to remember that they come with a risk or two.