The inconvenient truth about GM
Genetic modification has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides and resist pests. It has done little to increase yields
Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Middle East’s fertile crescent,
happenstance sowed the seeds of much of modern agriculture. Pollen from a
wild goat grass landed on primitive wheat, creating a natural – but stronger
and more productive – hybrid. Alert early farmers saved its seeds for
growing their next harvests, starting a long process of development that has
led to all the modern varieties of wheat that feed a third of the world’s
people.
Now scientists at Britain’s National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB)
have deliberately duplicated that ancient accident, with a different goat
grass, in an attempt to restart – and enormously accelerate – the process
with new genes. Early indications are that this could increase wheat yields
by a dramatic 30 per cent.
The National Farmers’ Union president, Peter Kendall, describes the potential
as “just enormous”. And it is indeed the sort of breakthrough we desperately
need, since – in little more than 35 years – the world will have to increase
food production by a challenging 70 per cent if it is to feed its growing
population. In the next half century, adds the NIAB, we will have to grow as
much wheat as has been harvested since that original hybridisation occurred
at the dawn of agriculture.
Hunger is rapidly rising up the agenda. David Cameron missed this week’s
crucial vote on the Europe referendum because he was in New York to co-chair
a UN panel setting new targets for tackling it, and will host a special
hunger summit next month. And two important new books outlining solutions
will feature at a session on “feeding the world” at the Telegraph Hay
Festival, opening next week.
One is by Prof Sir Gordon Conway, formerly both President of the Rockefeller
Foundation and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International
Development, who is one of the most thoughtful supporters of genetic
modification. But what emerges from his book, One Billion Hungry, from this
week’s breakthrough, and from a host of other evidence, is how little – so
far, at least – GM technology is contributing to beating hunger.
It was not involved in the NIAB’s quantum leap, which was due to conventional
breeding techniques. Nor was it involved, to give an example from Prof
Conway’s book, in developing new varieties of African rice, called Nerica,
which are up to four times as productive as traditional varieties, contain
more protein, need a much shorter growing season, resist pests and diseases,
thrive on poor soils and withstand drought.
The same is true of another of his superstars, Scuba Rice, which beats flooding by surviving 17 days underwater and still achieving enhanced yields – and, within three years, had been taken up by 3.5 million Asian farmers.
CGIAR – the international consortium of research centres that developed this miracle rice (and kicked off the Green Revolution more than half a century ago) – has also used non-GM techniques to produce more than 30 varieties of drought-tolerant maize, which have increased farmers’ yields by 20 to 30 per cent across 13 African countries; climbing beans that have trebled production in Central Africa; and wheats that thrive on salty soils. A host of other successes include blight-resistant potatoes and crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and other essential nutrients.
Genetic modification, by contrast, has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides (often manufactured by the same company, thus encouraging their use) and resist pests. They have done little to increase yields per se – though they have helped by controlling weeds and insects – while varieties designed to withstand drought and floods, and improve nutrition, are only now beginning to emerge.
GM may be able to do jobs that more conventional techniques cannot manage: conferring heat resistance to cope with global warming is one candidate. But the impression often given by its proponents that it is the main source of new crops, and thus essential to feed the world, could hardly be further from the truth.
Nor is biotechnology all GM. The Nerica rices, for example, owe their existence to cell tissue culture. Scuba rice was produced through the technique of marker-assisted selection, which identifies and enables the use of a whole sequence of genes.
But in the end new crops can only do so much. Most of the hungry, in a bitter irony, are themselves farmers who cannot produce, or afford, enough of it – and the new seeds are often beyond their reach. Prof Conway stresses the importance of helping such small, subsistence farmers grow more but it is the second book The Last Hunger Season – whose author, Roger Thurow, will be at Hay – that goes into detail on how to get them the help they need. Just as 10,000 years ago, the future rests on them.
Pot-growing is sending green principles up in smoke
Talk about sitting back and watching the grass grow. Greens and government officials in Washington State are normally fierce towards carbon emitters, pioneering tough standards on power stations, for example. But their principles go to pot when it comes to cannabis growing.
The practice, legalised there by a vote in last year’s presidential election, is immensely polluting. Growing just one kilo of marijuana, a study concluded last year, releases as much carbon dioxide as driving across the United States seven times. This is because it is mainly cultivated indoors – with bright lights, air-conditioning, fans, dehumidifiers and even machines specially generating the gas to produce more potent puffs.
Normally keen green groups, such as the Sierra Club and Conservation Northwest, have dopily told The Seattle Times that they have other priorities. Governor Jay Inslee – who hails Washingtonians as “the people who are destined to defeat carbon pollution” – declined to comment. And the City of Seattle, despite aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2050, is producing new zoning regulations to permit plenty of indoor reefer ranching.
Making cultivation go outside would be much cleaner, of course. But there seems to be a joint determination to hash things up.
Handing the keys to Ukip
When will the Government stop insulting its own supporters? No sooner has housing minister Nick Boles repented by saying he wants to “work with” those he once denounced as “hysterical Luddites” for worrying about inappropriate building in the countryside, than Michael Gove accuses them of opposing social mobility, aspiration and the family. No wonder the Government’s planning policies are a big factor behind the Ukip surge.
If the Education Secretary would return from the history curriculum to the present day, he might realise that the Conservatives he apparently despises agree that there must be much more housebuilding and that some of it should be in the countryside. All they have been asking – for nearly two years now – is that it is properly planned.
Besides, such social condemnation comes ill from a government that last year saw the first fall in constructing affordable housing in a decade, is encouraging builders to renege on agreements with councils to supply it, and has instituted a mortgage support scheme that the Office of Budget Responsibility says risks driving up house prices.
Developers love it all, of course, but – while they may provide funds – they don’t have many votes.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/10064255/The-inconvenient-truth-about-GM.html
The same is true of another of his superstars, Scuba Rice, which beats flooding by surviving 17 days underwater and still achieving enhanced yields – and, within three years, had been taken up by 3.5 million Asian farmers.
CGIAR – the international consortium of research centres that developed this miracle rice (and kicked off the Green Revolution more than half a century ago) – has also used non-GM techniques to produce more than 30 varieties of drought-tolerant maize, which have increased farmers’ yields by 20 to 30 per cent across 13 African countries; climbing beans that have trebled production in Central Africa; and wheats that thrive on salty soils. A host of other successes include blight-resistant potatoes and crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and other essential nutrients.
Genetic modification, by contrast, has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides (often manufactured by the same company, thus encouraging their use) and resist pests. They have done little to increase yields per se – though they have helped by controlling weeds and insects – while varieties designed to withstand drought and floods, and improve nutrition, are only now beginning to emerge.
GM may be able to do jobs that more conventional techniques cannot manage: conferring heat resistance to cope with global warming is one candidate. But the impression often given by its proponents that it is the main source of new crops, and thus essential to feed the world, could hardly be further from the truth.
Nor is biotechnology all GM. The Nerica rices, for example, owe their existence to cell tissue culture. Scuba rice was produced through the technique of marker-assisted selection, which identifies and enables the use of a whole sequence of genes.
But in the end new crops can only do so much. Most of the hungry, in a bitter irony, are themselves farmers who cannot produce, or afford, enough of it – and the new seeds are often beyond their reach. Prof Conway stresses the importance of helping such small, subsistence farmers grow more but it is the second book The Last Hunger Season – whose author, Roger Thurow, will be at Hay – that goes into detail on how to get them the help they need. Just as 10,000 years ago, the future rests on them.
Pot-growing is sending green principles up in smoke
Talk about sitting back and watching the grass grow. Greens and government officials in Washington State are normally fierce towards carbon emitters, pioneering tough standards on power stations, for example. But their principles go to pot when it comes to cannabis growing.
The practice, legalised there by a vote in last year’s presidential election, is immensely polluting. Growing just one kilo of marijuana, a study concluded last year, releases as much carbon dioxide as driving across the United States seven times. This is because it is mainly cultivated indoors – with bright lights, air-conditioning, fans, dehumidifiers and even machines specially generating the gas to produce more potent puffs.
Normally keen green groups, such as the Sierra Club and Conservation Northwest, have dopily told The Seattle Times that they have other priorities. Governor Jay Inslee – who hails Washingtonians as “the people who are destined to defeat carbon pollution” – declined to comment. And the City of Seattle, despite aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2050, is producing new zoning regulations to permit plenty of indoor reefer ranching.
Making cultivation go outside would be much cleaner, of course. But there seems to be a joint determination to hash things up.
Handing the keys to Ukip
When will the Government stop insulting its own supporters? No sooner has housing minister Nick Boles repented by saying he wants to “work with” those he once denounced as “hysterical Luddites” for worrying about inappropriate building in the countryside, than Michael Gove accuses them of opposing social mobility, aspiration and the family. No wonder the Government’s planning policies are a big factor behind the Ukip surge.
If the Education Secretary would return from the history curriculum to the present day, he might realise that the Conservatives he apparently despises agree that there must be much more housebuilding and that some of it should be in the countryside. All they have been asking – for nearly two years now – is that it is properly planned.
Besides, such social condemnation comes ill from a government that last year saw the first fall in constructing affordable housing in a decade, is encouraging builders to renege on agreements with councils to supply it, and has instituted a mortgage support scheme that the Office of Budget Responsibility says risks driving up house prices.
Developers love it all, of course, but – while they may provide funds – they don’t have many votes.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/10064255/The-inconvenient-truth-about-GM.html
