1.Drought-Resistant Corn Is Oversold – WSJ
2.A Less Thirsty Future Through Engineered Crops? – UCS

NOTE: Despite all the hype about the promise of GM drought resistant crops, it took until the end of 2011 for the first GM drought resistant crop to be approved for marketing anywhere in the world. That crop is a Monsanto GM drought resistant corn (maize) for cultivation in the United States – see the discussion of its limitations in the 2 pieces by Dr Doug Gurian-Sherman below. 

By contrast, non-GM plant breeding has achieved success after success in producing a variety of drought resistant crops, including a whole series of drought resistant corn (maize) varieties, and these have been made available in many countries, including developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to drought. For more on some of these:
http://www.gmwatch.org/component/content/article/31-need-gm/12319-drought-resistance

1.Drought-Resistant Corn Is Oversold

Doug Gurian-Sherman
Wall Street Journal (Letters), September 16 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444709004577651430329063156.html

R. Paul Thompson misses the point in his op-ed on a new Monsanto corn variety and the potential for genetic engineering to address drought and other major agricultural challenges ("Seeds of Hope for the Dry Midwestand the World," op-ed, Sept. 10).

A former Monsanto consultant, Mr. Thompson refers to the Union of Concerned Scientists' recent report "High and Dry" when dismissing the notion that genetic engineering poses risks. Our report says nothing about risks. It focuses on the extent to which genetic engineering delivers real benefits. Based on analysis of Monsanto's own data, we found that its product would yield only about 6% more than nonengineered varieties, and only under moderate drought conditions. In the case of extreme droughts, such as the one that has plagued Midwestern farmers this year, there likely would be no substantial improvement.

Mr. Thompson's claim that Monsanto's corn uses less water in "normal" times is demonstrably false. Data provided by the company to the U.S. Agriculture Department show no gain in so-called water-use efficiency under nondrought conditions.

While Monsanto and its competitors have struggled to overcome inherent technical difficulties with genetic engineeringsuch as unintended gene interactions that can make crops less valuablemore mature farming practices and technologies, including organic and other ecology-based farming systems and advanced breeding techniques, have delivered far more with far less investment. These promising but often neglected technologies, not genetic engineering, deserve increased support.

Doug Gurian-Sherman
Union of Concerned Scientists
Washington

2.A Less Thirsty Future Through Engineered Crops?
Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist, Food and Environment
The Equarion (UCS), September 13 2012
http://blog.ucsusa.org/a-less-thirsty-future-through-engineered-crops/

An op-ed in the Wall Street Journal sees a bright future for crops engineered for drought tolerance, water use efficiency, and other useful traits. The author, R. Paul Thompson, criticizes our recent report, "High and Dry," for expressing too little faith in the ability of science and technology to make good on its unmet promises about genetic engineering.
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/high-and-dry-report.pdf

The basic point of the article is that new technologies typically start slow, but get more effective and less expensive as they mature,  so we should expect GE to get cheaper and more effective too.

New Improved Biotech?

Clearly technologies can advance, and the author provides a few cases in point. But technologies do not always significantly improve or become much cheaper. The backers of nuclear power claimed it would become “too cheap to meter” after it was rolled out more than half a century ago. Nuclear power is still expensive, and still faces big technological hurdles such as the disposal of nuclear waste. And after Fukushima, we are less sanguine about its safety as well.

Technologies may face challenges that ultimately do not find adequate solutions, for technical, social, or economic reasons. Thompson implies that UCS considered only current aspects of GE drought tolerant crops without understanding that they may improve over time. In fact, we did analyze the prospects of GE drought tolerance for coming years.

Thompson ignores the part of our report that examines why the technology faces significant challenges in addressing drought. These include unanswered questions about complex and unpredictable interactions of engineered genes with the rest of the workings of the crop that may result in undesirable tradeoffs in crop properties.

An important reason for considering the current state of genetically engineered drought tolerance, and its prospects, is to inform our investments in agricultural science to improve our ability to confront the challenges that Thompson and others have noted. Should those investments be based on our best information regarding what works, as we contend, or on the hope that we will find ways to make GE substantially cheaper and more effective?

And the truth is, we can make major headway toward answering agriculture’s challenges now we don’t need to hold our breaths to see if GE will improve! We already have multiple ways to substantially address Thompson’s agricultural challenges, but we are not implementing them widely, or adequately supporting research to improve them.

Conventional breeding is already producing numerous drought tolerant crops, as noted in “High and Dry”. There is also substantial evidence from recent genetics studies to suggest that conventional breeding can continue to produce big improvements in drought tolerance and other traits, which is also discussed in the report. And there are clear benefits from ecologically-based farming systems that employ practices like long crop rotations (alternating crops from year to year) and the addition and recycling of nutrients and organic matter in the form of manure, mulches, and cover crops.

For example, Thompson wants to blunt the damaging effect of fertilizers and pesticides on the environment. But we already know that cover crops can typically reduce nitrogen fertilizer pollution by 40 to 70 percent, reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers, enrich the soil, and maintain or increase crop productivity. Cover crops are not widely used today due to misplaced policies like insurance penalties, and lack of research and infrastructure to make them more farmer-friendly. Other ecologically based farming methods can provide similar benefits.
https://www.soils.org/publications/aj/articles/100/3/600

The typical refrain from some promoters of GE is that we need all of these methods of meeting our agricultural challenges. That remains an assertion that has never been demonstrated, because there are probably several paths to achieving food security that include conventional breeding, agroecology, reducing food waste, empowerment of poor farmers (especially women), and more judicious consumption of meat, which is an inefficient source of protein and calories.

And Thompson never mentions that producing enough food alone won’t ensure that everyone is well fed, as the billion people who have too little food now demonstrates. It is not enough to understand the safety and efficacy of a technology, as Thompson contends, we also need to understand whether it may be compatible with justice and fairness.

One could argue that prudence suggests that every technology should be aggressively pursued unless there are compelling safety reasons to the contrary. In a world without substantial resource constraints, that might be the case. But in the real world of limited resources, we need to make informed choices. Our reports, and major reports like the IAASTD, are part of a growing body of evidence that supports an emphasis on agroecology, other agronomic and infrastructure improvements (e.g. more efficient irrigation and reducing waste) and conventional breeding, not GE.

And then there are the Errors

A second serious problem with Thompson’s article is that it contains several errors. He claims that DroughtGard increases water use efficiency (WUE; less water use in “normal” times). That’s important given that agriculture already uses about 70 percent of extracted fresh water. But Monsanto’s own data in their petition to USDA for deregulation shows that this is probably not true. Thompson makes the common mistake of equating WUE with drought tolerance, but the scientists who study WUE show that this is not the case. Typically, drought tolerant crops do not use less water. And there have been only 9 field trials testing experimental GE crops for WUE compared to thousands for herbicide resistance and insect resistance. This does not demonstrate a commitment by the industry to develop this trait.

Thompson also claims that the risks of GE have been well managed. This is emphatically contradicted by the millions of acres of resistant weeds that have arisen due to mismanagement, which in turn undermines his claim of reduced herbicide use. And insect resistance to Bt is now hot on the heels of weed resistance.

Finally, he compares GE food to GE medicine, expressing exasperation at the greater acceptance of biotech drugs. But these two applications of biotechnology present very different benefits. Medicine is a choice, and we may accept serious side effects because the alternative may be more dire. Food is a daily necessity, and when our food supply is inundated by GE, our choices become limited.

As we note in our report (and other work), GE may make some contributions to drought tolerance and other important agricultural problems in coming years. But that does not answer the question of whether those benefits outweigh problems and risks from GE, and certainly does not demonstrate that GE is needed to improve agriculture.

Posted in: Food and Agriculture, Global Warming, Uncategorized Tags: biotechnology, corn, drought, genetic engineer, sustainable agricutlure, water use ing

About the author: Doug Gurian-Sherman is a widely-cited expert on biotechnology and sustainable agriculture. He holds a Ph.D. in plant pathology.