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Choosing the Right Solutions
Editorial from the October/November/December 1999 issue of Small Farm Today® magazine.
"Current agriculture practice isn't sustainable; we've lost something on the order of 15% of our topsoil over the last 20 years or so, irrigation is increasing the salinity of soil, and the petrochemicals we rely on aren't renewable."You may be as surprised as I was to find that this quote was uttered over two years ago by Robert Shapiro, chairman and CEO of Monsanto. After I found this quote in my July/August Organic Gardening issue, I knew I needed to see the whole interview. I headed off to the library, where I looked up the Jan/Feb 1997 issue of Harvard Business Review, where Joan Magretta interviewed Mr. Shapiro. It was interesting to read how Mr. Shapiro could gather all the right information, then veer off to entirely the wrong conclusion.
Ms. Magretta had asked, "Is sustainability an immediate issue [to] Monsanto?"
Mr. Shapiro replied, "...in our agricultural business, we can't avoid it. In the twentieth century, we have been able to feed people by bringing more acreage into production and by increasing productivity through fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. But current agricultural practice isn't sustainable; we've lost something on the order of..." Yes, the chairman of Monsanto, one of the companies involved in establishing and maintaining the industrial agriculture system we have today, really did say that this system is not sustainable. I would never have believed that I could agree so wholeheartedly with Mr. Shapiro's statements.
He continued, "We don't have 100 years to figure [a solution]; at best we have decades." Correct, Mr. Shapiro. Even in this land of plenty, we are losing over two acres of farmland a minute to developers, and losing farmers at the rate of 100 per day! At this rate, a change will have to be made in a few years, not a few decades, or America will have no farmland and few farmers, and will be importing almost all of its food. Other countries, with poorer soils, a bad infrastructure, and overpopulation, are much worse off than we. The urgency to come up with solutions is of vital interest and concern to the entire human race.
Mr. Shapiro said that he knows "of only two viable candidates" to solve our problems in a short time: "biotechnology and information technology.... Using information is one of the ways to increase productivity without abusing nature." (He also stated that "biotechnology is really a subset of information technology because it is about DNA-encoded information.")
Information is the key to solutions, no doubt–but, as Mr. Shapiro says, biotechnology is only one type of information, and (in my opinion) is certainly not the best solution. We need to look at the big picture of the world for solutions to sustainability. Sustainability must contain three elements; it must be profitable, it must be environmentally sound, and it must be socially acceptable. Is biotechnology sustainable?
Everyone is in agreement on profitability as a measure of sustainability. If a business is not profitable, it dies (unless it receives government subsidies, or has money coming in from another job, savings, or borrowed money). In any case, this is not sustainable. A farm must have more cash coming in than going out to be sustainable. By this measure, biotech is sustainable for corporations, because they make an immediate profit from their sales. But further down the line, farmers may not find it so profitable. Earlier this year, some corporations were refusing to buy some varieties of GMO (genetically modified) corn. This was certainly not profitable for those farmers who raised it. And next year, these farmers might opt not to buy GMO seed–which will not be sustainable for the corporations who sell it. Another example is recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). When farmers have to rely on increased volume of milk sales–of which there is already a surplus–to make a profit, and spend more money on rBGH to get that volume, can they be sustainable? In fact, any type of volume sales crop with a low margin of profit is probably not sustainable for farmers–and corporations are dependent on farmers for their sales. Is biotech profitable in the long run?
To be sustainable, a technology must be environmentally sound. Is biotech environmentally sound? The answer is, we don't know! There have been no long term studies, because the technology is not very old. There have been reports of health problems in cattle and increased cancer risk from rBGH, possible damage to monarch butterflies and increased pest resistance to Bt from Bt crops, and reports of Round-up resistant weeds near Round-up Ready canola. And Terminator technology will certainly have the potential of dangerous crosses. Is this environmentally sound? Despite the newness of the technology and the uncertainty of risk, 44% of this years soybean crop is from GMO seed, and 33% of the corn crop (St. Louis Post Dispatch, Sept. 2, 1999). Time magazine reports that 30% of dairy cows are injected with rBGH, and 75% of all cheeses contain chymosin, a product of genetic engineering (Time, Sept. 13, 1999).
To be sustainable, a system must be socially acceptable. As mentioned, earlier this year, some corporations were not accepting GMO corn, because Europe wouldn't buy it. ADM now says that they will accept GMO crops, but keep them segregated from traditional crops. If the European market doesn't want gene altered crops, if major food processors don't accept them or treat them differently, if U.S. consumers choose not to buy GMO crops–if they are aware of them–is biotechnology socially acceptable? If a GMO corn crosses with my own strain of open-pollinated corn that I have spent ten years developing, thus preventing me from selling it as organic, and contaminating all my work for the future, is this fair? Is this socially acceptable? In die United States, if you are not buying your produce and grains from local producers who tell you how they produce it, chances are you may be eating the products of biotechnology. Is it socially acceptable to not label biotech products, so that consumers do not have the chance to choose what they want to eat? If life science companies make GMO grains the only affordable choice for farmers to grow, is this socially acceptable?
Now that we have reviewed all the requirements of sustainability, how well does biotechnology fit them? I believe that life science companies like biotechnology simply because it puts more money in their corporate pockets. Many simply use the word "sustainable" as a marketing tool. One of Monsanto's uses for biotechnology is Round-up Ready crops. Increasing sustainability usually involves decreasing inputs (saving money and improving the soil). How sustainable is creating plants designed not to die when you spray chemicals on them? Open-pollinated crops are certainly sustainable–but they put no money into corporate pockets, so no corporation is interested in promoting them or doing research to improve them. I do not believe that corporations are solely responsible for the situation we are in now, though–the government also deserves some blame. Why hasn't the USDA spent the last 40 years experimenting with improving open-pollinated varieties of corn, rather than throwing all their support into hybrids? Why haven't universities been helping small farmers make their operations sustainable? Why have they responded to the short-term call of corporate money and assistance, rather than the long-term goal of keeping our nation's farmers sustainable, so that we can continue as a prosperous and well-fed country?
Mr. Shapiro and the life science companies say we need to feed the world. I say that the world needs to be fed. For corporations, feeding the world means control of the food system. For the world to be fed, we merely need to empower farmers to provide food through knowledge and information. Corporations think in terms of volume sales, economies of scale, export to other countries. Rather than worrying about feeding the world, why not be concerned with feeding your neighborhood? Local food systems will promote jobs, health, and security for families, neighborhoods, and communities.
The life science companies say we cannot feed the world and prevent people from starving without biotechnology, because we are running out of land and must increase productivity. Not so–we have enough to go around, if we conserve it and use it sustainably. Government intervention and lack of transportation infrastructures keep people from getting access to this food. Lack of knowledge and the move to large industrial agriculture has kept this country from developing a sustainable system. If you look at the big picture, a localized, sustainable community system wins hands down over the other way, because it empowers farmers to succeed, and causes an increase in farmer numbers. It furnishes a high quality, fresh product for the consumer, and encourages both self-reliance and interdependence in a community. It helps just about everybody–but, damn it, there's just no money in it for the life science companies.
Happy and Profitable GMO-Free Farming,
Ron Macher
Publisher/Farmer