World According to Monsanto, pt. 1

categories: Biodiversity, Community Development, Corporate Kneebiters, Gene Modification, Soil

Published June 17, 2009 @ 01:20PM PT

At Monsanto's Genuity (TM) site, they say of their upcoming brand of corn that ...

... The drought-tolerance gene works by mitigating the impact of low soil-moisture content on the plant's physiology—enabling the corn plant to maintain metabolism for a longer period of time during drought stress.

Drought tolerant technology has the potential to improve on-farm productivity around the world. And it's coming soon.

They've even launched a water utilization learning center to talk about how their new trait is going to revolutionize farming. Or has the potential to revolutionize farming. Maybe. By about 6-10 percent.

From Joel K. Bourne Jr. writing in National Geographic, May 2009:

... So far, genetic breakthroughs that would free green revolution crops from their heavy dependence on irrigation and fertilizer have proved elusive. Engineering plants that can fix their own nitrogen or are resistant to drought "has proven a lot harder than they thought," says Pollan. Monsanto's Fraley predicts his company will have drought-tolerant corn in the U.S. market by 2012. But the increased yields promised during drought years are only 6 to 10 percent above those of standard drought-hammered crops.

And so a shift has already begun to small, underfunded projects scattered across Africa and Asia. Some call it agroecology, others sustainable agriculture, but the underlying idea is revolutionary: that we must stop focusing on simply maximizing grain yields at any cost and consider the environmental and social impacts of food production.

... Ackim Mhone's story is typical. By incorporating legumes into his rotation, he's doubled his corn yield on his small plot of land while cutting his fertilizer use in half. "That was enough to change the life of my family," Mhone says, and to enable him to improve his house and buy livestock. ...

Doubled yields from inexpensive ecological agriculture practices vs. 6-10% increases in yield during drought years from expensive, needy seeds that come with technology fees and end-user licensing agreements attached. It's a choice between making your soil naturally fertile and stripping its fertility through monocropping, then adding fertilizer back in.

Gosh, what a tough decision.

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Comments (2)

We've been genetically engineering crops by sexual selection for desirable traits for 10 thousand years.

Why is genetic engineering by phenotype "natural" and genetic engineering by genotype "unnatural"?

Posted by David V on 06/18/2009 @ 12:02PM PT
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As I understand it, genotype manipulation is intended to eliminate one of the alleles to insure against phenotype variation. Reducing the possibility of variation by phenotype manipulation but maintaining the ability to allow regression and preserving a fundamental state is utilizing natural processes, not profit and technology to achieve results.

Genotype manipulation, on the other hand, is not a natural process, can only be driven by technology, and cannot be confined to other organisms sharing the genotypes. Such manipulation has the potential to eliminate a fundamental state, variation, and the possibility for regression. It also has the very strong potential to bind agriculture to manufactured seed as simply destroying the ability of these organisms to naturally reproduce would leave us at the mercy of the seed producers for every planting.

Eugenics, in any form, is wrong.

Posted by Harold Lewis on 06/19/2009 @ 09:03AM PT
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Natasha is an amateur eater with severe snarkolepsy and a c. 2002 blogging habit. She had a fabulous time studying ecological agriculture and policy at The Evergreen State College, and even did her homework while writing at various times for pacificviews.org, boomantribune.com, and mydd.com.