GMOs and The Organic Farmer
By Emily Millar
April 29, 2018
By USDA standards, no food crop can be grown by the organic farmer. Organic certification rules mandate that no genetically engineered crops may be used in organic practices, but humans have been genetically engineering plants since the dawn of agriculture, with crop domestication beginning approximately 10,000 years ago. Through artificial selection by humans, food crops have been altered to reproduce faster, improve their ability to self-fertilize (or breed with themselves), produce larger fruits and seeds, and have a higher yield as compared to their wild relatives. Artificial selection over hundreds of years has resulted in crops that are ideal for agriculture. We consider this conventional plant breeding to be safe, despite the large uncertainty that is introduced by the genetic phenomena of recombination, random assortment, and mutations.
Today, gene-editing technology has streamlined this process of crop modification: “Genetically modified organisms,” or “GMOs,” contain manipulations or insertions of one or a small set of specific genes in the organism’s genome. The technology allows plants-geneticists to identify and isolate useful genes, and link them to the necessary regulatory parts in the target organism. The genes are replicated many times in order to increase the probability of being taken up, and then all the gene copies are inserted into a plasmid that is transferred into the target organism, which is bred for many generations to see whether or not the gene transplant produces the desired effect. Ultimately, the ‘genetically modified’ organisms only differ by one or a few genes out of the thousands that make up their genome, making ‘genetically micro-edited organisms’ a more accurate term.
Genetic micro-editing (GME) technology provides an array of possibilities for the organic farmer. By artificially expanding the gene pool from which modified crops can draw by opening up the species boundary, the technology provides more potential for the development of traits that increase crop adaptability, production, and nutritional value. It is important to increase adaptability in the face of global climate change, which reduces crop yields as a result of the increased frequency and intensity of floods, droughts, and high soil salinity. These factors put crops under osmotic stress, decreasing the plant’s uptake of water and nutrients through the overabundance or deficiency of solutes such as salts or sugars. GME can be used to produce crops that can withstand these extreme environmental conditions and use resources more efficiently, without losses of yield or of characteristic flavors, aromas, texture, and appearance.
Another major issue facing agriculture is ‘hidden hunger,’ a deficiency of vitamins and minerals in human diets. GME technology could be used to combat these deficiencies through biofortification, in which crops are engineered to take up more essential minerals, such as the abundant iron in the earth’s crust, and to synthesize vitamins important to human health. For example, scientists have inserted a gene pathway in golden rice that enables it to produce vitamin A, using genetic material from other species. Although the technology is relatively novel, we have already seen the development of wheat with high drought and salt tolerance, canola and soybean with a more nutritionally complete protein content, nitrogen-efficient rice, and low phytic acid (an antinutrient) maize, just to name a few [9-12]. Thus, GME is a valuable tool for addressing issues of agricultural efficiency and world hunger.
Opponents of GME crops, however, have raised concerns about their safety for people and the environment, as well as the issue of monopolies by biotech giants such as Monsanto. While some argue that there is not enough evidence to show that there is no threat to human health, the scientific consensus from 1,783 studies and 275 independent science organizations is that GME crops are no more dangerous to human health than conventionally-bred crops. As for environmental health, concern about cross-pollination of wild relatives with GME crops is valid, but the likelihood of its occurrence is low, as the GME crop and its wild relative must be sufficiently close to another, genetically compatible, and flowering at the same time. Many of today’s crops are now genetically and geographically distant from their wild relatives and their original centers of domestication, and biodiverse farms can limit contact between crops and wild relatives in that area by mixing up what is planted at the farm’s margins. And while the biotechnology corporations Monsanto, DuPont/Pioneer, Syngenta, and Dow Agrosciences do dominate the market for GME crop production and marketing, many of the GME crops that benefit human nutrition or the environment are developed by scientists at universities and non-profit organizations. Golden rice, for example, was developed by two scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, while nitrogen-efficient rice was developed by the Africa Rice Center.
As has been demonstrated, GME technology could increase the production of more resilient, resource-efficient crops while prioritizing the organic values: sustainability, low resource use, ecological balance, and human health. It does not need to displace conventionally bred or heirloom crops, as conventional breeding techniques can be more effective at manipulating highly complex traits, like drought tolerance, while heirlooms provide a great source of genetic diversity, which is important for agro-ecosystem stability. Rather, by including GME crops alongside conventionally bred and heirloom crops in the organic farm model, organic farmers could reduce their need for even organic fertilizers and pesticides while better serving the people they strive to nourish. When the technology has so much potential to benefit undernourished populations and the environment, why wouldn’t we want to give organic farmers the option to sow these new crops in hopes of a more nutritious and sustainable future?
