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13 Food Plants People Have Modified
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{ 20 comments }
I love your blog – but I’m dissapointed you advocate GM as safe. As a student of Molecular genetics in 1990, I was part of a group that made a submission to a parlimentary inquiry (into the release of GMO’ s into the environment,) cautioning once they are released there is no going back, and the effects cannot be know in such short periods of time as required lab testing periods of 2 years or less.
now in the US there is this situation:
“The food toxin found is used in a strain of corn that is widely used in the United States as livestock feed and has been genetically modified to produce an insecticidal protein. This corn has received cultivation approval by the European Union but has not been widely adopted outside of the United States and is currently banned in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Luxemburg and Greece. Because of the toxin that this corn contains, the corn is now regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency as an insecticide.” from http://parentables.howstuffworks.com/health-wellness/food-toxin-found-blood-pregnant-moms.html
Actually you’ll notice that I don’t advocate it as safe. I said there are pros and cons and gave two examples of possible cons, including modified strains escaping and becoming a problem. I pointed out that each proposed modification needs to be studied on its own merits. To flatly deny a tool can be useful because in some cases it might be dangerous is to deny the use of most tools and transport, which regularly kill people. We don’t ban cars, we carefully regulate and limit their use.
As for that specific case, it is an insecticide. That does not automatically mean it is dangerous to humans, partly because we have a different physiology to insects and partly because the dose makes the poison. This is how we use insecticides in our homes without worrying. It is a worry that it has made it into the blood stream and not been broken down, and means that that type of GM involved in introducing possibly dangerous chemicals needs to be investigated further. It does not say anything about other types of GM, such as the two examples I gave of golden rice and improving salt resistance.
In fact I’ll add one more problem to GMO – it tends to focus on very narrow solutions. Take golden rice, it’s a great and logical way to increase vitamin A and combat deficiencies. However would it be better to combat it in a lower tech way, such as encouraging the farming of a wider range of vegetables? I don’t know enough to answer, both have their drawbacks and the best answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.
Exactly the same can be said of producing herbicide resistant grains – could weeds be combated in a better way than more weedkillers? Plus you then have the corporate problems of being dependent on companies.
But I keep coming back to the Indian salt-resistant crops – traditional breeding would take years to achieve it, if it even could. Food is needed now.
Great reading. Thanks!
I was just thinking about this the other day! Great post. Thanks!
It is fascinating to think about. We’re still making huge changes – selecting for things that are easily picked and store well. Now if we could go back to selecting for taste!
Thanks for pointing out that whatever comes of GMOs, it’s something we’ve been doing since we’ve been an agricultural society. We’ve hit a few things out of the park and then we have moments of over-specialization and end up with mass famine. GMOs will be no different. Don’t get me started on companies holding farmers in bondage through seed distribution and patents. Sigh.
Thanks for all of the information!
Happy TT,
~Xakara
Wolf’s Glory
Yes, there are major ethical problems aren’t there.
When I was writing this I was wondering – does any major development actually happen without large companies and patents these days? I mean is there development happening at the farm level in the developing world? If there is, that’s brilliant and needs to be encouraged and supported. But if there isn’t, then practically it makes little difference whether it is GMOs or fertilisers, they are still ending up dependent on corporations.
Climate change is going to have a huge impact, there are already problems with the monsoons in India which will get worse as glaciers melt. And I’ve seen some very scary modelling in Africa that shows that conflict is strongly linked to temperature – as it gets hotter, there are more wars, and part of the pressure is because of food and water shortages.
Very informative and thought-provoking. I am not a fan of corporations and as a small farmer I find many of their activities abhorrent. At the same time I must acknowledge that they are feeding many more people. It’s a huge price to pay, though.
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I never thought that some of those had been modified. Do you think they just morphed over the years? Or would have even without the help of farmers?
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Things do change over time, they drift or there are selection pressures on them. The remarkable thing about most of these changes is that they are bad for the plant in a natural state – things like corn or commercial bananas cannot reproduce on their own and can only continue with farmers planting them, so they would become extinct.
What farmers have done is select the plants for unnatural things that are good for us, like losing the poison that protects them from insects so it’s better for us to eat them, or losing the seeds we don’t like so there is more flesh but they can’t reproduce.
The farmers didn’t do it on purpose, it’s just that they encourage and keep seeds of the plants they like and don’t keep seeds from the ones they don’t, so it gradually changes the plants.
To the victor go the spoils….Some plants win (by taste) some plants lose. Over time, we’ve mastered agriculture and farming. Yet still….we surrender ourselves to nature and hope we are being healthy, and productive in our farming.
I would like to see what your thoughts are on this…verticalfarm,com
I came upon this recently, and I believe it to be a great partial solution to the population/ consumption growth for the demand for food in the world.
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Wow, great information. I didn’t know how much we modified our plants. Crazy.
http://carabossesbedchamber.blogspot.com/2011/06/thursday-thirteen.html
Wow, I had no idea. Thanks for sharing!
Wow. Really amazing. I’m happy because in my whole life I’ve been getting to make new idea on searching different kind of plants. I can’t imagine when I see a black corn and a colorful carrots. Thank you so much for making this post.
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YUM! Those carrots look interesting!
Have a great day!
http://harrietandfriends.com/2011/06/96-today/
Great post. I can’t imagine sinking my teeth into purple corn lol
Happy T13!
How about apples? All apple trees are grafted. Every apple seed will grow to be a different tasting apple. Tat would be a real long term science experiment- discovering a new tasty apple. 🙂
I didn’t know all apples were grafted, grapes are too. It would be lovely to do a long term experiment like that. Basically every food we farm we have created in some way.
Hi Deb!
I’m wondering if you could flick me your references? We’re looking at simplifying and trying to live from our owm land as much as possible so in between assignments I’m as much research on growing our own wholesome foods as I can, so would love to read up more on this… Thats so interesting about the corn and kinda makes sense too…
Bec.
XX
[Answered in email]
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