Can GM crops promise food security? – DW – 06/19/2024 (2024)

Farmers have cross-bred fruits, grains or vegetables to create tastier or higher-yielding hybrids for millennia. But it wasn't until the 1970s that scientists first employed bioengineering to transfer genes from one organism to another to produce "transgenic" crops.

When these genetically modified organisms (GMOs) first hit shelves in the 1990s, they were dubbed Frankenstein foods. Resistance to GMOcrops was based on a continuing public fear that they'reharmful to human health, even if long-term studies saideating them wasas safe as conventional varieties.

Now in the 2020s, a new "gene revolution," whereby DNA can be genetically"edited" without splicing in genes from a separate organism, is bolsteringbiotech crop industry claims that it can ensurefood securityfor a global population expected to approach10 billion by 2050.

The World Economic Forum (WEF), a consistent advocate of GM technology, saysthat research into new rice, maize, wheat, potato and cassava strains, for example, will further help these vital food staples survive extreme weather and "new climate-induced diseases" in a warming world.

It points out the latest bioengineering technology that helps plants and soilsbetter captureand storeplanet-heating carbon from the atmosphere.

One US-based research projectis helping to optimize photosynthesis so plantstaples like maize and rice can better convert sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into energy to improve yields — while also reducing atmospheric carbon.

"We have the knowledge and tools to usher in the next Green Revolution, enabling farmers to produce more in this century than in the history of humankind," stated the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency website, which has received around $115 million (€107 million) in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation since 2012.

Industrial-scale GMOs perpetuate climate change, say critics

Many scientists and environmental campaigners don't agree that GMcrops can promise food securityor help fight the climate change-induced extremedroughts and floods thatare decimating agriculture.

New GMOs will continue to perpetuate an "agro-industrial system" that "bears substantial responsibility for the climate crisis," Anneleen Kenis, lecturer in political ecology and environmental justice at Brunel University, London, told DW.

Currently, food systems generate around one-third of thegreenhouse gas emissions fuelling climate change. And in the US, more than half of harvested cropland is produced with genetically modifiedseeds.

Kenis' research argues that GMOs often involve "large-scale monocultures" of limited crop varieties that also require great amounts of artificial fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation.

"It's a very energy-intensive system in terms of the input it needs to function. There is nothing sustainable about further strengthening this system," said the researcher, adding that GMOs are promoted by the same "agro-industrial giants" that also control and profit from "a large part of the seed, food, pesticide and fertilizer market."

So far, this system has also failed "to feed large parts of the population in different parts of the world," Kenisclaims. At least250 million people in nearly 60 countries endure crisis-level food insecurity, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Campaigners move to ban bioengineered crops

Similar criticism of GMOs was behind a successful campaign in the Philippines to have GMgolden rice and eggplant placed under a production moratorium in April. Golden rice ispartly genetically modified with protein from maizeto generate beta-carotene for addedvitamin Aand was approved for cultivation in 2021.

A court implemented the ban based on the "need to uphold the constitutional right to health and healthful ecology," explained Lea Guerrero, country director of Greenpeace Philippines, which led the campaign.

The court found that "there is no scientific consensus on the safety, or harm, of golden rice and eggplant," Guerrero told DW.

But Matin Qaim, a specialist in food economics and director of the Center for Development Research at the University of Bonn in Germany, has stated that many Filipinoswith vitamin A deficiencies coulddie without access tovitamin-enriched Golden Rice. Qauim also sits on the pro-GM Golden Rice Humanitarian Board.

Greenpeace's Guerrero maintains, however, that the ban is a victory of crop diversity and ecological resilience over GMO monoculture that tends to benefit food and agriculture companies like Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina-Syngenta and BASF,who control over 60% of the seed market worldwide.

Proponents back a GM gene revolution

Jennifer Thomson, emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, has been developing drought-tolerant transgenic maize by adding genes from a "resurrection plant" known as xerophyta viscosa that can tolerate up to 95% dehydration.

Having advised the World Economic Forum and United Nations onGM crops across decades, she says, "There is so much controversy, and it's ongoing."

Butin the context of smallholdings in southern Africa, she sees"insect resistant" crops created through bioengineering as a "godsend to these farmers."

Australian scientists are spearheading a cowpea production project by bioengineering "built-in"insect pest protection since the legume has been a dietary staple across Africafor millennia.

"Without insect resistance, they get no crop in many cases," Jennifer Thomson said, adding that the planting of GMmaize crops has doubled yields for some African farmers.

Are non-GMecological crops also a food security solution?

Despite the rising potential of new GM crops, resistance to gene manipulation continues — as does skepticism, with around half of people polled globally in 2020 believing GMOs are unsafe to eat.

Greenpeace Philippines argues that local scientists struggle to develop ecological, non-GM seed, food and nutrition systems in a heating world since, according to Lea Guerrero, "most of the research is backed by giant agri-biotech companies."

Meanwhile, agricultural science researchers have noted deficiencies in the risk assessment of GM cowpea developed by the Australian researchersthat was approved for cultivation in Nigeria. They were concerned that the transgenic plants produce a toxin meant to protect the plants against pests — and hence reduce the need for insecticides — but that safety risksremained due to "enhanced toxicity."

While Thomsonclaims that African consumers of GM maize have never raised health concerns, Anneleen Kenis believes biotech companies too often "play the climate card," even though few GM crops currently in the pipeline are actually aimed atclimate resistance.

Initiatives insteadincludedeveloping fruit and vegetables that can stay freshoverlong distances, one goal being tolimit climate-killing food waste. But for Kenis, thisbenefit isoffset bythe high food milesand carbon footprint.

Any sustainable, ecological crop alternative should not only aim to "produce toxic-free food," she says, but to nurture "rich biodiverse sites" that can both resist and mitigate climate change.

Edited by: Jennifer Collins

Sources:

"GMOS and Your Health," US Food and Drug Administration, July2022," https://www.fda.gov/media/135280/download

"Green Revolution to Gene Revolution: Technological Advances in Agriculture to Feed the World," May2022,https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/11/10/1297

"Explained: How engineered crops can fight climate change" https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/engineered-crops-can-fight-climate-change/