The Advantages and Disadvantages of Genetically Modified Agricultural Crops - Essay Example

The advantages and disadvantages of Genetically Modified Agricultural Crops An Essay One of the central differences between humankind and any other species of the animal kind lies in that Man has always sought to meet life in his own terms. All adversities that have threatened his very survival since the dawn of his kind have been taken up as challenges and through innovations man has reshaped his own world and gradually made it more cordial and congenial for the survival of its kind. It is this process of reshaping the world to have his needs better catered to through innovations that has made Human kind stand out (Bronowski, 1973) from all other living organisms. Since the perception of trees and plants as food sources, and more importantly since the maybe accidentally acquired know how of how to make trees and plants grow from seeds, Mankind has chosen to cultivate its very own green sources of food. The autarky of nature in deciding which, how and where trees and plants would grow was gone since then, and the dominance of mankind in this specific field of decision making has grown since and it is this very trajectory of growth that has now brought us into the era of genetically modified crops where our previous frontier of choices has been expanded to even include newly engineered breeds of plants, created with the objectives of having our needs even better catered to. However, there is an ongoing debate regarding the nature of benefits derivable from these Genetically Modified Crops (GM crops from hereon) and the costs that society has to incur for them, and the relative counteracting strengths of these aspects of GM cultivation, and the spread of the debate has encompassed spheres of Genetic engineering Science, Religious and related studies, agricultural economics, politics and many other social, physical and organic sciences. The objective of this essay is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of GM crop cultivation. In what follows, to help create an overview of the global GM crop scenario, we first briefly talk about the history of the cultivation of GM crops and then move on to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of GM crops. We then proceed to talk about Golden rice, an example of GM crop before concluding the discussion with a brief summary. The pace of adopting GM crops since their first commercial appearance has been very rapid. First commercially planted in 1996 in the form of a newly engineered breed of tomatoes, global GM crop cultivation as a whole has crossed 220 million acres in 2005. It should be noted however, that in spite of this pace, large scale production of GM crops has been limited to growing Soybean, maize, cotton and canola (oilseed rape) only. Albeit, countries like USA and Canada have observed large take ups of GM production, this has been quite low in Europe. But on the flip side of the coin there has been an observed upsurge in GM production in developing countries An interesting point to note is that there were 17 countries that participated in the production of GM crops but the number of crops under a significant scale was still the previously mentioned four even after 10 years of the initiation of commercial GM crop production (James, 2005). This apparently quizzical pattern is actually a resultant of the existence of ambiguity regarding the true net benefits of GM crop cultivation and the consequent and yet unresolved debate. An aspect that must be commented upon before initiating the analysis of merits and demerits of GM crop cultivation is that of non homogeneity. Here I use this word to indicate the non universality of the results, i.e, to indicate that commenting upon GM crop advantages and disadvantages in a non-specific manner is not possible. Each different breed of crops bear different fruits in terms of character and thus a broad generalisation would not be an intelligent way of dealing with the issue. Assessment has to be based upon the premises of food security impacts, poverty, bio-safety, and the sustainability of agriculture (Fresco, 2001). The advantages of GM crops obviously stems from certain problems faced with in traditional Non-GM agricultural production. The primary advantages that currently manufactured GM crops have over Non-GM crops are relatively enhanced resistance to insects and increased tolerance to herbicides (Moschini, 2006). The Nuffield report (Nuffield Commission on Bioethics,1999) talks about immensely increased yield potential as well which given the present state of gradually slowing down arable land expansion coupled with diminishing returns to irrigation assumes significant importance. Global agriculture suffers huge losses due to insect damage1. Although, conventional agricultural pest control itself has evolved into a large industry2, insects mutate to develop their own resistance to insecticides over time, and as a result, farmers are forced to use increased doses to control insects. Not only does this raise production costs for farmers, it also increases the amount of toxins injected into the environment (Pringle, 2003).In this context genetically modified crops that are able to produce their own insecticides are grown it reduces the costs as well as the hazards of using insecticides. The so called Bt crops (short form of Bacillus thuringiensis) have been developed to ensure this3. Improved herbicide tolerance is also one of the major advantages of GM crops over their non-GM counterparts. Such tolerance is ensured by insertion of a gene causing a reduction of responsiveness of the plant to zero to toxic chemicals prevalent in Herbicides. Along with these benefits, GM crops also bring the promise of substantially increased yields indirectly implying improved access to food for the poor. The pipeline GM projects are presently concerned with developing the traits of virus resistance, quality, and, in some cases, tolerance to abiotic stresses in GM crops (Fresco, 2001). GM crops of the third generation offer bio-production of pharmaceuticals and industrial compounds in traditional plants4 (Moschini, 2006). The main disadvantages of GM crops stem from technical constraints leading to uncertainties, impacts on non-GM crops as well as lack of public perception of the potential advantages, which may well be attributed to some misdirected investment that would have been better allocated to raising awareness. A major disadvantage of GM crops is that its large scale adoption has negative externality effects on the non-GM crops. This is better understood when we perceive the fact that introducing GM crops implies that effective maintenance of previous market shares of non-GM products now requires additional identity preservation and segregation activities which raise costs significantly and considering the majority of traditional crop producer’s financial statuses the social desirability of GM crop production reduces significantly (Bullock and Desquilbet, 2002). This is the prime reason that has led to a controversial debate regarding “co-existence” of GM and non-GM crops. A concern regarding bio diversity that indicates another possible disadvantage of GM crops is that genetically engineered plants unlikely to have evolved naturally even with conventional hybridization methods, not only are grown, but these themselves now can be made to interbreed with naturally evolved wild varieties thus creating the problem of genetic pollution. This coupled with genetic erosion resulting from genetic tampering without giving the prevalent uncertainties their due respect are actually gradually eroding the very crucial genetic base (Ellstrand, 2003) and thus stand as considerable threats to the preservation of the great global ecosystem that is crucially linked to our own survival. The varied perception of the commons and lack of consensus regarding the true value of GM crops themselves act as considerable disadvantages for GM crops. Production is perceived by certain groups and individuals as tampering with naturally and biologically evolved states and thereby as an intolerable interference with evolution itself. It is also argued by the critics of GM crops that modern science is still suffers from limitations that disallow full comprehension of the actual effects the genetic engineering process has and given such uncertainties, certain marginal benefits like increased yield potential, better resistance to pesticides and improved tolerance to herbicides may well be insignificant compared to the huge costs humankind may have to bear if the misgivings are actually true. We now turn to the example of Golden rice a ‘second generation GM crop created or rather genetically modified to enable it to produce β-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A to help alleviate the deficiency of this crucial component in developing countries (Potrykus, 2000). The process of producing Golden rice is considerably more complicated compared to the production of either Bt or glyphosate-tolerant first generation GM crops, in that it entails the transfer of many more genes (Ye, Al-Babili, Klöti, et al., 2000). However this suggested ability of Golden Rice to alleviate vitamin A deficiency has not gone unchallenged. Although it can produce the substance, critics argue against its practicality. The idea that rice by itself can alleviate the problem has faced doubts too as it has been pointed out that it does not form a substantial part of the diet (Shiva, 2000). Thus we find that while GM agricultural crop production definitely entail the advantages associated with enhanced productivity as well as greater tolerance to herbicides and insecticides, it also has certain demerits like negative externality effects on non-GM production. The exact effects on health of the consumers are not yet certain and nor are those on the environment and this uncertainty coupled with lack of public awareness have become prime hindrances to its global prevalence and led to huge controversies. The example of Golden rice was forwarded to primarily serve as an organism that provides instances of both angles. References: Bauer, M. W. and Gaskell, G. (2002) “Biotechnology: The Making of a Global Controversy”, Cambridge University Press. Bronowski, J., (1973) “The Ascent of Man,” Little, Brown and Co., Boston Bullock, D., & M. Desquilbet. (2002) “The Economics of Non-GMO Segregation and Identity Preservation.” Food Policy 27:81–99. Campbell, S. (2004) A genetically modified survey, Spiked, www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA661.htm (accessed Nov 2007) Ellstrand, N.C., (2003) “Dangerous Liaisons? When Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild Relatives;” The Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-7405-X Fresco, L.O., (2001) “Genetically Modified Organisms in Food and Agriculture:Where are we? Where are we going?” Keynote Address - Conference on “Crop and Forest Biotechnology for the Future Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry”, Falkenberg, Sweden 16 to 18 September 2001 James, C. 2005. “Global Status of Biotech/GM Crops in 2005” ISAAA Brief No. 34-2005, Ithaca, NY. Moschini, G., (2006) “Pharmaceutical and Industrial Traits in Genetically Modified Crops: Co-existence with Conventional Agriculture” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, December 2006, Vol. 88, No. 5, pp. 1184–1192 Nuffield Council on Bioethics (1999) “Genetically Modified Crops: The Ethical and Social Issues,” Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London. Pringle, P. (2003) “Food Inc: Mendel to Monsanto – The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest,” Simon and Schuster, New York. Potrykus, I., (2000) “The Golden Rice Tale” http://www.agbioworld.org/ at http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/topics/goldenrice/tale.html (accessed November 2007). Roush, R.T., (1997) “Bt-transgenic crops: just another pretty insecticide or a chance for a new start in resistance management?” Pestic. Sci. 51:328-334. Shiva, V. (2000) “The ‘Golden Rice’ Hoax – When Public Relations Replace Science,” Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, India. Ye, X., Al-Babili, S., Klöti, A. et al. (2000) “Engineering the provitamin A (β-carotene) biosynthetic pathway into (carotenoid-free) rice endosperm”, Science, 287, pp. 303–305. Read More