GMOs

How the Purple Tomato is Changing Consumer Perception of GMOs

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 15:00:00 GMT

Eating the rainbow has become easier and more flavorful in recent years, especially when it comes to anthocyanins — the purple pigment that’s in blueberries, blackberries, red grape skins, eggplant and now — thanks to genetic modification — the purple tomato.

Nathan Pumplin is CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, the company behind the Empress Purple Tomato, a bioengineered tomato made by adding two genes from snapdragons. These tomatoes are a rich source of antioxidants because the purple pigments are in the whole tomato, not just the skin.

“They’re really good for people’s health, and most of us don’t eat nearly enough anthocyanins,” Pumplin says.

But the trained molecular biologist, who has worked for nearly 20 years in R&D and commercializing new types of plants that solve problems, says bringing a GMO purple tomato to market has not been without challenges.

“The first GMOs were really marketed to farmers, and the innovative farmers said: ‘OK, there’s these new GMO crops, do I want to use them?’ And they very quickly saw: ‘Wow, this solves a lot of problems for me. Yes, I want to adopt them,’” he says. “What was forgotten was that it was food being produced and sold to consumers, and consumers never had an opportunity to engage with GMOs in the food system.”

“There were people who felt the food supply was playing God in the lab by adding DNA to create new varieties, and no one had asked them if they wanted to opt in or opt out,” Pumplin continues. “I think a lot of people felt like they were treated like guinea pigs. Their opinions and their values weren’t respected when those first crops launched. And that’s a huge problem.”

Adding to the challenge is the reality that most consumers don’t know what a GMO is, making education critical to driving demand for the purple tomato.

The Empress Purple Tomato is a stunner in a variety of dishes from appetizers to salads.

(Photo courtesy of Norfolk Healthy Produce)

“What’s really gratifying is that we find, generally, 80% to 90% of people in the U.S. want this product,” Pumplin says. “They know it’s a GMO, and they get a chance to ask questions like: ‘Well, don’t all GMOs have pesticides?’ And we can say: ‘No, there’s no pesticides on these. And they have the opportunity to ask a lot of questions, and then the vast majority of people say, ‘OK, I really want this.’”

While Pumplin says backlash against GMOs halted innovation and new product development for years, now he sees things coming full circle. And as consumers are hungry for the new, the flavorful and the nutritious, the fresh produce industry has innovated with the help of GMOs in some exciting ways.

“Now we have some breakthrough products, and so I’m really proud to say, our purple tomato — which is marketed in grocery stores right now under the Empress brand — is doing extremely well,” he says. “We also have the Pinkglow pineapple from Del Monte on the market. We have the Arctic Apple, which is growing and doing very well in a lot of segments.”

“I think we’re on the brink of a widespread recognition within the industry that this is something that consumers are no longer afraid of,” he adds. “They simply want a better product. They want something they can afford. They want something that their kids will eat. They want something that’s nutritious, that’s beautiful, that tastes good, all of that.”

But while today’s consumer might be ready for the better, purple tomato, Pumplin says it’s the produce industry that needs to catch up on GMOs.

“There’s just simply so little fear among the broad consumer base right now, and also such a desire for new and better products,” he says. “A big part of my messaging is to try to make sure that folks in the produce industry, these key decision-makers, understand where their consumers are.

“Because I think that’s actually the biggest gap right now. Consumers have moved on, and a lot of the decision-makers in the industry, haven’t caught up to where the consumers are,” he says. “They think the consumers are still 10 years ago, afraid of GMOs, and that’s not true anymore.”

Companies Race to Bring More Hybrid Wheat to the U.S.

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:09:35 GMT

Success has been an elusive achievement for technology providers wanting to develop hybrid non-GMO wheat products for U.S. farmers.

Corteva is the latest company to announce its intention to develop proprietary non-GMO hybrid technology. It plans to launch hybrid hard red winter (HRW) wheat as early as 2027 in North America, adding to its portfolio over time, the company shared in a recent press release.

Corteva says its hybrid HRW wheat technology will:

1. Increase farmers’ yield potential by 10% while using the same amount of land and resources, providing significant promise for both farmers and global food security. (Based on internal yield trial testing; two years of testing on six to 10 locations per year in each of the market classes; and hard red winter testing in Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma.)

2. Be more resistant to drought. Research trials show Corteva’s hybrid wheat can yield roughly 20% higher than elite varieties in water-stressed environments, which would help farmers better adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. (Based on internal yield trial testing; two years of testing on six to 10 locations per year in each of the market classes; and hard red winter testing in Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma.)

3. Accelerate the speed to market of new elite germplasm by increasing the scale of parent seed production over competitors’ technology.

Wheat ranks third behind corn and soybeans among U.S. field crops in planted acreage, USDA says. Approximately 39.1 million acres of wheat were harvested this year.

A Look Behind and Forward
The development of hybrid non-GMO wheat products has netted a mixed bag of results for technology manufacturers, among them Syngenta, BASF and Bayer.

Bayer sold its research and development platform for hybrid wheat to BASF in 2018. “Bayer was required to divest the hybrid wheat program it was working on as part of the acquisition of Monsanto,” a Bayer spokesman told Farm Journal.

Since then, the company has begun working on a program to develop hybrid wheat in both the U.S. and Europe. In the U.S., the company is building on its WestBred germplasm portfolio, “harnessing internal R&D to advance hybrid wheat and extend our seed offerings beyond varietal wheat,” the Bayer spokesman says.

In 2023, BASF announced its decision to pull its hybrid wheat development program from North America, despite 15 years of research. The company is continuing its hybrid wheat development work in Europe.

Different Products, Different Goals

While Bayer has regeared its efforts and BASF dropped out of the race, Syngenta has made inroads in developing and launching hybrid hard red spring wheat (HRS) commercially in the U.S.

In 2023, Syngenta launched three hybrid HRS wheat products in the U.S. Northern Plains under the AgriPro brand.

HRS wheat is considered the “aristocrat of wheat” used in designer wheat foods such as bagels, artisan health breads, pizza crust and other strong dough applications, according to the U.S. Wheat Associates.

In 2023, 5.6 million acres of HRS wheat were planted in the United States, a slight increase from 5.3 million acres in 2022. The bulk of HRS wheat is grown in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho and Washington.

More Acreage Potential?
Unlike Syngenta, Corteva is focusing its current development efforts on HRW, the most widely grown class of wheat in the U.S.

HRW is known for its consistency and milling efficiency. The U.S. Wheat Associates describes it as a reliable foundational ingredient for most wheat-based products.

In 2024, an estimated 24.1 million acres of HRW wheat was planted in the U.S., according to the USDA.

GMO Wheat Gains A Foothold
In total, there are seven different types of wheat grown in the U.S. today:

hard red winter
hard red spring
soft red winter
soft white
hard white winter
hard white spring
durum

Currently, none of the seven types is based on any genetic modification. But that could change with USDA’s decision this past August to give a green light to the commercial production of HB4 wheat.

HB4 is a genetically modified wheat variety developed by Bioceres Crop Solutions and features a trait for drought tolerance.

The U.S. joins Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay in authorizing HB4 wheat, which could mark a significant shift in the landscape of wheat production.

Although USDA’s ruling clears the regulatory pathway for cultivation of HB4 wheat in the U.S., there are several additional steps needed before HB4is grown commercially. These include the need to conduct closed-system field trials prior to commercialization.

U.S. Wheat Associates said in August the organization will continue monitoring Bioceres’ commercialization plans to ensure careful stewardship and alignment with the “ Wheat Industry Principles for Biotechnology Commercialization ” developed jointly with the National Association of Wheat Growers.

Your Next Read: Make Fertilizer Decisions With Confidence and Insight

A Global Farmer Perspective on the Opportunity Offered With New Plant Breeding Technology

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 13:00:00 GMT

By Onyaole Patience Koku, Nigeria and Diana Lenzi, Italy

Nearly three dozen Nobel laureates have joined more than 1,000 scientists in urging members of the European Parliament to embrace science-based gene editing technology.

New Genomic Techniques, they write in a petition , “hold immense promise for sustainable agriculture, enhanced food security, and innovative medical solutions.”

As farmers who worry about the future of food production in an era of climate change, we join this distinguished group in asking the policymakers of the EU to open their minds to the amazing potential of this technology.

On the surface, we don’t share much in common: One of us grows corn in Nigeria, and the other runs an organic vineyard and olive grove in Italy. We live in different places, serve different customers, and face different challenges.

Yet we’re united in our belief that NGTs present a tremendous opportunity to farmers in Africa, Europe, and everywhere as we strive to grow more food in a more sustainable way.

The EU’s proposal of regulation on NGTs, as much as it is a welcomed step forward into understanding and accepting the great benefits that agriculture and civil society could both obtain thanks to the introduction of NGT technology in plant breeding, is a confusing mess with some grey areas that might undermine the efficiency of the new regulation. While many European farmers, stakeholders, and NGOs are attracted to this important innovation and recognize its enormous upside, others remain skeptical.

The stakes are huge. In a global market, the failure to introduce NGTs in Europe will hurt not only European farmers who strive to do more with less and improve their commitment to sustainability, but also inadvertently impacts African farmers who depend on trade with Europe.

In their petition, the scientists put the matter bluntly, imploring the Europeans “to engage with the overwhelming majority of farmers and genuine experts, not with reactive anti-science lobbyists in the Brussels bubble.”

What we absolutely cannot afford is a repeat of Europe’s disastrous rejection of GMOs, a safe technology that has transformed agriculture in the Americas and much of Asia, where they’ve allowed farmers to grow more staple foods, fight pests and disease, and build climate resilience into their crops.

NGTs, however, offer a remarkable science-based opportunity to move past this old dispute.

With NGTs, crop scientists can speed up the slow process of traditional breeding that farmers have used since the birth of agriculture in the distant past. They get results quickly by nudging existing genes in helpful directions, leapfrogging the antiquated trial-and-error experiments that can take generations to complete.

NGTs can help farmers fight climate change by equipping crops to withstand the extremes of heat and cold as well as droughts, floods, and disease. They can help us reduce our reliance on herbicides and pesticides. And they can help us improve our yields and feed a growing planet.

This technology also can involve everyone, from big-time producers of major commodities to farmers like us.

In Italy, NGTs could help farmers overcome the devastating effects of climate change and the spread of uncontrollable pest and fungus that the traditional methods of control and contrast can no longer defeat. And they can make it easier for organic farmers to produce affordable food and compete in the marketplace while remaining true to their core principles.

In Africa, where agricultural productivity trails the rest of the world, NGTs can help farmers grow better crops that make more food, nourish our neighbors, and push us toward economic self-sufficiency. NGTs also will lead to a new round of astonishing medical breakthroughs.

None of this will happen without Europe’s political and scientific leadership.

In recent months, various bodies within the EU’s political bureaucracy have considered the promise of NGTs, but their deliberations mostly have delivered uncertainty. In 2024, they must strive to come up with a consistent and evidence-based approach that begins to settle the matter in favor of this excellent technology. But it is now also the time for national governments to show their support to this regulation. The proposal now sits in the hands of the Council and it will be there for the support or rejection of the leaders of Europe that will determine if we wish for science to be the guiding light for Europe’s transition to more sustainable food systems.

The policies of the EU determine the rules that govern its member countries, of course, but their influence reaches far beyond their borders. When the EU resisted GMOs around the turn of the century, much of the developing world followed its example—and then watched with envy as farmers in the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil adopted biotechnology and surged ahead with the biggest yields agriculture has ever seen.

NGTs give us a chance to hit the reset button—and embrace a technology that can make agriculture more climate conscious, more sustainable, and more fruitful.

Onyaole Patience Koku co-founded and manages Replenish Farms where they grow mostly maize under irrigation in Nigeria. Through their company 1hectare1 family, they are providing access to knowledge transfer supporting input and market access for smallholder farmers in Nigeria. Patience is an outspoken advocate for making sure that all farmers have access to innovative technology and is a member of the Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Diana Lenzi runs her family’s organic winery, Fattoria di Petrorio, in Tuscany where she grows grapes to do Chianti Classico and olive for Extra Virgin Olive oil, available on the international market and through direct sales on the farm. She also manages an arable crop farm in the Marche, is a professor for agri-business, sustainable agri-business and food and beverage management. Diana provides leadership to young farmers’ organizations and is a member of the Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

As a Farmer I Must Continue to Share My Story

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 12:00:00 GMT

By Marcus Holtkoetter: Altenberge, Germany

When I became a farmer 25 years ago, I didn’t realize the importance of becoming a storyteller as well—but that’s what the economics and politics of agriculture require today.

My family farm in Germany goes back 11 generations, to the 1700s. We have the papers to support that legacy, but the farm may be even older.

Like my ancestors, I focus on food production. On the farm today, I grow winter wheat, barley, canola, and corn. I also raise pigs.

Unlike my ancestors, I invest a lot of my time explaining what we do and why we do it to people who don’t know much about farming—an audience that includes consumers as well as politicians, regulators, journalists, and more. Many of them live in cities and rarely see farms, let alone visit farms and understand what farmers do.

That’s why I became active on X (formerly Twitter) as the first farmer in Germany who uses this social-media platform to explain modern agriculture.

If farmers fail to tell their own stories, someone else will. This would most definitely put us in a position to lose the freedom to farm—and this freedom already is under severe pressure, due to harmful policies such as the EU’s Green Deal . This policy would force many of us to adopt practices that will make us less productive and raise food prices in grocery stores and restaurants—even though we can meet many of the policy’s environmental goals through innovation and technology.

So I’m honored and heartened to receive this year’s GFN Kleckner Award for Global Farm Leadership . I’ll formally accept it in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 24, during the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogue.

The award is an honor because its namesake, Dean Kleckner, was both a farmer as well as an influential advocate for farmers. His legacy lives on with the non-profit organization that he led for many years, the Global Farmer Network . I’m proud to participate in this group’s activities as a member. Joining it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The award is heartening because it will give me new opportunities to tell my story as well as the stories of other farmers. The better people understand who we are and what we do, the better positioned we’ll be to grow the food that the world needs.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

Social media is a wonderful tool for communication, but it also can function as a megaphone for ignorance—and misinformation. Have you ever heard the ridiculous claim that farmers “poison” their crops and their land.

Why would a farmer do that?

On my farm, we work hard to promote the health of our crops and the soil they grow in. That means defeating the weeds that try to steal their nourishment as well as the pests that attack them and open pathways for disease.

To accomplish these goals, crop-protection products give us the tools we need—and we apply them with discretion and precision. We use limited quantities and put them in exactly the right place at the right time. This helps our crops grow and preserves their nutritional value. Our commitment to precision technology also encourages sustainability in all its forms. As we strive to do more with less, we maintain the health of our soil and grow food in a way that is financially feasible for farmers and economically affordable for consumers.

I can talk about practices such as this all day long, but there’s nothing quite like showing them to people who want to learn more. That’s why our farm participates in “open farm days,” when guests can visit our farm and ask questions. When people watch us farm with their own eyes and hear us describe what we do and why we do it, they almost always come away with a better appreciation of agriculture and its challenges.

Not everybody can make the journey to our farm, of course, and so I try to create something like virtual visits on social media. I routinely post photos of my fields and videos from my tractor, trying to educate the public about what we do. I also take questions from anybody who poses them.

Others have joined me in this effort, but we need more help from farmers in my country, throughout the EU, and around the world.

We’ve got to tell our stories—and when we tell them with honesty and authority, we’ll win hearts and minds and defend our freedom to farm.

Marcus Holtkoetter is part of his family’s 11-generation farm, where they grow winter wheat and barley, corn, canola and pigs in the northwest part of Germany. He has an active social media presence as he tells his story and that of other farmers. Marcus is a member of the Global Farmer Network and has been recognized as the 2023 GFN Kleckner Global Farm Leader. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

EU Seeks Revised GMO Rules to Loosen Curbs on Gene-Edited Crops

Wed, 05 Jul 2023 18:38:16 GMT

The European Commission proposed revising its rules on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Wednesday to loosen some restrictions for plants resulting from newer gene-editing technology.

The EU executive said the move would give farmers more resilient crops and reduce the use of chemical pesticides and offer consumers food with higher nutritional value.

The Commission launched a review in 2021 after concluding that GMO legislation from 2001 was “not fit for purpose”. The EU’s top court had ruled in 2018 that genome-editing techniques should be governed by GMO rules.

On Wednesday the Commission proposed splitting new genomic technique (NGT) plants into two categories.

Those that could also occur naturally or by conventional breeding would be exempted from GMO legislation and labelling
requirements. All other NGT plants would be treated as GMOs, requiring risk assessments and authorization.

Plants will qualify for the first category if there are no more than 20 genetic modifications.

A faster track approval process would apply for the second category of plants if, for example, they are more tolerant to climate change or require less water or fertilizer.

Related Story: John Phipps: The New Technology Helping Cool the GMO Debate

The proposal needs approval from the European Parliament and EU governments and may be revised.

The most prominent example of the new technology is the CRISPR/Cas9 “genome scissors”, for which Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Bayer, the world’s second-largest seeds and pesticides maker, described the proposal as “ground-breaking”.

“Plant breeding normally takes more than a decade from the first positive research results to market entry. Gene editing allows us to cut five years out of this process,” said Bayer’s head of sustainability Matthias Berninger.

Biotech industry group EuropaBio urged an extension of the rules to cover micro-organisms.

Environmental groups say NGT plants need careful controls and the proposal risks making European farming dependent on large agribusiness companies.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Mute Schimpf said it was essential labelling requirements remain so that consumers could make informed choices. The need to label has effectively prevented sales of GM food items to EU consumers.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; additional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt; editing by Jason Neely and Alexander Smith)

John Phipps: The New Technology Helping Cool the GMO Debate

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 13:59:09 GMT

The public apprehension over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) has slowly dissipated as an abundance of non-GMO offerings have been made available to consumers. One major concern was the transference of genetic material between species.

These transgenic mutations made some consumers uneasy, but they also made GMOs detectable. Soon simple and rapid tests could make sure if corn was GMO or not. Such detectability is crucial.

Compare this situation to organic, for example, where the only criterion was essentially the word of the producer, backed by paperwork, inspections, and other oversight – not a laboratory test. Science has moved on.

Using a genetic engineering tool with the handy name of CRISPR/Cas9, breeders can now alter genes without using transgenic material. This is essentially the same method as conventional plant breeding only capable of targeting a specific gene segment instead of waiting for an identical natural mutation to occur and be sorted out.

CRISPR results are identical to results from conventional breeding. Without outside material involved it is impossible to differentiate from conventional and CRISPR results.

While food activists may still object, recent scandals in the organic food industry suggest trying to discriminate against CRISPR products will be impossible or at least worse than the current shaky organic verification regimes. It would also make no sense or calm any fear.

Gene alterations occur constantly from natural causes such as background radiation, gene replication errors, and traditional breeding, evidenced by the importance of pedigrees for breeding livestock.

When this genetic tool first began getting attention, I wrote about it in Top Producer. I was a little too enthusiastic six years ago about when the first fruits of this work would show up in supermarkets.

It is happening now, and one of the first foods to be improved is sadly, mustard greens. The new varieties are less bitter, I guess, but then I’m far from a salad aficionado.

My hope is we could finally solve some more pressing vegetable issues – like shippable tomatoes with August-garden juiciness and flavor. Meanwhile consumers may be, knowingly or not, storing one of the most advanced scientific discoveries in their refrigerators.

In other words, we’ll be putting CRISPR in the crisper.

Connecting Japan’s Farmers to the World In Support of Sustainable Agriculture

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 12:00:00 GMT

By Shuichi Tokumoto: Tottori, Japan

I want to be the most influential farmer in the world.

The first step is for me to become the most influential farmer in my native Japan.

As farmers, we are professional businessmen and women who produce the food our families, communities, and the world needs. To support my work as a Japanese farmer, I recently founded the Japan Biotech Crop Network . Our mission is to build a stable and sustainable supply of food and feed for our country while reducing the burden that agriculture puts on the environment. We will accomplish this through honest conversations about sound science and smart technology, leading to policy recommendations that serve the long-term interests of farmers and consumers.

Unlike many farmers, I haven’t spent my life in food production. I’ve worked as a firefighter, a singer , and an information-technology professional. In 2008, I was on the board of an IT venture company in Tokyo when the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers sent shock waves through the global economy.

That experience convinced me to reorganize my life. Rather than immersing myself in the intangibles of the IT industry, I wanted to create tangible value from scratch with my own business. Around the same time, I had a child—and began to think hard about the food that we eat and the future in which my children will live.

So, I became a farmer, and today I grow paddy rice, feed corn, soybeans, buckwheat, and more near the city of Tottori. (Here’s a video of me on my farm last month, as a tractor forms a hard-packed retaining wall to conserve water.)

As I moved into agriculture, I noticed that populist politics and scientific illiteracy affect farming in profound ways—and make it harder for Japan to grow the food that it needs. Too many policies are the result of what sounds popular to the non-farming public rather than what makes sense for the good of the nation, and many of these blunders depend on low levels of education and scientific knowledge.

Because of this, Japan has resisted technological developments that have improved food security in many other nations. I saw this firsthand at a meeting of international farmers in Argentina, sponsored earlier this year by the Global Farmer Network . As we visited hugely successful farms, I saw how GMOs have helped my fellow farmers fight pests, weeds, and disease to grow more food. I also saw how GMOs in conjunction with no-till methods and cover crops protected the environment and contributed to sustainability.

On returning home, I began to question Japan’s longstanding resistance to GMOs like never before.

If we want our agricultural system to provide high-quality food at reasonable prices in a way that respects the environment, we need to reject non-science-based ideology and embrace safe technology. Time and again, the studies of our own government have shown that GMOs present no risk to human health or biodiversity.

I’m hopeful that the Japanese public will become more accepting of GMOs, but I’m especially heartened by the rise of gene-edited crops, sometimes called new genomic techniques, or NGTs. This different approach to biotechnology presents Japan with a breakthrough opportunity to welcome the latest advances in crop science.

A few gene-edited products are already on the market. With time, people will get used to them and recognize that they can become a part of a healthy and nutritious diet and will specifically request them.

Demographic factors also may play a role. The population of Japan is aging . This is driven partly by the fact that people are living longer, which is good, but mostly by declining birthrates, which is bad. This has enormous implications for the economics of agriculture, as some farmers quit the business and fewer children want to take up the occupations of their ancestors.

The future of farming in Japan therefore is large-scale and liquid, as smaller numbers of farmers will take on the obligation of overseeing more agriculture land. This new generation will push for productivity by taking advantage of safe technologies while also committing to sustainable practices.

They’re going to need my new group, the JBCN .

We’re ready to improve agriculture in Japan—and if we can lead the way here, we can lead the whole world.

Shuichi Tokumoto is a first-generation farmer producing rice, beans and corn on 100 Ha in Japan. Shuichi is the founder of the Japan Biotech Crop Network ( www.japan-biotech-crop-network.com ) and a member of the Global Farmer Network. This column originates at www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Is the U.S. Becoming Less Competitive in Growing Wheat? A New Warning Sign for the Future of Wheat

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 23:10:53 GMT

The same week as Brazil became the second country to approve the planting of GMO wheat , BASF announced it’s halting work to develop hybrid wheat in North America. The move is one the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) fears could ultimately drive more wheat acres out of the U.S., unless more public and private investments into research and development are made.

BASF isn’t moving out of wheat entirely; instead, the company is now focusing on developing a new type of wheat in Europe. According to Reuters , wheat breeders have been working to develop cross-bred wheat varieties that not only increase yields but make the crop more resistant to drought and disease. However, the hybridization of wheat is both costly and slow, which doesn’t provide much incentive to stay in the North America market.

BASF announced last month it’s cutting 2,600 jobs due to rising cost and weak earnings and, according to Reuters, those job cuts include hybrid wheat developers in the U.S. and Canada.

Wheat’s Struggle to Stay Competitive in the U.S.

Chandler Goule, CEO of NAWG, says BASF notified the association of its decision before the company made the announcement. Goule says while he understands BASF’s decision, he fears the U.S. could become less competitive and cause declining U.S. wheat acres over the next decade.

“That says a couple of things to us,” says Goule. “It says one, that the margins in the wheat industry are not wide enough to

generate enough financial support for continued research. That’s something I think we as an industry need to look at as a whole, not just because BAF pulled out. But that means we need to be putting more dollars towards research and advancement, so that these private companies and our land grants can all continue to help us move breeding programs forward.”

He says without that research, wheat won’t be as competitive a crop to grow in the U.S., when you compare it to other crops such as corn and soybeans.

“I fear that in the next 10 to 20 years, we will continue to see a decrease in wheat acres, even though we saw an uptick this year. But if you look at the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a steady decline of wheat acres in the United States. We’re going to do the same thing to the wheat industry that we did to the oat industry in that we’re going to push it all into Canada, because we are not able to adopt those advanced technologies. Then corn, soy, canola and other grains are going to take over what has predominantly been wheat acres for hundreds of years,” says Goule.

Is the Approval of GE Wheat in the U.S. a Possible Answer?

Also last week, Brazil, a country that plants about 3 million hectares of wheat annually, became the second country to approve the technology for planting. The first country to clear GE wheat for planting was Argentina. Brazil says global food supply fears and drought’s impact on the crop helped fuel the decision.

Could the U.S. approve GMO wheat next? Goule says because wheat is used in so many food products, education will continue to be key in finally getting U.S. consumers to trust and understand that GE wheat is safe.

“We aren’t able to take advantage of GE events like corn and soy, because we are a food grain and not a feed grain, and we are much closer to the consumer,” says Goule. “It’s unfortunate that the consumer is still so scared of such a safe technology that would actually help us produce more wheat to help us with situations like Russia and Ukraine. The hybridization of wheat is great, and that is moving us along faster than standardized breeding has, but it still is not as fast as if we were able to adopt advanced technologies like GE.”

Fighting for the Future By Reaching Those Outside of Ag

The fight to not only keep wheat competitive, but also grow its footprint in the U.S., is one Goule has already started. He says studies are currently underway to show the life-cycle of wheat, data that could prove just how climate-friendly a crop like wheat is for farmers and the environment. The other piece of that puzzle is to not only educate policy makers and consumers about the importance of wheat in the world’s food supply, but also why things like GE wheat are a sustainable path forward.

“Those urban members are so focused on SNAP and feeding programs, well those programs all focus around a grain-based diet, bread and other foods along those lines,” says Goule.

That’s why Goule thinks of wheat as a food grain instead of a feed grain. He says it’s vital that not only the wheat industry, but also those representing rice and pulse crops, continue to push those conversations beyond just agriculture.

“I think the more that we can start looking outside the box and not talking just to our echo chamber here in ag, but really start educating these urban members on why this technology is important,” he says. “We have to educate on why we should increase wheat acres in the United States, why a whole grain diet is so important not only for our kids and our consumers here in the U.S, but worldwide.”

Related Story:

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U.S.'s "Candid" GMO Corn Conversation With Mexico Results In Changes To Looming Trade Dispute

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 19:58:03 GMT

USDA’s Secretary Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai hosted senior Mexican officials in Washington, D.C. on Friday.

According to USDA’s press release , the group shared a “candid” conversation about President López Obrador’s 2020 decree regarding imports of biotech products. The decree would bar imports of GMO corn beginning in 2024 and prohibit use of glyphosate.

U.S. officials said Mexico “presented some potential amendments” to the decree.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Mexico “explained its food security policy” by highlighting Mexico’s three goals:

1. Preserve Mexico’s bicultural heritage as the birthplace of more than 60 varieties of corn
2. Continue to ensure self-sufficiency in corn for tortillas
3. Strengthen food security in North America

“We agreed to review their proposal closely and follow up with questions or concerns in short order,” said Tai and Vilsack in a joint statement. “There is a joint recognition that time is of the essence and we must determine a path forward soon.”

Meeting Timeline

This isn’t the first conversation Vilsack and Tai have shared with Mexico’s officials regarding the decree. These meetings have been ongoing in 2022, with the latest talks coming at the urging of many senators and ag groups to shutdown the decree.

“Corn farmers are right now in the process of making planting decisions for next spring, and any additional uncertainty in the market affects their ability to appropriately respond to multiple market signals,” National Corn Growers Association said in a letter to President Biden. “If the decree is not completely withdrawn, we ask that your administration initiate a case under USMCA.”

The Biden Administration previously made known they would challenge Mexico under the USMCA if the decree is not redacted or removed completely.

More on Mexico :

NCGA Adds to the List of Those Urging Biden to Address Mexico’s GMO Corn Ban
USMCA Disputes Run Ramped Again, This Time with Mexico

Innovation Will Help Farmers Feed a World of 8 Billion and Counting

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 13:00:00 GMT

By Gurjeet Singh Mann: Village Patti Kirpal, District Sirsa of Haryana State, India

You can mark the date on your calendar: On November 15, 2022, a mother will give birth to a baby who is the world’s 8 billionth person.

This milestone in human history comes to us from an estimate by demographers at the United Nations.

They also predict that next year, my country of India will pass China as the planet’s most populous nation, with about 1.4 billion people.

This means the expanding population will need much more food than we ever had before. If we’re going to feed them, we need another Green Revolution and a lot more for India as well as for the rest of the world. Farmers must enjoy access to the full power of modern technology so that we can do our part to meet the necessities of life.

The challenges of population growth are enormous. I’ve seen the effects in my region of northern India, where I’ve worked on my family farm for more than four decades and currently grow rice and wheat. Areas that once were devoted to agriculture now are dotted with dwellings to accommodate more families and people. The boundaries of cities and villages continue to expand, cutting into cropland. Everything feels more congested.

We’re losing arable land every day to urbanization and industrialization. Because we can’t make more of it, we must do more with what we have—and in a world of 8 billion people, that means growing more food on less land than ever before.

This is our task for the rest of the century, too. The UN predicts continued growth in global population, with 9.7 billion people in 2050 and 10.4 billion in 2100.

The problem is especially severe in India. Soon we’ll have more people than China, but China always will have more arable land.

Feeding our nation will involve one of history’s biggest tests.

This is a serious problem, but it can be transformed into an opportunity as well. The good news is that we know what to do, at least in principle, and that’s because we’ve done it before.

Back in the 1960’s, the global population topped 3 billion—and many experts worried about the ability of farmers to improve their production and keep up. Enter Norman Borlaug , the agronomist who made it his mission to find a solution. In India, he worked with M.S. Swaminathan and M.S. Randhawa to develop new seed varieties, which gave a big boost to the yield and total production of cereals, especially wheat in India.

At a time when pessimists were ready to surrender in the war on hunger, Borlaug showed the power of human ingenuity to solve problems with science and technology. He went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his achievements as an agronomist.

This is the hidden benefit of population growth: For all the ways that additional people can present dilemmas, they also give us a better chance to create a new generation of innovators who will help us think our way to answers.

As they do, farmers like me stand ready to do our part. We are ready to innovate, too.

During my career as a farmer, I’ve watched technology transform everything. The advent of GMOs, for example, allowed cotton farmers finally to withstand the assaults of boll worms and other pests—and we enjoyed a massive boom in production. Although I’m now growing other kinds of crops, I was a full participant in this development and saw firsthand how much it helped farmers and consumers alike.

Sadly, our government has prevented us from adopting GM technology in edible produce. While much of the developed world has embraced this technology, India has hesitated, due mainly to the opposition of political activists. We have an amazing potential to grow more food. A couple of the most promising examples are mustard and brinjal (which is known as “eggplant” in other parts of the world). Today, we have a ray of hope as GM mustard recently received environmental clearance from the Government. Access to these GM seeds would immediately help farmers strengthen India’s food security.

Yet this is about more than just a single technology. The gene-editing technology called “CRISPR” gives us new abilities to grow crops in harsher conditions, including drought, heat, and frost. We should apply it to every crop—starting with wheat and rice, which may be the commodities that could gain the most from new technological approaches and farmer access needed to meet the worlds hunger challenge.

Everything begins with having the best seeds, but we have other technological opportunities: Climate-smart farming requires better machinery, from large harvesters for big fields to small and micro size so a maximum number of farmers can adopt it to small drones for mapping and surveillance; micro-irrigation, for the efficient delivery of water in a time of climate change; improved weather forecasting, to help us make planting decisions; and crop-protection tools that fight weeds, pests, and disease.

These are the makings of a new Green Revolution—one that a world of 8 billion people and counting will need.

Gurjeet Singh Mann grows rice (mainly aromatic Basmati varieties) and wheat on a family farm in Haryana State, North India. As a farmer who embraces new technology, including GM crops, he guides fellow and young farmers in these new technologies. Gurjeet Mann is a member of the Global Farmer Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

The Man-made Disaster in Sri Lanka Could Have Been Avoided

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 12:00:00 GMT

By V. Ravichandran: Poongulam Village, Tamil Nadu, India

The images of agitated Sri Lankans storming into their country’s presidential residence in reaction to the mishandling of farm policy by their government left me with a single thought: This could have been avoided.

Man-made disasters are the worst. They are totally unnecessary. Yet we can learn from them, and what just happened in Sri Lanka is an eye-opener and offers warnings about food production for the rest of the world—and perhaps most especially for my country of India.

When Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced last year that his island nation would reject conventional agriculture and immediately go 100-percent organic, many commentators predicted a catastrophe. I was one of them, calling this radical decision “a massive failure” that would hurt the country and its people.

Sri Lanka’s tragic error was the stuff of a wild thought experiment: What would happen if a whole nation were to abandon the tools of modern agriculture and go back to the way farming was done more than a century ago?

We no longer need to wonder about the result. We have the hard evidence of a humanitarian and economic crisis that has engulfed a nation of more than 21 million people.

Those who are serious about agriculture know that organic farming won’t work on a large scale . It simply cannot meet the needs of food production. It can thrive when it presents consumers with one choice among many in a diverse marketplace. By contrast, forcing every farmer in an entire country to adopt its primitive practices, such as the rejection of synthetic fertilizers and crop-protection devices, is an exercise in lunacy.

Yet this is what many ideologues insist that they want. Vandana Shiva , an influential Indian activist, has praised Sri Lanka for its ruinous farming policies: “Let us all join hands with Sri Lanka,” she tweeted on June 11, 2021.

And on July 12, 2022, just 13 months later, the Sri Lanka president who had followed her false and mischievous propaganda fled his country on a military jet and resigned from his position, abandoning his hungry citizens and leaving them in a great food, fuel and economic crisis.

Today, Sri Lanka has a new president: Ranil Wickremesinghe , who confronts the unenviable task of cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor. He’ll have to restore growth and help farmers, who in normal times produce lots of rice as well as the world’s best tea. Over the last year, however, Sri Lanka has been forced to import large amounts of rice and has watched its tea exports drop by 18% from November 2021 to February 2022, losing $425 million due to the reduced tea exports.

Wickremesinghe can start by looking to a positive example in our region: Bangladesh has taken advantage of the latest technology to improve a staple crop. Its adoption of Bt brinjal (eggplant) has boosted production and reduced the use of pesticides, in a victory for agricultural and environmental sustainability .

This shows what can happen when leaders see technology as a solution rather than a problem. When farmers enjoy access to technology, they can improve their own operations as well as pass on the benefits to consumers and others. This was the great lesson of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution —and it’s the lesson of our times as well, as responsible scientists unleash the potential of biotechnology, gene-editing, crop protection and more.

Activists like Shiva never seem to pay a price for promoting their harmful ideas. She remains unrepentant over the wreckage of Sri Lanka. While Dr. Borlaug saved over a billion lives, Vandana Shiva has been ruining billions through her fictitious allegations against conventional farm practices and casting baseless fears in the minds of the people.

I’ve never met Shiva, but I’ve jousted with her online. When I challenged her with a few questions about GM crops, however, she blocked me from her social media. That’s her way of dealing with criticism. She refuses even to consider alternative points of view. She won’t look at evidence that makes her uncomfortable.

Sadly, some of the leaders in my own country have promoted the widespread adoption of organic farming, or what they sometimes call “natural farming.”

But let’s not fool ourselves: If India were to attempt what Sri Lanka just tried to do, it might lead to the worst food-security failure in history. Nearly 1.4 billion people live here—we’re about to pass China as the world’s most populous nation—and our calamity would be many times worse than Sri Lanka’s.

I wish Sri Lanka and its people were not mired in misery, but let’s at least learn from their mistake and not commit another man-made disaster, here or anywhere.

Mr. V. Ravichandran owns a 60-acre farm at Poongulam Village in Tamil Nadu, India where he grows rice, sugar cane, cotton and pulses (small grains). Mr. Ravichandran is a member of the Global Farmer Network, and the 2013 recipient of the Kleckner Global Farm Leader Award. This column originates at www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Food Insecurity Increases With Man-Made Disasters

Sun, 05 Jun 2022 12:00:00 GMT

By V. Ravichandran: Poongulam Village, Tamil Nadu, India

It’s difficult enough that the cost of food keeps rising. Now the cost of cooking is going up as well.

That’s because much of the world is on the brink of a shortage of edible cooking oil. Suddenly, we have less than we need—and most of this growing problem is man-made.

The natural disasters of earthquakes, hurricanes, and droughts can be devastating. Even worse, however, are the unnatural disasters—the manmade ones that are within our power to avoid.

The soaring cost of cooking oil is a perfect example. As a farmer in India, I’ve come to understand that the problem is not just due to Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine. It’s also about lack of access to agricultural technology.

Whatever the causes, cooking-oil scarcity is starting to hurt consumers everywhere. In the United Kingdom, supermarkets have rationed it, limiting purchases to three bottles of cooking oil per customer. Stores in Belgium, Greece, Spain, and Turkey have adopted similar rules.

Here in India, there is no shortage of oil as of now, but prices of edible oils have increased steeply. I’ve never seen them so high.

All of this is on top of a massive explosion in food prices. In March, the cost of food hit an all-time high, according to the United Nations. Prices eased slightly in April, which is good news, but the improvement was modest. It’s like we’ve just scaled Mount Everest and now we’re resting a few feet below the summit. The air is still thin, and the weather remains uncertain. It’s a dangerous place.

The immediate cause of our cooking-oil crisis is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which exports more sunflower oil than any other country—about half the planet’s production, in fact. Ukraine and Russia combined account for three-quarters of the world’s sunflower oil.

These supplies are suddenly unavailable in the quantities we’ve come to expect. The price of sunflower oil has leaped by more than 40 percent since the war started in February, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

The world has ways of coping, as sunflower oil is not the only kind of cooking oil available. In my home, in addition of sunflower oil, we use many kinds of edible oils: ground nut, palm, gingelly (a.k.a. sesame), mustard (a.k.a. canola), and more.

Yet the shortage of sunflower oil puts massive pressure on every variety of cooking oil. As a result, each one is becoming more expensive. The most vulnerable people suffer the most, and not just because they have less disposable income. They also tend to rely on cooking oils more than people in developed countries. The scarcity of these products hits them harder.

War may be the ultimate manmade disaster—a huge calamity brought on entirely by the lethal choices of combatants. The most immediate solution to the global challenge of food insecurity, including the inflated price of cooking oils, would be for Russia to halt this act of military aggression against Ukraine.

To blame everything on Russia’s war of conquest, however, is to neglect another important factor: The refusal of many governments to let farmers use the best agricultural technology.

I’ve experienced the problem firsthand. Although farms in my area are not major producers of cooking oil, I’ve planted sunflowers, palms, and soybeans. I gave up partly because we don’t have a local mill for the extraction of sunflower or soybean oil.

An even bigger challenge, though, were the pests. Pod borers savaged our soybeans. We controlled them through traditional methods of crop protection and enjoyed some success—but our government also prevents us from using the safe GM technologies that would have both reduced our costs and boosted our harvests.

I believe that with GM soybeans, we would have increased our yields by about one third. In other words, we would have done more with less, creating an abundance that would have led to lower cooking-oil prices for consumers and allowed India to be self-sufficient in edible oil.

Yet we didn’t have this option—and today, I don’t produce soybeans at all because I can’t use the science-based technologies that farmers in North and South America have access to. It makes sense for me to focus on other crops. Lots of other farmers in my region and elsewhere have made similar choices.

The result is that the world has less cooking oil than it might.

Had Russia not invaded Ukraine, the global food crisis could have been avoided, but a portion of our problem is the result of a bad choice to prohibit a proven technology.

This is the definition of a manmade disaster. And now we’re all paying a lot more to cook our food.

Mr. V Ravichandran owns a 60-acre farm at Poongulam Village in Tamil Nadu, India where he grows rice, sugar cane, cotton and pulses (small grains). Mr. Ravichandran is a member of the Global Farmer Network, 2013 recipient of the Kleckner Award and served on the World Economic Forum New Vision for Agriculture Transformational Leaders Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Time to rethink genetically modified wheat?

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 13:00:00 GMT

By Jake Leguee: Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada

It’s safe. It would help farmers deal with drought, support biodiversity, protect the environment and decrease a farms carbon footprint. It would help consumers cope with inflation and pay their food bills.

So why aren’t we growing genetically modified wheat?

We’re asking this question again because of the news from South America late last year that Brazil will accept the importation of genetically modified wheat flour from Argentina.

This is an enormous step, marking the first time anywhere in the world that a regulatory agency has approved such a move. Bloomberg called it “the most critical milestone for genetically modified wheat to date.”

Other countries may follow. Australia and New Zealand are reviewing genetically modified wheat. The UK has started field trials for gene-edited wheat. Other countries also are interested .

Huge hurdles remain. Farmers in Argentina are now growing thousands of acres of HB4 wheat, genetically modified for drought tolerance, but Brazilian millers are skeptical. They worry that consumers don’t want food derived from genetically modified wheat.

What happens next is anyone’s guess.

Perhaps it makes sense to review the facts—and to think about a better future.

I grow wheat and other crops here in Saskatchewan, Canada. I don’t grow GM wheat because it’s not available, at least right now. I do grow GM canola, however, and I’ve seen the benefits that biotechnology can deliver when we allow safe science to inform crop breeding.

In the case of HB4 wheat, scientists have developed a seed technology that is drought tolerant. Field trials have shown that when this technology is partnered with regenerative soil practices like no-till, the carbon footprint for this crop decreases while yields are protected when water is limited.

Droughts are a growing threat in my region as Canada, along with much of the world, is experiencing unpredictable extreme weather events. In western Canada in 2021, we suffered our worst drought in decades. We’ve had dry summers and we’ve had hot summers, and often we can deal with these problems when they come at us one at a time. Last year, however, they struck together—and the result was our smallest harvest in recent memory.

Genetically modified wheat would help farmers like me contend with problems such as this. Rather than watching our crops wilt and die, we’d see them continue to thrive and survive. It would be good for the environment, too, as we seek to grow as much food on as little land as possible. This is a major goal of sustainable farming, and biotechnology is an innovation that allows us to meet it.

Best of all, genetically modified wheat would support the growing consumers demand for affordable wheat products like pasta and bread. When farmers like me can consistently grow enough wheat by adapting to the challenges of a changing climate, we are able to meet these demands and effectively keep wheat products available and affordable.

That’s a big concern right now. People have noticed that the prices in grocery stores and markets are spiking. The major factors include supply-chain slowdowns and general inflation. Droughts also play a role—and they’ve contributed to the fact that in expectation of scarcity, wheat futures are hitting their highest prices in years.

Genetically modified wheat is part of the solution. In a world with abundant wheat, everything from bread and pasta to breakfast cereal and pizza crust would cost less.

We’ve used biotechnology for a generation in canola, corn and soybeans. Although these crops once confronted uncertainty, that debate is over : GM technology is a conventional part of agriculture. Every single day, billions of people eat food that traces back to genetically modified crops.

We would have adopted genetically modified wheat years ago, except that our industry was concerned that consumers wouldn’t accept it. Whereas much of the corn and soybeans grown goes into livestock feed or a food ingredient, wheat goes directly into the human food chain.

At the start of this century, when GM was a relatively new technology, many people didn’t know what to make of it. It’s easy to reject something you do not understand. Sadly, we may have only ourselves to blame: We failed to communicate the big advantages of this crop to consumers.

But this doesn’t mean that we never should try again. The views of consumers are essential, but they also can change. As people learn more about these safe technologies and come to understand that these same technologies help farmers meet the sustainability goals many consumers are asking for and we share, their support for these ‘tools of sustainability’ may change. This is the story of genetically modified crop acceptance, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t come to include the acceptance of genetically modified wheat.

As a wheat producer, I will be watching developments in Argentina and Brazil closely—and hope they lead to a better future for farmers, consumers, and everyone.

Jake Leguee and his family grow canola, wheat, durum, peas, flax, and lentils using a no-till system in Saskatchewan, Canada. Jake has been an active agvocate and is a member of the Global Farmer Network www.globalfarmernetwork.org

We Must Learn From Sri Lanka’s Man-Made Organic Agriculture Disaster

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 12:00:00 GMT

By V. Ravichandran: Poongulam Village, Tamil Nadu, India

Sri Lanka has partially reversed a hasty decision to experiment with farming, but the country and its citizens are already paying for this bad mistake in the form of a food crisis .

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced a plan this spring to make Sri Lanka the first country in the world to ban inorganic fertilizers and crop-protection products that fight pests. This week, he changed his mind .

Yet as we commemorate World Food Day this month, we know that Sri Lanka is suffering from its original, anti-scientific choice: The government recently declared a food emergency, imposing price controls and strict rationing. It forced farmers to sell their rice to a state agency and it has seized supplies from private warehouses. Meanwhile, Sri Lankans wait in line for hours to receive their portions of rice, sugar, milk powder, and other basic commodities.

This is what happens when a government pushes anti-scientific ideas onto farmers and consumers.

I’ve never visited Sri Lanka, which hangs like a teardrop off the southern coast of my native India, but it holds a special place in my daily routine: I drink its delicious tea every morning, as I begin to work on my farm.

Sri Lanka’s tea is perhaps the best in the world, due to the island nation’s favorable climate and long history of production. The country’s economy depends on these exports.

They are now in jeopardy , though the president’s change of heart may soften the blow. Organic tea is much more expensive to produce. Under a mandate, yields will plummet, and these producers will suffer significant consequences because of this disastrous policy.

Yet this crisis is about much more than tea: It has affected every sector of Sri Lanka’s agricultural economy , effectively paralyzing the smallholder farmers who produce much of Sri Lanka’s rice, vegetables, and fruit. Even its natural rubber production may decrease.

Sri Lanka’s government decided to go backward into primitivism at a time when farmers around the world are surging forward with new technologies that help us grow more food on less land than ever before. Through remarkable advances in everything from plant genetics to precision irrigation to satellite imagery, we’ve become better and more sustainable producers.

If we were to apply Sri Lanka’s strange thinking on agriculture to communications, for example, we’d relinquish our mobile phones and turn to carrier pigeons. Instead of emails, we’d send handwritten letters. Rather than learning about the news from televisions and radios, we’d wait a long time for the news to reach us and perhaps not hear it at all.

When President Rajapaksa introduced his organic-farming rules, he boasted that no other country had ever tried such a thing. What he failed to understand is that most other countries already knew that this was a misguided and unscientific idea voiced by anti-development activists.

At least he is now beginning to understand his mistake.

Sri Lanka’s organic-farming blunder hardly could have come at a worse moment. COVID-19 has hurt economies everywhere, and it has taken a special toll on those that rely on tourism. After booming in the first part of this century, tourism in Sri Lanka has dropped sharply. This is partly the result of terrorist attacks on Christians in 2019, but mostly because of the pandemic. Foreigners have stopped flocking to its beaches, scuba-diving destinations, and natural beauty.

The value of its currency also has fallen, making it harder for Sri Lankans to purchase the goods and services they need from their international trading partners.

Compounding the problem is the logjam in the global supply chain, as container ships sit outside ports. Everything from semiconductors to medical devices is in short supply.

The most tragic aspect of Sri Lanka’s food crisis, however, is that much of it was avoidable. In choosing to push its agricultural mandates, the government refused to listen to the warnings of farmers.

I know that my farm couldn’t operate under Sri Lanka’s ridiculous rules. My yields of rice, cotton, and other crops would decrease significantly. The result would be simply disastrous.

If India’s population of more than 1 billion people were ordered to adopt the organic regulations thrust upon Sri Lanka’s 22 million people, we’d witness a catastrophe of malnutrition and starvation like the world has never seen. Our economy would crumble, and we would exhaust our foreign-exchange resources to feed our huge population, diverting our national wealth and stalling all other developmental activities. Finally, we’d have to expand our arable land by converting forest land for farming purpose, chopping down countless trees and global warming.

I don’t wish even to imagine such dreadful conditions.

It took only six months for Sri Lanka to begin to recognize that its organic-farming mandates are a massive failure. The lesson is to let farmers make judicious use of organic and chemical inputs, used in combination with other important technology options such as integrated pest, water and disease management practices. Trust science and technology so that its farmers and citizens stop paying a price they can’t afford.

Let the policy makers of all other nations understand the realities of Sri Lanka’s man-made disaster.

Mr. V Ravichandran owns a 60-acre farm at Poongulam Village in Tamil Nadu, India where he grows rice, sugar cane, cotton and pulses (small grains). Mr. Ravichandran is a member of the Global Farmer Network, 2013 recipient of the Kleckner Award and serves on the World Economic Forum New Vision for Agriculture Transformational Leaders Network. www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Mexico’s Self-Defeating War on Safe Technologies

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 13:00:00 GMT

By Gina Gutierrez: Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico

The strangest thing about Mexico’s war on crop-protection tools is the assumption that farmers like me don’t care what we spray on our fields.

Of course we care: I live and work in the very place where we grow corn, barley, and more to feed our dairy cows. Why would I risk the health of my family with harmful chemicals? It makes no sense.

That’s just one of the mysteries behind the push to ban glyphosate, a safe product that helps me succeed as a farmer.

Mexico’s government nevertheless wants to ban it by 2024. It also seeks to outlaw GM corn.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador doesn’t seem to care whom these prohibitions will harm—and he even seems to take a perverse glee in the fact that they will hurt his critics in the agricultural sector. He treats us as enemies.

I wish he’d see us as allies in achieving the objective of food security. To meet this challenge, Mexico’s farmers need access to the world’s best technologies. This includes glyphosate, which is the world’s most popular crop-protection tool.

Glyphosate is popular because it’s safe and effective . Farmers in the United States and Canada use it and they’re our biggest trading partners. Farmers in Europe also enjoy this option. Why shouldn’t Mexicans?

By controlling weeds, glyphosate helps our crops thrive. When we produce more food on less land, we contribute to making food abundant, affordable and available for all. At the same time, we conserve the environment because we don’t have to cultivate extra acres to make up for our losses to weeds.

Unfortunately, President Lopez Obrador has antiquated ideas about food. He likes to invoke Mexico’s pre-Columbian past, and especially the fact that corn—the world’s most popular crop—ultimately hails from our corner of the planet.

It’s good to take pride in this heritage . As a Mexican farmer, I certainly do. Yet we must avoid the temptation to romanticize this aspect of our culture. Let’s resist the fantasy that our oldest ancestors were somehow more “natural” than we are today.

The ancient Mexican farmers who helped turn a grass called “teosinte” into a food-producing crop were practical, problem-solving people. They didn’t understand anything close to what we know today about plant genetics, but they used the knowledge they had to improve their agricultural output.

Their example should inspire us—not to go backward in time to a more primitive era, but rather to marshal the science and technology of the 21st century as we meet the unique challenges of climate change, pests, and consumer demand.

President Lopez Obrador seems not to understand this, and his toxic mix of populist ideology and scientific illiteracy is more dangerous than any of the safe technologies that he speaks against. For him, this is all about politics—and it has nothing to do with what Mexican farmers and consumers truly need .

There’s an irony at work here: Mexico can’t even grow enough corn to meet its own demand. We’re self-sufficient in the white corn that goes into our tortillas, but we import yellow corn to feed our livestock. Banning glyphosate and GM corn will make us even more reliant on corn from the United States and elsewhere. Instead of helping us grow more food, this move will almost certainly make our food more expensive, something most people in Mexico cannot afford, especially as COVID-19 continues to hurt our economy.

It is important that Mexico takes advantage of international trade, as the ability to move goods and services across borders benefits everyone. But not at the expense of Mexico’s population—farmers and consumers—when policy makes it harder to grow corn in its homeland.

Another irony involves the pandemic. Deaths due to COVID-19 have spiked everywhere this winter, but Mexico has suffered more than most. We recently surpassed India in fatalities, becoming the third most-afflicted nation , behind the United States and Brazil. More than 161,000 Mexicans have fallen to the coronavirus, according to official numbers, but many of us know the death toll is significantly higher. And the numbers continue to grow.

Last month, President Lopez Obrador himself contracted COVID-19. I wish him a speedy recovery. I also hope it gives him occasion to reflect upon the solution to the pandemic: the successful distribution of vaccines developed from the same set of genetic technologies that he now seeks to ban in agriculture.

Sometimes the best way to honor the past is to embrace the future—and that means Mexico should pull back from the self-defeating efforts to forbid safe technologies.

Georgina “Gina” Gutierrez is a fifth-generation dairy farmer in the central region of Mexico. Committed to telling the farmers story and promote milk consumption and its benefits through social media, Gina is the 2018 recipient of the Kleckner award and a member of the Global Farmer Network www.globalfarmernetwork.org

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Genetically Engineered Insects Next For Agriculture?

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:10:21 GMT

Want to crash an insect population? Slip in a self-limiting gene and topple the family tree in two to three generations. The promise of biotech mosquitoes to combat the pest that spreads Zika, dengue and yellow fever grabs the headlines, but just off center stage, the same technology utilizing genetically engineered (GE) insects is being tested on U.S. farmland.

With the flick of a genetic switch, agriculture could turn the sex drive of an insect against itself. The arrival of GE insects in farming could usher in a new wave of pest management, based on species-specific tools targeting pest insects, and result in a significant reduction in broad-spectrum insecticide applications. GE insects may provide growers with a major new pest weapon if all goes according to plan.

Anthony Shelton is walking farmland in west-central New York, across a field of cabbage that serves as U.S. agriculture’s ground zero of GE insect research. A Cornell University professor of entomology and renowned expert on insect pest management, Shelton is using biotechnology to place GE crosshairs on a remarkably adaptable crop pest: diamondback moth (DBM).

In the pantheon of devastating pests, DBM holds a top-tier perch, casting a long shadow across global farmland as a major crop killer of broccoli, cabbage, canola, cauliflower, and more, racking up $5 billion per year in damage. A consummate survivalist, DBM features a remarkable ability to develop resistance to insecticides (sometimes within two years) by reproducing a generation within a few weeks in the field. DBM has developed resistance to every insecticide class used against it, according to Shelton: “It’s a leader in the resistance movement and is the first insect to have developed resistance to Bt.”

Shelton is using technology developed by Oxitec to target DBM. Oxitec, at the vanguard of GE insect research and technology, has garnered a great deal of attention through its releases of GE male mosquitoes in Brazil and other countries. GE males mate with wild females and the resulting offspring die as a result of a self-limiting gene.

Shelton is testing Oxitec’s self-limiting technology in DBM trials. When Shelton releases DBM males modified by Oxitec, they mate with wild females. Through biotech engineering, all female offspring die. With the continued release of male moths over a sustained period, the number of females in the population drops precipitously and the capacity of the population to sustain itself is diminished.

Cabbage planting in process for GE insect field trials in 2017.

© Robert Hazen, Cornell University

Typical insecticide resistance isn’t an issue because the developed strain is susceptible to insecticides and as the insects die, the potential build-up of insecticide resistance genes is blocked. Could behavioral resistance develop? “In theory, wild insects could evolve a preference strictly for other wild insects,” Shelton says. “We have to look for that, but have seen no indication of it so far.”

Radiation vs. Precision Surgery

GE insect technology essentially utilizes biotech sterilization. Current insect sterilization methods, such as sterile insect technique (SIT), require radiation. SIT was developed in the 1950s, targeted toward the screw-worm, which annually inflicted heavy losses on the cattle industry. SIT was highly successful in controlling screw-worm, several fruit flies, pink bollworm and more pests.

In 1990, Shelton was asked by the International Atomic Energy Agency to work on a SIT project to sterilize DBM with radiation in Indonesia and Malaysia. The radiation dose sterilized the moths, but they didn’t hold up well to the treatment and weren’t fit enough to fly well and mate. The project was dropped due to the limits of radiation. Yet, rather than the sledgehammer of radiation, current GE insect technology is akin to precision surgery.

In 2015, Shelton and his colleagues completed GE DBM greenhouse trials proving the technology was effective—the pest DBM population crashed after several releases of GE DBM. Additionally, beyond triggering DBM population crashes, the trial also addressed insect resistance to Bt crops. “When we introduced the GE insects into the pest population, which we had bred to be resistant to Bt, the DBM population crashed and we also restored susceptibility to Bt,” he explains. “It’s like having your cake and eating it too.” In fall 2017, he completed open-field testing to assess the field behavior of GE DBM.

Shelton is currently conducting supplemental lab experiments and preparing to publish his overall findings in a peer-reviewed journal. “Growers need tools and this one is species-specific. There are so many concerns about the broad-spectrum effect of some insecticides on pollinators,” he notes. “If something as benign as genetic engineering helps control insects, growers will want to adopt this technology.”

Caged release trials of GE DBM. Biotech insects could provide growers with a major new pest weapon.

© Shailee Shah, Cornell University

Shelton also touts the potential for using biotechnology in diverse ways to help manage pests. Current discussion usually centers on the development of GE crops resistant to particular insects, but Shelton says rather than wading through the expensive and time-consuming process of creating and getting such crops registered, the focus also could be placed directly on engineering pests to control themselves: “In so many cases, maybe a more effective way of using biotech is to engineer the pest to take care of itself. We’ve got GE crops of all types, but let’s think about GE insects to supplement, or in some cases replace, those crops.”

“We’re at the cusp of utilization of GE insects. In 25 years, when someone sees an airplane spraying insecticides over a field, they may wonder if that’s the best way to control pests,” he adds.

Debut in a Decade?

Oxitec strains of Mediterranean fruit fly and fall armyworm are also in preparation. Are all agricultural insect pests a candidate for GE control? “The top consideration is whether they reproduce sexually,” says Neil Morrison, research lead for agricultural pest control at Oxitec. “That leaves most pests still on the table. Our technology is highly suitable for a whole lot of important pests.”

DBM has rapidly developed resistance to insecticides even when faced with sophisticated pest management programs. The mode of action within biotech DBM relies on mating, ensuring target-specific pest suppression, and avoidance of pollinators and other beneficial insects. Morrison says genetic engineering is a powerful alternative to insecticides and provides another much-needed IPM tool for growers.

GE technology in use with DBM has an additional benefit to direct pest suppression, in that male progeny initially survive. “If our factory colony is insecticide susceptible, those susceptibility genes are pushed out into the pest population,” Morrison explains. “We’ve done laboratory tests indicating this could have a powerful resistance dilution effect. We potentially have a powerful tool for managing insect resistance to insecticides in biotech crops.”

When could biotech pest control make a commercial debut on farmland? Timelines depend on the regulatory process, but Morrison expects some GE insect use within a decade. Navigating EPA requirements for GE insects is a trip into uncharted waters. “Others who come after us may have an easier time,” says Sarah Hoey, communications manager at Oxitec. “Given the nature of our solution, the success of Oxitec relies on partnerships with each country. Working closely with collaborators around the world, we’re able to develop the best strategy for each location.”

Anthony Shelton releases male DBM into cages for contained trials. “We’re at the cusp of utilization of GE insects,” he says.

© Robert Hazen, Cornell University

Morrison believes GE technology is a powerful pest control agent and says the benefits extend beyond suppression: “This relies on mating and has the potential to reduce pest populations lower than other methods, but there is more: It protects other tools in the toolbox. Genetic engineering could be a solution for growers that find it difficult to control pests sustainably using conventional tools. In terms of IPM, this can fundamentally change the ways pests are managed.”

“We’re very passionate about this opportunity. Growers face increasing pressure to control pests in a way that doesn’t harm the environment beyond their fields,” Morrison adds. “This technology is one of the most sustainable means of pest control, period, and it has a lot to offer growers and the environment.”

Driven by Dollars to Non-GMO Seed

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:10:02 GMT

Nathan Reed is rumbling north on a Lee County levee with Crowley’s Ridge rising a mile west and the old St. Francis River rolling two miles east. Wedged in the flats between levee and river, farmland flashes by in hazy green blocks as the gray Ford F-150 Raptor crunches gravel on the levee spine. Reed brings up his right hand in an arc and points across a non-GMO landscape of corn, cotton and soybeans. “Money and survival,” he says. “This is about the total price picture.”

In 2014, Reed fought for financial breath even after skinning inputs one by one. No matter how he shifted the figures, the pencil always pointed to the glaring expense of biotech seed. With an eye on cost control, he began switching portions of his ground to non-GMO production supported by a minimum till cover crop scheme, and the change led to farm-wide profitability.

With 6,500 acres split across Lee and St. Francis counties in northeast Arkansas, Reed’s crop roster includes non-GMO corn, cotton and soybeans, along with transgenic varieties as well. When Reed, 37, began farming solo in 2005, the expense framework was relatively forgiving. Cotton sold for 65 cents per pound; transgenic cotton seed was $60 per acre; Roundup smoked weeds; residuals were an afterthought; and Reed paid $120,000 for a new tractor. Fast forward a mere 12 years to 2017: Cotton at 75 cents per pound; transgenic cotton seed at roughly $140 per acre; residuals at $60 per acre; and Reed can’t buy an equivalent tractor for less than $240,000.

When cotton dropped into the high 50-cent range in 2014, Reed had $1.2 million invested in picker equipment. The hard math demanded change and he planted 250 acres of non-GMO cotton varieties developed by Fred Bourland with the University of Arkansas (UA) System Division of Agriculture. Successive years saw steady acreage increases and Reed planted 1,300 non-GMO cotton acres in 2017. Generally, he aims for yields at 1,200 lb. per acre on irrigated ground and 1,000 lb. per acre on gumbo and dryland.

Pen to paper, Reed estimates he saves $80 per acre with non-GMO cotton versus biotech cotton. He pays $25-$30 for non-GMO seed, treats it with Staple LX and sprays for worms, which brings his total to $75-$80. He then tries to push those savings toward $100 to $120 per acre. The cereal rye cover reduces water use by 30%-50% and saves a significant amount of fertilizer use. In addition, Reed is almost no till and the elimination of deep ripping saves $10-$12 per acre.

Reed checks non-GMO cotton planted into cereal rye. He estimates savings of $80 per acre with non-GMO cotton and tries to push those savings toward $100 to $120 per acre.

© Chris Benentt

“Nathan generally spends $60-$80 dollars less per acre in non-GMO cotton compared to his other cotton, but sometimes his savings are even more. He’s ensuring those savings with cover crops and reduced tillage to make a tremendous difference in weed control and soil health,” says cotton agronomist Bill Robertson, with the UA System Division of Agriculture. “He does run ragged in the spring and must be Johnny on the spot to keep pigweed under control. Non-GMO forces him to be extra sharp with weed control timing.”

Reed’s silt loam lacks soil structure and suffers from diminished water filtration, but cereal rye directly addresses the problem. Following irrigation on many farms, Robertson routinely hits dry soil with a soil probe at a mere 5”. On Reed’s cover crop ground after irrigation, Robertson can punch down 16” without hitting dry soil. “Nathan is doing a great job with the profile and he’s farming much more than the top 6”,” Robertson notes.

“The cereal rye makes such a tremendous difference for his soil profile. Doubling or even tripling your effective rooting zone makes life much easier for the crop to get the moisture and nutrients it needs,” Robertson explains. “A plant forced to do all the work in top few inches is going to get hurt.”

Reed’s cereal rye helps non-GMOs with weed control, but also works below the surface to improve soil health, according to Robertson: “It’s pretty simple: Improved soil health in corn, cotton, soybeans or any crop means improved profit.”

Instead of trying to make 1,300 lb. of cotton at 75 cents, Reed aims for 1,100 lb. per acre and maintains the same profit line. Due to his buckshot ground, it’s extremely difficult to average 1,300 lb. … but he can safely hit 1,100 lb. “I need a high gross crop to survive. The non-GMO fields compare very closely with GMO fields, but I’m saving costs in combination with cover crops,” he says.

In 2016 Reed teed off with non-GMO production. He boosted non-GMO cotton to 2,000 acres, all blanketed with cereal rye to choke Palmer amaranth. He also planted his entire soybean crop (1,200 acres) in non-GMO production, and had no irrigated yields below 60 bu. per acre and no dryland yields below 35 bu. per acre. “I took the things pointing toward profit and expanded in 2016,” he says. “It was more work, but that’s what farmers have to do to stay in business.”

Reed plants non-GMO soybeans on his rougher ground in a rice rotation. He pays roughly half the cost of dicamba-tolerant seed and gets a premium from Ozark Mountain Poultry.

© Chris Benentt

Reed plants non-GMO soybeans on his rougher ground in a rice rotation. He pays roughly half the cost of dicamba-tolerant seed and gets a premium from Ozark Mountain Poultry ( OMP ). “I can make 35 bu. dryland beans profitable. If I’d gone the other route, I’d be breaking even or losing at $9.50 soybeans,” he says.

Most of his soybeans are broadcast behind rice in heavy clays to get a fast canopy. He works the ground once, puts out Treflan and lays down a residual to choke Palmer amaranth. Reed pays close attention to the Palmer maxim: Get it early or cut it with a combine. “With non-GMOs, I can still basically kill anything but pigweed, but that’s no different than Roundup Ready crops,” he says.

“I’ve never given the beans a fair shake yet,” he admits. “They’re always on my worst ground.”

In 2017, a wet spring and a late flood at the beginning of May forced Reed to put in LibertyLink soybeans to safeguard against Palmer, but 75% of his soybean acreage remains non-GMO (800 acres; all irrigated).

Reed doesn’t save soybean seed. “Hauling back and forth for cleaning puts costs near $18 per bu.” he explains. “I pay $23 for new seed and use the cheapest generic fungicides and insecticides I can find for treatment.”

OMP’s premium schedule is based on farmer storage. Reed is a fiber farmer, but has grain bins due to a parallel rice history. He holds all his grain, including 650 acres of non-GMO corn. Non-GMO crops have allowed him to hold grain and get paid for storage. The further from harvest, the higher the premium: His 2016 soybeans didn’t start delivery until June 2017.

With 6,500 acres split across Lee and St. Francis counties in northeast Arkansas, Reed’s crop roster includes non-GMO corn, cotton and soybeans, along with transgenic varieties as well.

© Chris Benentt

Overall, the non-GMO food industry (not just soybeans, but all related crops) is estimated at some $300 billion in the U.S. and Canada with global markets surpassing $700 billion. With an estimated annual growth of more than 15%, worldwide markets are expected to reach about $1.5 trillion dollars within the next five years, according to Kelly Cartwright, executive director of the National Soybean & Grain Alliance ( NSGA ). The premiums, combined with cheaper seed, are driving the production/farm level system which, in turn, feeds the overall industry.

How does that growing demand translate to the field level? “For soybeans, our research and experience show that producers can potentially obtain a premium from $1 to as much as $3 for conventionally grown, non-GMO soybeans, depending on variety, current market demands and other variables. $1 to $2 is relatively common, though it can fluctuate with CBOT markets,” Cartwright says. “It varies depending on food grade compared to commodity grade, with food grade soybeans typically fetching a higher premium.”

Ask a crop question and expect an in-depth response from Reed (a licensed attorney). His answers come at a machine gun pace, punctuated with details on trials, innovations in progress and a healthy dose of self-deprecation. It’s difficult to find a sharper producer and his acumen is tapped through various roles with the Arkansas State Cotton Support Committee (ASCSC), Cotton Incorporated , and National Cotton Council ( NCC ). Reed doesn’t shy from out-of-the-box swings, and he searches for new agronomic techniques before they become common coin.

Whether furrow-irrigated rice, non-GMO crop systems, 200 acres of black oat cover for seed use for 2018, planting into 6’ tall green cereal rye, running moisture probe trials, or working with Blue River on a robot weed sprayer, Reed consistently shapes something new on his 6,500 acres. He is currently experimenting with non-GMO dryland cotton this year to test low-input yield on rougher land. The non-irrigated cotton needs to yield 733 lb. at 75 cents to break even, he projects: “I’m pushing to make 850 lb., but 1,000 lb. would be great.”

Reed relentlessly compares crop variety performance. He presently has a 10-variety cotton trial (through Robertson and UA Extension) measuring GMO versus non-GMO yield. It’s an apples-to-apples comparison: six top GMO varieties against four top non-GMO varieties.

“It’s pretty simple to take a pencil and know what you’ve got in a crop. If it ain’t in the black, something has to give.”

© Chris Benentt

Peak yields aren’t necessarily the best avenue toward profit, evidenced by Reed’s operation. “I have nothing against GMOs, but I can’t escape the seed price. If somebody out there is considering non-GMOs and cover crops, I recommend they walk in slowly. Hey, I’ve had some oops moments and I’ll have some more, but it’s not devastating when seed is about $20 per acre,” he says.

“You can’t be afraid to adapt and get ready for tomorrow,” he adds. “You know your fields. It’s pretty simple to take a pencil and know what you’ve got in a crop. If it ain’t in the black, something has to give.”

Golden Rice Separates Reason, Radicalism

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:08:15 GMT

Each day more than 1,000 children go blind; each year more than 1 million children die; and each decade the losses mount, all due to a lack of vitamin A. The staggering numbers, made all the more tragic by the needless nature of the losses, highlight a glaring reality: Real-world consequences are tethered to opposition to genetically modified crops.

Golden Rice may be a lifeline to millions of children suffering from vitamin A deficiency (VAD) in the impoverished nations of Africa and Asia, but antidotes don’t ensure access. Saddled by opposition at every research and regulatory turn, Golden Rice reveals a chasm between reasoned caution and radicalism.

In 1999, two scientists, Ingo Potrykus of Switzerland and Peter Beyer from Germany, inserted beta-carotene genes from daffodils and corn into rice DNA. (Conventional rice contains no beta-carotene.) Yellow in color, beta carotene is vital to the human body as a precursor of vitamin A production. Syngenta modified Golden Rice in 2005, and a single bowl packs over half of needed daily vitamin A intake for children. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 250 million children are vitamin A deficient. In addition, WHO projects 250,000 to 500,000 children lose eyesight each year due to VAD, and roughly 50% of those children die within 12 months of going blind.

Potrykus and Beyer’s efforts were driven by humanitarian aims from the start. Syngenta gave sublicensing rights to the non-profit Golden Rice Humanitarian Board (GRHB), which in turn provides Golden Rice to research institutions. As Golden Rice continues through regulatory hurdles, Greenpeace, GMWatch, Soil Association, and other advocacy groups have cast the yellow grain as fool’s gold. Their opposition has been steady and grounded in a consequences-be-damned march.

All the while, Golden Rice research is progressing, says Rob Bertram , chief scientist at the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Food Security, and GRHB board member. “If it moves forward as currently expected, a Golden Rice approval request could reach regulators in some countries in 2016 or early in 2017. Once a country has approved its use, there would still be a couple of years of lag time for seed testing and standard environmental testing. Based on that timeline, farmers would be able to plant Golden Rice seed early in the coming decade.”

Golden Rice research is boosted by investment from humanitarian organizations such as USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. There are no issues of ownership or patent; Golden Rice technology is freely available through public domain. “Sometimes, new science raises concerns in some quarters about ownership and the roles of the global private sector,” Bertram says. “Golden Rice is intended to be a publicly available technology to benefit the world through improvement in global nutrition. It catches attention because it juxtaposes resistance to transgenic crops with a new opportunity to address an age-old scourge in terms of (Vitamin A deficiency).”

He believes Golden Rice will likely emerge from the regulatory pipeline in roughly five years, leaving individual countries to make a crucible decision. “Each country has its own approach and rules. We work with their agencies to build up science-based regulatory capabilities but then it is up to them to decide,” Bertram explains. “Enthusiasm and opposition may both rise over Golden Rice. We hope the scientific facts allow people to make rational decisions. Will they? I can’t say.”

Just 100 grams of Golden Rice per day (3 to 4 oz.), would meet half a child’s vitamin A needs and act as a buffer against the worst symptoms of Vitamin A deficiency, Bertram emphasizes. Gladys Ebron, communications officer with the International Rice Research Institute ( IRRI ), echoes Bertram’s contention. “Research indicates about one cup a day of Golden Rice could provide half an adult’s vitamin A needs. This estimate is based on research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2009.”

Golden Rice opposition groups cite a boilerplate roster of unforeseen environmental detriments, contamination of conventional varieties, lack of nutrition, and ill health effects. Their solution to Vitamin A deficiency? Supplements, capsules, food fortification and a diverse diet. Those solutions all have key roles to play, but don’t change a simple reality: Vitamin A deficiency sufferers are the poorest of the poor. They reach for rice as their dietary staple and can’t afford the relative luxury of fruits and vegetables in quantity. Supplements and capsules require logistics, administration, and tremendous financing.

Staunchly refusing to embrace Golden Rice as a cost-effective, complementary means to fight vitamin A deficiency, activist groups seek to block Golden Rice at the pass. Yet, the present methods of addressing Vitamin A deficiency are failing, evidenced by 1 million child deaths per year. It doesn’t take Solomonic judgement to note a gaping moral hole surrounding the arithmetic: As more than 1,000 children go blind each day (and half of those die within a year of losing sight), anti-GM advocates bleat about the detrimental effects from a bowl of transgenic rice.

Without activist opposition, would Golden Rice be nearer to the plate? “We have to develop Golden Rice varieties that approximate the agronomic traits and yield of conventional varieties. This takes considerable time and resources,” Ebron says. “Responding to anti-GM activism also takes a lot of our time, and that’s time which could productively be used in research.”

Patrick Moore, chairman of the Allow Golden Rice Now campaign, speaks in a far blunter manner. “Activists are responsible for the byzantine set of regulations making it very difficult to get through the approvals process. They are also responsible for the toxic political environment where the International Rice Research Institute is based.”

Moore was one of Greenpeace’s original leaders in the early 1970s, and served as president of Greenpeace Canada for nine years and director of Greenpeace International for seven years. He quit the organization in 1986. “If Golden Rice were a cure for Ebola, malaria or HIV-AIDS, it would have been approved years ago,” he says.

Mark Lynas, a pioneer in the anti-GM movement, experienced a road-to-Damascus change in 2013, and reversed course to become a prominent GM advocate. Lynas doesn’t mince words, and says Golden Rice has been hindered by its GMO association. “Golden Rice has become something of an international poster child for how delaying scientific innovation can have dire humanitarian consequences. But the truth is more complicated: Plant breeding aspects of initial Golden Rice varieties are still being sorted, so no final version is ready for release. However, the fact it has the GMO tag makes it infinitely more expensive, complex and difficult to take to farmers.”

Golden Rice is a benchmark separating reason and radicalism. It promises a complementary and partial solution to Vitamin A deficiency. Rather than stepping aside and allowing the destitute to make their own choices, anti-GM activists lob out a litany of alarmist charges related to ill health, contamination or multinational corporation takeovers – whatever takes the given day. As millions of children go blind and die, opponents of Golden Rice appear to be whistling past the graveyard.

Would anti-GM activists push a bowl of sustenance just beyond the reach of a malnourished child, all the while howling about the contents causing allergies or lacking nutrition? Would anti-GM activists promote current Vitamin A deficiency treatments and exclude Golden Rice, while 1 million children continue to die each year? The questions answer themselves, evidenced by 16 years of opposition to Golden Rice.

What do you think about Golden Rice? Let us know in the comments.

Vertical Farming's Forefront at Green Sense

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 20:06:36 GMT

Bathed in pink light, rows of identical plants are thriving in an indoor Eden at 65 F – over 700 trays of lettuce stacked 25’ toward the ceiling that translate to 1,500 cases of perfect produce per week. Green Sense Farms, Portage, Ind., is the largest indoor, vertical farm in the United States, and is scrambling to meet demand.

Green Sense Farms is the largest indoor, vertical farm in the United States. Plain-spoken CEO and founder Colangelo doesn’t rely on platitudes or offer agriculture a lofty panacea. “I sometimes see others making false claims about the sustainability of their ventures. The best way for Green Sense Farms to solve world hunger is create a profitable indoor vertical farm.”

Located in an industrial warehouse, Green Sense utilizes two climate-controlled grow rooms for a total growing area of approximately 200,000 cubic feet. One room contains 400 4’x8’ trays of baby greens, culinary herbs and micro-greens, and the second houses the 700 trays of lettuce.

Adios to Weather

Colangelo, along with CFO Carl Wenz and plant manager Lane Patterson, take weather out of the farming equation by growing indoors in a controlled environment and creating optimum plant conditions each day. He uses a modified hydroponic system where the temperature, light, humidity, water, and nutrient levels are consistent each day of the year.

The crops are grown in coconut coir (ground-up husks) in three ways: compressed husks with netting for use with an automated seeding machine; loose coconut coir for broadcasting seed; and seeded in pots with loose coir. From seed, plants go into a germination room from one to three days – dark, hot and humid. They are next placed in a nursery for up to 20 days; and then onto grow towers for 10 to 20 days. Water and nutrients are pumped in, and then gravity drained and recirculated. Green Sense uses no pesticides or GMOs.

LED Kingdom

Colangelo uses approximately 10,000 4’ foot Phillips LED growth strips in place of sunlight. Efficiency of LED light is measured by micromoles of light produced per joule of electrical energy. “Phillips creates the lights with the best value. Most plant photosynthesis occurs at the red and blue light and we mimic that with red and blue LED diodes. We get maximum photosynthetic value from our lighting system without producing much heat or using a lot of electricity,” Colangelo details. An LED, compared with a fluorescent light, costs more to purchase, but produces light far more efficiently. LED longevity also allows Green Sense to save on labor costs. “If we had to use fluorescent lights, we’d need two full-time employees just to replace and order bulbs.”

LEDs also use less electricity – about a third as much used by fluorescent lights to get the same amount of plant growth – and produce lower amounts of heat requiring less energy to cool the growing rooms for optimum temperature balance. Different plants require specific light recipes that optimize LED wavelength according to crop. (Phillips is currently building a database of light recipes based on plant variety.) The plants remain under LED illumination for 18 to 22 hours each day. Leaving the lights on 24 hours per day doesn’t kill the crops, but creates a point of diminishing returns, Colangelo notes. The extra cost to run the lights isn’t offset by additional plant growth.

As Colangelo worked to get Green Sense started, he leaned heavily on the expertise of Gene Giacomelli , director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Robert may think I helped him a lot, but really I confirmed details he was already hoping were correct. Vertical farming requires dealing with irrigation distribution and environmental controls for air temperature and humidity. We already do both of those in greenhouses with the sun, but the difference is artificial lighting in a closed building. The big sticking point of vertical farming is the cost of lighting, but efficiency keeps reducing costs.”

Feeding The Market

Green Sense’s indoor system is built on technology developed over the last 40 to 50 years – controlling light, air temperature and carbon dioxide for the top part of plants. However, it also involves controlling fertilization, water and oxygen levels in the root section of plants. The challenge includes finding the desired medium for optimal growth, and Giacomelli says Colangelo will be tweaking that for the rest of his career. “This is the future for some crops and the quality may be better than in-field produce. Quality is initially related to genetic variety, but true potential comes from the environment where a plant is grown. Provide an optimal environment and the plant will respond accordingly with maximum nutrition. That can happen indoors with every crop. If fresh, nutritional produce without a speck of dust is important – and it is to a growing number of consumers – then vertical farming will feed that market.”

Ideally located near 20 million people within a 100-mile radius, Green Sense’s main market is Chicago. Colangelo’s produce goes from farm to table in 24 hours. “We’ll harvest in the morning and the truck picks it up in the afternoon and it’s at a given store the next morning,” Colangelo describes. With no diesel, land, or field equipment costs, he hopes to build a network of vertical farms. Colangelo is in discussion with hospitals, colleges and food distribution centers to locate future farms.

Coast to Coast?

Giacomelli believes indoor farms have the potential to go coast-to-coast in major U.S. cities, possibly in less than 20 years. “Their future depends on price and that’s one of the beauties of our nation – price rules. People normally flock toward price, but that’s not necessarily true when affluence levels offer people unique health choices. The market is growing and it contains people with deep pockets. As the market grows, systems like Robert’s will have to keep up with demand.”

The battle raging over vertical farming centers on cost-effectiveness. Colangelo admits the high electric costs, but at the same time is making his labor more efficient and decreasing input costs. All the while, he’s keeping his tools sharp: hydroponics, LED lights, and cooling capabilities. Colangelo is keenly aware that Green Sense is at the tip of the vertical farming spear in the U.S., and he doesn’t dole out boilerplate regarding the future. “Profit. People across the board understand profit. Make money and you can change behavior. People may get confused about environmental approaches that are profitable, but if you make money in a sustainable manner, they pay attention. Our goals are to build a profitable farm using state of the art indoor growing technology -- not to solve world hunger. Sure, we do a lot of work for charity and food banks, but if you want investors and long-term attention, you must have profit – and that’s our bottom line.”

Russia Accused of Spreading Anti-GMO Propaganda Online

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:19:58 GMT

Not only has Russia been reportedly sowing seeds of discontent in the U.S. political scene, the country has also been alleged of spreading anti-GMO articles on the Internet.

According to researchers at Iowa State University, Russia is trying to influence American citizen’s opinions on genetically modified organisms by funding articles shared online. The Des Moines Register first reported the story, after interviewing Shawn Dorius, an ISU assistant sociology professor who led the study. Also participating in the research and being interviewed was Carolyn Lawrence-Dill, an associate professor in ISU’s departments of agronomy and genetics, development and cell biology.

Dorius says Russia’s attempts to turn the U.S. or world against GMOs “would have a clear negative effect on an industry in the U.S. and could advantage Russia.”

Their research indicates agriculture has jumped to the second largest industry in Russia, behind oil and gas.

“That’s a primary interest, but there are multiple interests. One of which is to stir up division in the U.S.,” Lawrence-Dill says.

An article from RT , a Russian government owned news outlet, indicates the country is trying to become a major exporter of organic food after GMOs were banned in the country in 2016.

“Recently the organic food market has definitely expanded in Russia. The organically produced food industry held a market valuation of $178 million in 2015, an increase from 2010’s $116 million total,” says economist Iryna Kobuta at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia.

Interestingly, RT and another government owned media outlet, Sputnik, are two of the main culprits the ISU researchers pointed to for negatively portraying GMOs.

RT and Sputnik had more articles containing “GMO” than five other news organizations in the U.S. combined, including: MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, Huffington Post and Breitbart.

Sputnik had 19% of the articles related to GMOs and RT had 34%.

“RT and Sputnik overwhelmingly portrayed genetic modification in a negative light,” the researchers wrote. “Among U.S. news organizations, the left-leaning Huffington Post produced the most ‘anti’ articles, followed by CNN. Fox News produced the most neutral or mixed coverage of GMOs.”

Almost all of the articles from RT had “click bait” headlines, the researchers say.

The researchers also found that nationally 46% of adults care little or not at all about GMOs. Fewer than 20% of consumers feel well-informed on GMOs.

“Anti-GMO messaging is a wedge issue not only within the U.S. but also between the U.S. and its European allies, many of whom are deeply skeptical of GMOs,” Dorius says. “Stirring the anti-GMO pot would serve a great many of Russia’s political, economic and military objectives.”

An industry group promoting the science of GMOs called GMO Answers says they aren’t surprised by the findings.

“We know GMO misinformation abounds – from food marketing to messages in pop culture and click bait social media posts. The spread of this misinformation isn’t a new phenomenon. GMO myths have been spread and shared for years, and that is precisely why GMO Answers was founded,” says Michael Stebbins, spokesman for GMO Answers.

Less than two weeks ago, the U.S. special counsel accused 13 Russians in a scheme that was meant to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. The case involved sharing fake news through various social media accounts.

The white paper to the research study can be found here .

Trust In Food Q&A: Michele Payn On Consumer Mistrust Of Agriculture

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:19:02 GMT

Michele Payn is an accomplished author and speaker whose organization, Cause Matters Corp., focuses on connecting consumers about the science and technology behind agriculture and food production. Her latest book, “Food Truths From Farm To Table,” is a response to common misconceptions about agriculture and features interviews with numerous farm owners and operators around the U.S. It recently became a No. 1 bestseller on Amazon and is available now for a discounted price for Thanksgiving at CauseMatters.com . Payn and her daughter live on a small farm in central Indiana. The following Q-and-A interview with AgWeb.com focuses on “Food Truths” and the steps Payn thinks are necessary to ensure producers and consumers build stronger relationships.

What events led you to write this book? Why was this the right time for “Food Truths”?

As I sat around kitchen tables with moms and other parents, I heard guilt. I believe food should be about a celebration. It’s central to a family’s well-being, and it’s essential that people feel good about what they’re trying to feed their family. I have a quote hanging over my dining room table: “The finest memories are made gathered around the table.” I firmly believe that.

As an agriculturalist, frustration with half-truths and misinformation about agriculture was a prime motivator. I wanted the agricultural community to have a piece that answered some of [The New York Times Magazine contributing writer] Michael Pollan ’s claims, which are used by academia, on college campuses and in high schools. I didn’t feel it represented the farm perspective, which is why I’ve so heavily pursued this issue.

“Food Truths” is accredited for continuing education credits among dietitians. It’s an example of how to translate the science of agriculture through story. The intersection of farm and food has to involve the intersection of head and heart. Agriculture often approaches its story from the head standpoint, but food is a heart issue.

Why is Michael Pollan’s work attractive to many people?

He has built a circle of influence over time, and his voice resonates with a majority of the population. Just 1.5% of the U.S. population is on a farm or ranch. We’re in a distinct minority. We’ve always used science and data, but science doesn’t sell. Foodies and food writers have an opportunity to bring context that resonates with a majority of the population.

The content we bring to the conversation—in a completely different context—isn’t always appreciated. It’s difficult for us because of our limited circle of influence. Michael Pollan isn’t the only one. The Food Babe is another example. The point is, people deserve to have the truth about food. People deserve to know how their food is truly raised, and the only way that’s going to happen is by the people who are raising the food speaking up.

Out of all the misconceptions you cover in “Food Truths,” what is the biggest un-truth about food, in your view? What drives you crazy?

Food Truth No. 3 focuses on animal welfare, which is an hourly concern on farms and ranches. I have cats and dogs, and I appreciate the value of pets. I also have dairy cattle, and while they are spoiled rotten, they’re not my pets. People need to understand the context in which we care for our animals.

Take dehorning. Animal rights organizations make it sound horrific. But as one mom to another, I say “These heifers could break my daughter’s ribs, and they gore each other to death if you don’t dehorn them.” We need to talk transparenctly about practices like these as animal welfare gets hackles up

Food Truth No. 5 addresses the fact production methods do not affect the nutritional value of food. The divisiveness in agriculture doesn’t serve any of us well. I will advocate for my friends who farm organically just as I do for friends who farm 10,000 acres conventionally. Farming is a personal choice that a family makes. We have to understand buying food is a personal choice that every family makes. One should not trump the other.

Food Truth No. 10 is about GMOs, by far the most contentious issue for consumers, if you ask me. The last one I’d offer up from the book is Food Truth No. 42, which speaks to the fact that the media isn’t the best source of information about food. People deserve to get information about food from those who raise it. It’s unfortunate people have been taught to fear their food.

Speaking of GMOs, what’s your take on GMO labeling and other absence claims on food packaging?

I would be radical on packaging. I would allow nothing besides government-mandated claims. The absence claims are most misleading. The idea of organic, gluten-free, GMO-free cat litter makes us laugh, but clearly there’s a market for it.

This is a very big-picture, long-term issue that I am not going to pretend I have the wherewithal to resolve. At some point, it comes down to food ethics. Food companies need to take responsibility for ethics of what they’re putting on packages. I also believe we in agriculture need to be much more proactive in getting out ahead of activists and companies that are targeting food retailers and food service.

How can farmers, ranchers and growers most effectively reach consumers?

Engage in conversation with those across the plate. Some of the animal health companies have representatives sitting in the board room at Walmart, for example, and having a discussion about why hormones are used in beef cattle and why there is a sustainability advantage to that. The same is true for restaurants such as McDonald’s. It’s about gaining the trust of those food-service companies and food providers.

The biggest epidemic in our country is obesity. Dietitians need to make science-based recommendations, and younger generations aren’t necessarily following that. There are some real challenges. All of agriculture needs to figure out a way to have a place around the plate to have better conversations. At some point, food companies are going to have to realize the value of hearing from people with a firsthand perspective as well as consumers.

What should farmers, ranchers and growers do after reading your book?

First, use it as an example to make their life easier. This conversation about what they do every day doesn’t have to be complicated.

Second, I hope it gives them permission and encouragement to have the conversation. So many times, farmers think somebody else will do it. There is no better spokesperson for American ag than farmers or ranchers, or the people working in it.

When I speak, I often ask farmers, “How many of you would say you are modest, stubborn, independent and were taught to not talk about what you do?” Those traits are prevalent in agriculture. That doesn’t bode well for us to protect our right to farm, and it’s time to change that.

My hope is the book will serve as an example of connecting with people’s emotions.

What level of urgency do you have about the topics we’ve discussed here?

Over 30% of the U.S. population thinks non-genetically engineered food does not have genes, according to a recent study from Michigan State University. We have scientific illiteracy running rampant in this country, coupled with extreme emotionalism and courage through the keyboard. We’re having our rights to farm removed. That’s the reality.

It’s a best business practice in 2017 to determine how to touch different people on a heart level, with your points of firsthand agricultural knowledge. There’s case study after case study of how farming practices are being removed, so the urgency to engage in the farm and food conversation is high.

Remember Goals When Talking to Consumers

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:18:29 GMT

When it comes to communicating with the public, it’s important to strike a balance of transparency.

Establish a goal for your public message. This will help drive each touchpoint and ensure your messages are with purpose.

“Figure out your vision statement, think about what you raise, who consumes it and who you are as a family,” says Bob Fetsch, family and ranching communication expert at Colorado State University Extension. “Get feedback from your consumers, answer their questions—those few people you reach will have a ripple effect in the community.”

The Klein family in Seymour, Illinois uses a website and Facebook page to communicate their day-to-day activities with consumers and out-of-state landlords. This lets those who aren’t around for the daily activities to have a glimpse of what the operation is doing. The family says they’ve seen a positive reaction and have even had opportunities to answer questions about why they use certain practices. In addition to online communication, the family hosts several on-farm tours throughout the year—which they say provides hands-on learning experiences.

“We want our consumers to think of us as farming partners,” Deb Klein says. “Part of our responsibility as farmers is to present ag in a positive, realistic light.”

Consumers Want to Know You Share the Same Concerns

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:18:25 GMT

On a sunny summer afternoon, Michele Payn is pacing around a windowless hotel meeting room, quizzing a group of assembled agribusiness leaders.

“What does every mother or father want to do for their children?” Payn asks the group.

Hands shoot up in the air and more than one person shouts out an answer, but no one quite says what Payn is looking for. She finally gives the answer she wants: “Protect their children,” she says.

Payn isn’t talking about protecting children from disease or disaster. Rather, she’s focused on how parents and consumers in general relate to food and form perceptions about food production. It’s work she has done for more than 16 years as the founder of Cause Matters Corp., a company that is “addressing food myths, developing science communication, and connecting farm to food.”

Payn’s perspective is that people relate to food on an emotional level and not based on science and years of accumulated data. The importance of building connections with consumers—your neighbors next door—was a message she repeated throughout her presentation to participants at the recent Mid America CropLife Association (MACA) annual meeting in Kansas City, Mo.

As proof of the value of emotional ties she asks, “How do you approach the subject of GMOs?”

“Lightly,” someone in the audience says. The group laughs, and another member of the audience offers in a defensive tone, “No one’s ever gotten sick or died from them.”

“Every time we’re put on the defense, we lose,” Payn reminds the group.

Another person in the audience says, “I tell them I care for my kids, too. I try to find commonality.”

That’s the right approach, Payn says. Genetic modification, pesticides and animal care topics can be scary topics for anyone removed from agriculture, so when members of agriculture can relate to people based on shared values, they tend to connect and build a bridge.

Payne offers two examples she uses that she says have proven effective, based on who she’s having the conversation with at the time.

“Do you have anyone in your family who’s a diabetic?” she asks. “They have a right to insulin, right? And insulin for Type 1 diabetes is typically genetically modified.

“Do you have an iPhone? If I take the Facebook app off my iPhone 6 it’s still an iPhone. That’s what can occur in a corn plant when you [remove] or add a gene that then allows that corn to be naturally resistant to insects.”

Both examples are over-simplifications, Payn says, but they help illustrate the concerns people have and the need for finding a connection with them.

“Take it back to their world,” she advises “They [examples] don’t have to be data-based. They have to be trust-based.”

A Closer Look at Chile's GMO Paradox

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:15:39 GMT

For years, Chile has had a curious double standard when it comes to genetically modified organisms. The country is a global powerhouse in the production of GM seeds -- but makes them strictly off-limits to domestic farmers. Throw any in the ground for the local market, and the crop cops may slap you with a fine.

Now the head-spinning policies could be coming under new pressure from the most punishing drought in Chilean history. It has stunted vegetation growth, ruined harvests and unleashed calamitous wildfires, with blazes that started last week engulfing more than 100,000 square miles of forests and grasslands south of Santiago, including in the wine-producing region of Maule.

Plants tweaked to be drought-resistant aren’t, of course, a panacea. But the agriculture industry, which exports about $9 billion in products a year, “could face catastrophe if we don’t do something,” said Simon Ruiz, a Universidad de Talca professor and GM-seed researcher.

The drought, going into its seventh year, gives no signs of abating. “All indications show that Chile will continue on a path of ever-lower rainfalls and higher temperatures,” said Universidad de Chile climatologist Rene Garreaud. “It just makes sense to work to adapt the seeds we sow.”

That’s certainly the view of Monsanto Co., the world’s biggest manufacturer of altered seeds. The company belongs to ChileBio, an industry-funded group that runs campaigns to persuade Chileans edited crops and foods are safe -- even advantageous. It can be unnerving work in a country where GMOs are viewed with suspicion and activists against them are powerful lobbyists.

“I’ve had people personally say they will beat me up,” said Miguel Angel Sanchez, ChileBio’s executive director.

The debate over “Frankenfood” has been going on around the globe for decades. GMOs have been particularly unpopular in much of Europe, including Germany, where Bayer AG has faced a backlash against its planned takeover of Monsanto. While the European Union has approved genetically modified products for sale, member states can refuse to cultivate them.

Still, grocery-stores shelves in most countries are loaded with products containing GMOs, and Chile’s no exception; there’s no law against eating the stuff, just against farmers growing it for domestic consumption.

The government has long sent mixed signals. The agency that oversees farming decided in 2001 to allow the cultivation of transgenic seeds if they’re destined for export. By the end of 2015, there were more than 9,000 hectares (about 22,200 acres) of GM seed-producing plants in Chile, sprouting products for companies including Bayer and Dow Chemical Co. The country is the fifth-largest producer of transgenic seeds in the world and the biggest exporter in the southern hemisphere.

Chile has been a key player in breeding new strains. It’s conducted field trials since 1987 in crops from canola to sugar beets, with funding from an arm of the Agriculture Ministry. Now researchers led by Ruiz at the Universidad de Talca are working on a new drought-resistant variety of corn. The university will no doubt sell the rights to a big multinational, such as Monsanto or Syngenta AG.

And what’s crazy, Ruiz said, is that the company will create a product for farms elsewhere that will grow corn Chile will end up importing. “We’re clearly losing money -- all of the seeds we produce come back to Chile in the form of soy flour or other products that people don’t know they’re eating.”

The country can’t produce enough corn on its own: Imports jumped 79 percent between 2012 and 2015, government data show. The reason is what scientists at the Universidad de Chile have called a mega-drought, which by their reckoning started in 2010. The fires raging in central Chile, the worst in the country’s history, have claimed eight lives.

Carlos Crovetto, a well-known proponent of no-till farming to fight erosion, took a stand in 2O15 when he planted pesticide-defiant soybeans on his small farm in the Bio Bio Region in the south, a valley of forests and wheat and eucalyptus plantations. He rotated the soy with maize and, he said, saw a jump in yields of 10 percent to 15 percent as the soy added nitrogen to the ground.

“Soy is a gift from God,” he said, and genetic rearranging by humans has made the legume even better. He’s a proponent of GM crops to help Chile survive the menace of drought.

A few days after Crovetto told the media what he’d done, the authorities showed up, ordered him to tear out the transgenic plants and fined him. The law sets fines as high as 3.5 million pesos (about $5,300) for any infraction; the loss of the investment in the destroyed crops can exceed that. Crovetto declined to disclose the total amount. “I’ll just say that it was a lot of money.”

A bill that would allow all farmers to sow transgenic seeds for domestic use has been languishing in Congress for 10 years. “Politicians here are afraid of having their names tied to a technology that some groups have been unfairly demonizing,” said Daniel Norero, a Chilean biochemistry fellow at Cornell University and a member of Cornell’s Alliance for Science.

There are dozens of such groups, including Chile Sin Transgenicos, Chile Sustentable and Yo No Quiero Transgenicos en Chile, all active on social media and with high-profile backers such as the actor Daniel Munoz. They contend engineered plants are deleterious to the environment and people who eat them, and want Chile to follow Peru, which in 2012 imposed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods, or Ecuador, where the constitution prohibits them.

Chances are slim that will happen, because GM-seed exporting is a big and growing business, with $314 million in exports last year. It’s also not likely Chile will see any relief from rising temperatures and diminishing rainfall, said Gabriel Leon, a researcher at Universidad Andres Bello who supports ending the domestic ban.

“We are going to see drastic changes in agricultural conditions in Chile, that’s inevitable,” he said. “Are we going to just get used to it?”

Hunt's Responds to "Non-GMO" Tomato Backlash

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:15:04 GMT

A new anti-GMO campaign by Hunt’s is creating quite the reaction.

Last week, the company announced, “No matter how far afield you look, you won’t find a single genetically modified tomato among our vines.” The announcement included a video showing a tomato field with a sign saying, “No GMOs in sight.”

This caused a flurry of responses from farmers, consumers and scientists, criticizing the company of pandering to the superstitions of misinformed extremists since no tomatoes are genetically modified.

The company released a statement on their Facebook responding to the criticism by saying:

“Sorry for any confusion caused by our post earlier in the week. Many people are interested in what’s in their food and we want to provide them with the information they are looking for. While it’s true that all tomatoes are non-GMO, there are tomato products that contain genetically engineered ingredients. We recently updated many of our tomato products including diced and crushed to meet Non-GMO Project Verification standards, so look for the seal at shelf.”

Judge: Hawaii Counties Can't Regulate GMOs and Pesticides

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:14:35 GMT

A federal judge has ruled that three Hawaii counties can’t enact their own bans or regulations on genetically modified crops and pesticides, handing a victory to the major agriculture companies that fought the regulations.

Circuit Judge Consuelo M. Callahan on Friday upheld a lower court’s decision that said Hawaii law prohibits counties from regulating agricultural matters.

The cases stemmed from a decision by Maui voters to ban the cultivation and testing of genetically modified crops in 2014 and related movements on other Hawaiian islands.

Kauai County had imposed pesticide notification requirements and mandated pesticide buffer zones, and Hawaii Island had enacted an ordinance banning open air testing of genetically engineered organisms, among other things.

But the court held that the county laws are pre-empted by state laws that regulate potentially harmful plants.

“This is good news for local agriculture in Hawaii, as it clears up potential confusion over who has jurisdiction in regulating agricultural operations, leaving that responsibility with the appropriate government agencies,” said Bennette Misalucha, executive director of the Hawaii Crop Improvement Association, in an emailed statement. The association’s members include major agriculture companies Dow AgroSciences, DuPont Pioneer, Monsanto and Syngenta, which fought the regulations.

“We will continue to stand and fight with the people of Hawaii against these chemical companies, and part of that is going to be demanding action at the state level to protect the people and the environment,” said George Kimbrell, senior attorney for the Center For Food Safety, which pushed for the bans. “We’re considering all legal options, including appeal.”

Monsanto, which farms genetically engineered seeds to be used by farmers around the world, was part of a group that fought the Maui GMO ban. Monsanto Hawaii employs approximately 1,000 people on Maui, Molokai and Oahu, Dan Clegg, Hawaii business operations lead for Monsanto, in an emailed statement.

“We’re listening and we’ve heard the concerns some people have about GMOs and today’s farming practices,” Clegg said. “Our commitment to ongoing dialogue with our neighbors doesn’t stop today.”

Those who pushed for increased regulation of pesticides and GMOs in Hawaii vowed to introduce new legislation in the state’s upcoming session.

“What the decision makes clear is that it is the state’s responsibility to meaningfully protect against undue harm from pesticides, whether it’s to workers on a field or to kids in schools nearby, and we have an obligation to make sure that safety is paramount,” said Rep. Chris Lee, chairman of the Hawaii House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection. “And looking forward, I do think there’s a middle road that can satisfy everyone that ensures public safety and doesn’t put an undue burden on anyone.”

Kimbrell was pleased the judge also said according to federal law, state and local governments can regulate some commercial crops, namely those that have been deregulated by the federal government after they’ve gone through testing. Even so, allowing counties to do that would require a change in state law. He was disappointed the ruling stated that only the federal government could regulate experimental field trials of commercial crops.

The Maui case ruling said scientific studies have not shown that food produced from genetically engineered crops pose any inherent risk to human health. But it said “the cultivation and testing of GE plants raise several well-documented concerns,” including harm to plants and animals caused by the increased use of pesticides sometimes associated with testing and growing genetically engineered crops, the proliferation of “superweeds” and pests resistant to pesticides and contamination of traditional, non-genetically modified plants during pollination.

“As a mother and a resident of Kekaha, Kauai, I will continue to stand up and protect my family and my community,” said Malia Kahaleina Chun, a mother, educator and Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, in an emailed statement. “It is our responsibility to insure that our keiki (children) have access to clean air, clean water and to aina (land) that sustains them.”

Calif. Ballot Measure Creates Largest GMO-Free Zone in U.S.

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 05:14:25 GMT

So-called “GMO-free” zones have been sprouting up county by county across the U.S. Lead initially by the state of California, these zones indicate areas where growing GMO crops is outlawed. During Tuesday’s election, Sonoma County, Calif., joined the ranks of Santa Cruz, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity and Marin counties going GMO-free. The addition of Sonoma County creates the largest GE-free zone in the country, measuring 13,734-square-miles.

According to a story from the San Francisco Chronical, farmers currently growing GMOs will be able to continue to do so for the current season before the ban kicks in. In addition, the newspaper reports that farmers who have purchased seed for the following year will be able to plant it as well.

Organic Authority, a news service aimed at organic farmers, reports that supporters of this measure raised three times as much funding as the opposition. Among the supporters were organic dairies, natural food co-ops and heirloom seed companies. Sonoma County Farm Bureau opposed the measure, arguing that it vaguely worded and would prohibit farmers from using technology necessary to fight pests and diseases.