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It looks like wheat has it rough right now. The number of people who eschew the grain (and its gluteny relatives, including barley and rye) keeps growing, and now the latest issue of Gourmet is questioning whether there should even be an annual wheat harvest in this country. “A small band of environmentally minded researchers have begun to question the sustainability of the grains that have dominated human diets since the dawn of agriculture,” Steven Johnson reports in the glossy’s Eco Watch section. Johnson cites erosion and nitrogen runoff from fertilizer as the two main ecological problems with our current wheat-centric agricultural system.
But the piece isn’t actually about a contingent of vehement antiwheaties (which I was kind of eager to read); get a little further into it and you realize it’s about scientists who want to supplant the annual wheat harvest with perennial ones. As Johnson explains,
[F]ields planted with perennial wheat wouldn’t suffer problems caused by soil erosion. The new plants would look similar to their annual cousins, but their root systems would be deep and long-lived, like those of the native prairie grasses that once covered the Great Plains. Just the seed-bearing stalks would be harvested [instead of the whole plant, as with annual wheat], leaving that network of roots in the ground during the months when erosion is at its worst, recycling nutrients and keeping the valuable topsoil in place.
Perennials would also cost less to farmers, who wouldn’t have to plant or fertilize each year, and the resulting grain fields would more closely mirror “all the world’s thriving ecosystems,” which are made up of “a complex web of perennial species,” Johnson writes.
Breeders are now working on developing perennial wheat, using the plant’s genome as a guide—but so far this group of scientists is emphatically opposed to genetic engineering, preferring instead to “artificially cultivate a more ‘natural’ existence for [wheat plants]” through traditional breeding. I wonder how long these scientists’ opposition to GMO perennials will last, though. It isn’t likely to extend to the developing world, as Johnson explains in an online interview with Gourmet:
[T]he obvious direction we seem to be headed is a scenario where the developed world goes backward in time, and the developing world goes forward: The developed world tries to recreate the older, slower, more local agricultural patterns, while the developing world embraces more ‘advanced’ biotechnology and genetic engineering. The developed world can afford to slow down and focus less on maximizing yields, because, of course, the problem in a country like the United States is obesity, not starvation. The developing world doesn’t have that luxury.
Johnson concludes that a biotech boom in developing nations won’t necessarily be bad, as long as they can stop using genetic modification once they’ve developed—and that, of course, remains to be seen. What do you think? Is there such a thing as responsible GM?
Marilyn --
GM crops have indeed reduced the use of certain herbides (like Round-up) and insecticides. The anti-GM folks get up in arms because they cite fears regarding the theoretical possibilities of transmitting herbicide resistance genes to undesirable plants or selecting for insect pests that are then resistant to more natural pest control substances (like BT toxin) engineered into the...+READ
Marilyn --
GM crops have indeed reduced the use of certain herbides (like Round-up) and insecticides. The anti-GM folks get up in arms because they cite fears regarding the theoretical possibilities of transmitting herbicide resistance genes to undesirable plants or selecting for insect pests that are then resistant to more natural pest control substances (like BT toxin) engineered into the plants. Other objections to genetic engineering seem not to be based on that technology so much as overall objections to industrial monoculture, which they see GMO plants contributing to.
As well, at least in some people, of a near religious dislike of any sort of genetic meddling no matter how benign or potentially beneficial.-COLLAPSE
Not clear to me why a farmer would choose not to fertilize a perennial crop. How will growers of perennial wheat control for weeds?
In regards to the comments...haven't GM crops reduced the amount of insecticides? Thought Roundup was environmentally benign and far preferable to other chemicals (read this on an eco trip with the family to Costa Rica). Is this not true?
GM can be used responsibly. If it's used to mimic the breeding of hybrid plants, making logical crosses. The risk is when you take an animal gene and insert it into a plant or vice versa. If it wouldn't occur naturally, we don't know what the outcome might be. We might be able to research the immediate outcome in a lab, but genes work as a group, not individually. Traits can be expressed or not,...+READ
GM can be used responsibly. If it's used to mimic the breeding of hybrid plants, making logical crosses. The risk is when you take an animal gene and insert it into a plant or vice versa. If it wouldn't occur naturally, we don't know what the outcome might be. We might be able to research the immediate outcome in a lab, but genes work as a group, not individually. Traits can be expressed or not, depending on what combination is present. Furthermore, genetic mutations happen all the time. Not only do the inserted genes have the potential for mutation, but they could influence mutations in the natural genetic code which haven't been seen before. This mutation could be a weak plant, or it could be some unhealthy compound found in the fruit (grain). We might not realize the mutation is unhealthy for a generation or two. By then it will be difficult and extremely costly to erradicate the GM-DNA.
Genetics are in the environment, even if the plant can't regenerate. Drift affects the non-GM crops next door, unnatural compounds affect birds and insects that are part of that environment, and immunity to herbicides just opens the door to make the soil so sterile that all the benefits and balance of the ecosystem in that field are lost.
Can GM be used responsibily? yes. Would it be profitable enough? guess that remains to be seen. It's a technology with huge potential for improving the quality of life. But all we've seen so far is how it allows you to use more RoundUp, and how widespread the affects can be of recalling GMO's. What happened to the promise of making crops so easy to grow that it would help end world hunger?
Einstein thought nuclear fission had incredible potential, but we decided that instead of developing a clean, efficient energy soruce, we'd make bombs. Be careful where your technology leads you...
http://www.cropchoice.com/leadstryc87a.html?recid=567-COLLAPSE
As a matter of fact, transgenics may not be the best way to go here, as you are likely looking at some complex traits that result from the interactions of multiple genes. However, biotech is still an extremely useful tool for moving breeding in this direction. It becomes a matter of using genomics and IT to guide your efforts -- marker assisted breeding.
Also new cis-genics technologies are...+READ
As a matter of fact, transgenics may not be the best way to go here, as you are likely looking at some complex traits that result from the interactions of multiple genes. However, biotech is still an extremely useful tool for moving breeding in this direction. It becomes a matter of using genomics and IT to guide your efforts -- marker assisted breeding.
Also new cis-genics technologies are coming to fruition that basically enable one to shuffle genes around within a single species with no need for "foreign" DNA. The promoter DNA that in transgenics comes from bacteria, for example, has now been found in many plant species. Thus it is now possible to have an engineered tomato with NO non-tomato genes.-COLLAPSE