Why do we need GMOs

In the last few years genetically modified organisms, GMOs, have featured quite prominently in social media and the news. In almost every case this has been very negative publicity. Google searches for GMO yields 61 million pages, Monsanto Evil yields 8 million. Negative articles from 2011 are dished up fresh today to show how bad GMOs are.

I have friends that attend marches protesting GMO use. I wanted to know more.

Morpheus said "You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." 

No single blog post can adequately cover all the issues. This is an immensely deep rabbit-hole. In this first in a series of posts on the subject, I wanted to understand why anyone would want to use GMOs. It is a first blush look at the raison d'être for GMOs.
Are we able to improve on what nature has developed over the ages? The act of modifying the organism must by its very nature make the organism more expensive.

Any farmer will tell you that becoming a farmer is easy, staying a farmer requires great skill. The cost of producing a crop does not stop once the seed stock is bought. There are costs involved in preparing the field, planting the field and keeping the plants free of pests. The field needs to be fertilized to ensure there are sufficient nutrients for the plants and we need to ensure that weeds are eliminated to give the crop has the best opportunity to produce.

Pesticides.

For as long as plants have been evolving, bugs have been evolving to eat those plants. Traditionally pesticides are used to prevent pests from destroying the crop. Pesticides do not come cheap. So the more you need to use these, the more expensive the crop becomes. We have learned from experience with DDT and other pesticides, that the lingering effects remain in the soil and can leach into water supplies. This creates a whole host of issues everyone would prefer to avoid. 

Science has tried to modify organisms to be less palatable to bugs. The result is that less of the crop is lost to pests so the yield must improve. This should save money since the crops require less pesticides. 

Herbicides.

When a field is prepared for a crop, it is unfortunately also prepared for any other plant that may grow there. The weeds that come up in your field rob the plants of nutrients and water and light. You can get rid of the weeds by hand, but that is labour intensive and time consuming. The roots may be intertwined, so pulling up a weed could damage or pull out the desired crop. Weeding can be done mechanically. This saves time but this could also damage some of the crop. Herbicides are an efficient method as long as they can differentiate between plants. If the weed is too similar to the crop, herbicides may not be viable.

Worldwide we find drought, crop failures, famine and malnutrition. The global population has grown to over seven billion people. Higher yield crops can go some way to address these issues but more must be done. Vitamin A deficiency is but ine serious problem in poorer countries and can lead to blindness.

For numerous reasons the same countries with wide spread need are unable to feed themselves as a result of drought or war or desert. 

This is where the genetically modified organisms, GMOs come in to their own. It is possible to modify crops to make them more nutritious. The case of Golden rice is one example http://www.goldenrice.org/. GMOs that are nutritious and hardy can go a long way to providing Vitamin A and combating sight problems rice based societies.

The GMOs can also be modified to be resistant to specific herbicides. This would allow a farmer to use a herbicide with environmentally friendly characteristics, secure in the knowledge that the crop is immune to the effects of the herbicides but the weeds are not.

If the plant can be modified to repel the pests then we are working towards a super organism to solve a whole host of the worlds problems.

There is one problem with this super organism. If it is immune to pests and herbicides. What can be done to stop the spread. The super organism may become an unstoppable weed?  While we are engineering all these super features into the organism, perhaps a failsafe can be added so that the organism can be controlled.

Terminator and Zombie Technology.

The names given to these two technologies play right into the worst nightmares of popular media. So what is this and why would it be needed?

The terminator technology is a safety device or a protection mechanism to prevent a particular organism from going absolutely wild and spreading like a weed. Without the technology the GMOs could potentially force other plants out and this would affect biodiversity.

The Zombie technology is a refinement of the terminator technology. The organism is sterile unless treated with a compound that allows it to reproduce. Think of this as the plant on birth control. No possibility or reproduction until the farmer reverses the process by treating the crop. Monsanto holds a patent for a terminator technology. ~ http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Terminator-US-Patent-5723765.htm.

We have a saviour, our super plant can not take over the world.

As long as the science can outperform the pest and weed evolution the crops should deliver better yield purely because they do not need to compete for nutrients and water.

So far there is no downside. Unless higher yield is a bad thing. It seems that GMOs are extremely beneficial. Why all the bad publicity?

That question I am going to leave over for a future post. 

I would love to hear what you think. What are the issues that concern you most? Perhaps my next post on this topic will be able to address or commiserate with those concerns.