Somewhat different crops for Africa

May 2019

The WEMA project to provide 'Water Efficient Maize for Africa' is a public-private partnership co-ordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, and involving among others, agribusiness multinational Bayer-Monsanto, and national research systems in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, and most recently Ethiopia. It is largely funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates and Howard G. Buffet Foundations, and USAID. (African Centre for Biodiversity)

The US government / Gates Foundation project to provide 'Water Efficient Maize for Africa' (WEMA) is hitting some rocks.

Triple stacked GM maize causes leaky stomachs

September 2018
Because partially digested food can be held in the stomach for some hours, the stomach is the part of our body most exposed to the materials in our diet. Yet, tests able to reveal pathological changes and gastric dysfunction, such as measurements of stomach tissue structure or diagnostic staining of stomach cells, are never included in GM safety assessments.

An Australian team of scientists has made a start on filling this gap.

GM pesticides cause more insect damage

September 2017

With such vast monocultures of GM corn being grown in America, most of which now self-infuse with the same or similar 'Bt' insecticides to kill the same or similar moth infestation, you might expect the pests to be reducing in abundance under the biotech-inspired onslaught.

Indeed, although no investigation has been made into the cause, earworm populations in American fields have been declining.  Long-term field monitoring from 1996 when the first Bt crops were entering the US landscape to 2016 found the pest reduced by up to 86%.

This should be good news for farmers, but counter-intuitively, over the same period, tests on sweetcorn sentinel plants [1] indicated an increase or no change in damage to both GM and non-GM plants.

Science-free wildlife death traps

May 2017

Documents from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in early 2017 show that almost 100% of GM corn is pre-treated with neonicotinoid insecticides. In addition, although the EPA has concluded that neonicotinoid seed treatments have no economic benefit to soya growers, incomplete data indicate that over 50% of soya beans are also coated with the insecticide.

Neonicotinoids, of which there are several brands and classes on the market, are used as seed coatings. They end up throughout the mature plant, its flowers, pollen and nectar, and 95% of the coatings spread through the wider environment including soil water and dust in the air. UK trials have found that at least one neonictinoid accumulates in the soil with increasing toxicity over several years.

Across America, tens of millions of acres of land are planted with corn or soya (often year about), each producing its own fresh wave of neonicotinoids.

Enogen contamination concerns

April 2017

In 2011, the first GM maize created solely for industrial purposes was approved for cultivation by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).

'Enogen' maize has incorporated a bacterial enzyme, 'alpha-amylase', which digests starch to produce sugar. Conveniently, this enzyme can be used at the high temperatures. This makes it useful for the production of ethanolic fuel to make American cars greener.

Up until the introduction of Enogen, the first stage of converting maize to ethanol was to mix in liquid amylase under carefully controlled conditions. Now, as little 15% of Enogen maize in the feed-stock is enough to efficiently decompose all the starch present* without further ado.

All maize is wormy now

March 2017

If you've been following the GM issue for a while, cast your mind back to 2006. A long-standing, respected British science journal gave its "Outstanding Paper Award for Excellence" to a study which could be better described as a pro-GM PR initiative dressed up as science.

To assess what influenced consumer purchasing decisions, the study offered 'Bt' insecticide-generating GM sweet corn for sale in a Canadian farm shop beside conventional sweet corn. One of the more blatant exercises in propaganda used during this 'study' was the descriptors attached to the two types of sweet corn: the conventional one was labelled 'wormy' followed by a list of the pesticides sprayed on it; the GM one was labelled 'quality' with the 'Bt' (insecticide!) part kept separate.

Fast forward ten years and check out how these two sweet corns would truthfully be labelled today. The wormy one is still wormy and still sprayed with multiple pesticides. And the quality one?

Smart plants are for real

October 2016

Ripe barley: Photo Creative Commons

We tend to view plants as having 'characteristics' rather than 'behaviours'. The latter suggests senses, reactions and communication at a level impossible without a nervous system.

Biotech scientists seem to view plants as lego-like structures into which they can slot characteristics of their choice, even animal ones. Belief in their ability to custom-build plant life is such that testing the whole-picture reality of what they've created has never been big on the GM agenda.

Plants, however, aren't simple bystanders in their environment, or passive sugar factories running on solar power. They're far smarter than we think.

Enlist duo

June 2016

The biotech industry's answer to the huge weed-problem it has inflicted on farms after years of spraying glyphosate weedkiller on biotech seeds, is (predictably) more of the same.  Indeed, packages of dual herbicide formulations plus dual herbicide-tolerant GM seeds are the business now.

Glyphosate weed-killer is still in there, but Dow Chemical has added in '2,4-D' to create ‘Enlist Duo' formulation for spraying its latest generation of GM corn and soya.  '2,4-D' is another decades-old herbicide, and was one of the two major components of the infamous Agent Orange defoliant used to clear the jungle and destroy crops in Vietnam.

Organic farmers pay the price of GM

April 2016

While America wakes up and finds itself with a GM alfalfa pollution problem [1], and Spain scrambles to control its GM maize pollution problem [2], the UK has just found itself with a GM oilseed rape which nearly became a pollution problem.

Britain doesn't, of course, grow GM anything commercially.  The offending genes were found during routine trials of seeds seeking new plant variety registration.  DEFRA quickly recalled the seeds, and ensured that all affected plants will be destroyed by the company which supplied them.  Mysteriously, the seed was imported from France which doesn't grow GM oilseed rape either.

A grass going feral and becoming a conduit for gene contamination is predictable [1].  An invasive gene-transmitting weed from the other side of the world in today's globalised market [2] is something we have to start watching out for.  The possible pollution of our entire seed supply is simply stupidity.

The problems caused by GM contamination aren't abstract or ideological threats. 

RNAi - lite GM bug busters

December 2015

By 2020, Monsanto plans to have the first two 'RNAi' insecticidal products on the market: one is an 'RNAi' spray to  kill potato beetles, the other is an 'RNAi'-enhanced corn to kill corn rootworm.

RNA is produced by DNA and has chemical similarities.  It's role is to regulate all aspects of gene function and protein formation.  The 'i' in RNAi stands for 'interference, because the synthetic RNA molecules being developed by Monsanto  are designed to prevent the creation of proteins.  In pests, Monsanto's RNAi kills by interfering with the activity of one of the target pest's vital genes.  RNAi is also referred to as 'dsRNA' where 'ds' means 'double-stranded' and is a biotech trick used to confer stability on the normally short-lived, single-stranded RNA.  All such RNA is collectively referred to as regulatory RNA.

Monsanto's RNAi spray will be formulated to enable the pesticide to penetrate into the plant tissue, while RNAi-enhanced GM maize will produce its own RNAi pesticide.  Either way, the bugs will eat the plant plus the toxic RNAi, and get killed.

The US corn addiction

November 2015

Corn growing in Illinois, USA. Photo Creative Commons

According to the US Center for Biological Diversity, world usage of the herbicide, glyphosate, is at an all-time high tied to the proliferation of GM crops. Glyphosate-tolerant GM plants (that is 94% of all soyabean monocultures and 89% of maize) can accumulate the herbicide and be planted in glyphosate-treated soil without harm while the weeds around them perish.

One of the weeds which is perishing on a grand scale in and near GM fields is milkweed.

Milkweed is the sole food for the iconic 'Monarch' butterfly caterpillars. Monarchs are famous for their long-distance multi-generation migrations across the US, but to do this there needs to be a patch of milkweed at regular intervals on the flightpath to feed the caterpillars in preparation for the next leg of the journey.

With all that glyphosate around in the environment, there's just not enough milkweed, few caterpillars, and very few Monarch butterflies left: their numbers are reckoned to have declined 80% in the last 20 years.

But, while we're all fretting over a very beautiful and unique insect, one US farmer is telling us:

"we've missed the entire point about GMO food".

Americans are just about as dependent on corn and soya, now largely laced with glyphosate, as the Monarch's are on milkweed. Consider that nine out of every ten bites of US food are created courtesy of GM ingredients: from all manner of livestock reared on GM feed, to tortilla chips, to the corn syrup in every kind of processed snack, drinks and 'healthy choices'. One inquisitive scientist determined that 69% of the average American's body carbon is derived solely from corn, 89% of which is GM. And that's not counting in the carbon from GM soya.

This is indeed a serious dependency problem, but it too is missing the point about GMO food.

Google Map photos of the State of Illinois, a major grain-growing State, just before the planting season, tell all. What you see is brown. Brown is bare earth, sprayed with glyphosate ready for the spring planting.

In order for maize and soya to grow, requires death on a massive scale. Death on a scale so massive you can see it from outer space.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 170 million acres of corn and soya are in production in the US. At a conservative estimate of 10 gallons of glyphosate per acre, this translates into 2 billion gallons of the herbicide poured onto American soil this year alone. We're talking about an area the size of California and Montana combined, which we're killing dead each year to grow mainly GM crops, mainly contaminated with glyphosate.

OUR COMMENT

The next phase of the Google Map photo is, of course, an ocean of GM corn and GM soya, waiting to slake the American addiction.

Nothing much can swim in that ocean, and Americans are drowning themselves in it.

Let's not go there.

SOURCES

• Sam Levin, California EPA moves to label Monsanto's Roundup "carcinogenic", East Bay Express, 5.09.15
• We've Missed the Entire Point About GM food - A Farmer Explains Why, www.huffingtonpost.com, 22.09.15
• Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the U. S.: Recent Trends in GE Adoption, www.ers.usda.gov, data 2000-2015

Genes know no boundaries

July 2015

GMO protest. Photo Creative Commons

How many random GM plants are kicking around in the food chain?

We've already had two indications of just how bad things might be. 'Starlink' Bt-insecticidal maize which was approved for animal feed only was found to be widespread in maize for human consumption after only two growing seasons, and later turned up in seven countries. Ten years after the first contamination alert, Starlink was found in Saudi Arabia. Two strains of experimental GM rice (one in China, one in America) which were grown in short trials over a very limited area nevertheless succeeded in contaminating global rice supplies.

Answer to bee die-off?

June 2015

Photo Creative Commons

Bee die-off is soaring alarmingly in America. US government figures show that honeybee mortality has risen to 42% in the past year. While hives will shrink over the winter, losses in excess of 15% are deemed unsustainable.

A whole range of factors has been blamed for the bee deaths, including virus-bearing mites, winter food insufficiency, trucking the hives around the country to rent-a-bee at sites where mass crop pollination is needed, and non-target effects of applied and systemic insecticides.

Hives which are already too small and weak at the start of the winter, simply won't survive.

The US race to become GM-free

June 2015

Photo Creative Commons

Labelling of GM food in America came "one giant step closer" in April when a federal court affirmed that Vermont's new law requiring GM disclosure was constitutional.

 

The plaintiffs in this case were representatives of America's largest food manufacturers the Grocery Manufacturer's Association (GMA), Snack Food Association and others. These huge and powerful organisations have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into anti-labelling campaigns across the States. Just why the GMA is fighting so hard to prevent something its members' customers have said they want isn't clear, especially since the larger food manufacturers already sell labelled GM foods all over the world.

 

Ironically, Vermont is one of the smallest States in America and would seem to have the least resources to fight Big Food, and yet it has achieved a ruling on the rights of its citizens which will have repercussions throughout the land.

America creating agri-problems for itself

May 2015

Corn rootworm. Photo from Wiki Commons

In the cold light of the GM day, American farmers and regulators are being forced to recognise they've created a couple of problems for themselves.

Corn rootworm ranks amongst the most expensive threats to US maize farmers. The invention of a GM crop which generates its own 'Bt' insecticide against the rootworm has been a great boon.

However, bolstered by biotech enthusiasm to sell as much as possible of its product, farmers' enthusiasm for reduced post-planting workload and costs, government enthusiasm for incentives to grow maize, and limited availability of alternative seeds, US agriculture has been channelled into planting the same Bt crop year-on-year.

And the rootworm have, inevitably, evolved resistance to that Bt toxin.

Natural food is simple

April 2015

Dr. Kellogg's corn flakes, patented in 1896, were probably the original, very simple, health food (even if no one would eat them until they were transformed into complex junk).

More recently, 'corn' has become associated with stuff that's definitely not in the healthy-choice section. For example: the number one staple junk food is corn syrup, then there's GM corn chock-full of its very own insecticide and specially accumulated weed-killer; and meat from intensively-reared livestock fast-fattened with GM corn to get them to market before their health buckles, washed down with milk from intensively reared dairy herds producing more milk than their bodies can handle (assisted by GM growth-hormone injections for good measure).

Milking (pardon the pun) the rising consumer concern about the cruelty involved in this routine extreme exploitation of cows to give them their daily pinta, scientists have invented Muufri (a worse pun).

Knowledge is never frootless

March 2015

America's in a mess: a GM mess.

US paediatrician, Michelle Perro, tells us: "Digestive health is rapidly declining in children. If children eat conventionally grown food, they will potentially be eating glyphosate, pesticide ingredients and GMOs ... The bioaccumulation effects of gyphosate have not been addressed in children and the standards of safety are arbitrary and not based on any clinical evidence."

Maize pollen travels a long way

January 2015

Field of corn. CC photo by Joel Dinda on Flickr

German scientists have come up with a large and well-controlled data-set which suggests that the management of 'Bt' insecticidal maize (the only GM crop grown on any scale in Europe) is fundamentally flawed.

Shaky meta-analysis of GM benefits

January 2015

Corn harvest. CC photo by United Soybean Board on Flickr

A heavily-promoted 'meta-analysis' of the performance of GM crops world-wide concluded it "revealed robust evidence of GM crop benefits for farmers in developed and developing countries" which "may help to gradually increase public trust in this technology".

 

Meta-analysis is a statistical technique which examines the combined effect of a number of studies on the same topic, to give an overall picture of what the total data might, or might not, be showing. The more studies included, and the more closely comparable the data sets, the more robust the results.

 

What the meta-analysis found was "On average, GM technology adoption has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22%, and increased farmer profits by 68%. Yield gains and pesticide reductions are larger for insect-resistant crops than for herbicide-tolerant crops. Yield and profit gains are higher in developing countries than in developed countries.

The Bt 'pest' refuge that isn't

December 2014


Early scientific wisdom on crops genetically transformed to produce their own insecticides, such as 'Bt' proteins, highlighted a number of fundamental weaknesses.

First, the ubiquitous presence of a single insecticide in a monoculture will result in the rapid evolution of resistant pests.

Second, the presence of a single insecticide throughout the growing season will result in the rapid evolution of resistant pests.

Third, the presence of a single insecticide which isn't at a high enough concentration to kill will result in the rapid evolution of resistant pests.