GM (genetically modified) crops help control insect pests, saving farmers billions of dollars and at the same time help with suicide prevention.
A recent scientific study in Nature reported that merely cultivating GM crops provided a healthy boost to the local ecosystem, including organic crops. Over the past 16 years, vast plantings of transgenic crops producing insecticidal proteins form the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) have helped to control several major insect pests and reduce the need for insecticide sprays. (1)
The cotton bollworm is an insect larva that, as its name implies, devastates the cotton plant. There are essentially two ways to control it: smoother a field in insecticides or grow cotton that has been genetically modified with a toxin derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Heavy use of insecticides is expensive and environmentally damaging, so in 1997 China switched to Bt cotton to control the bollworm population. An unintended consequence of this change was that as farmers began using less insecticide, the population of another insect pest—aphids—began to decrease.
Why? As Alex Berezow reports, “Because insecticides kill indiscriminately, they kill many species that are beneficial to farmers—such as spiders and ladybirds. These predators feast on aphids. Thus, the chain of events goes like this: Bt cotton allows farmers to use less insecticide, which causes predator populations to increase, which then leads to a decrease in the population of aphids. This is a win not only for farmers, but also for the environment.” (2)
The authors of the Nature paper also discovered that Bt cotton conferred a benefit on neighboring, non-GM crops such as peanut and soybean. The reason was higher populations of predators, which in turn likely helped keep the pest aphid population low. The mere presence of Bt cotton indirictly helped protect non-GM crops. (1) Again, this is another win for farmers and the environment. (2)
This is not the first time this effect has been descried. In 2010, a paper in Science showed that Bt corn helped protect non-Bt corn from a pest called the European corn borer. Thanks to genetic modification, farmers in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin who planted the non-Bt corn were saved $2.4 billion over the course of 14 years. Comparable estimates for Iowa and Nebraska were $3.6 billion in total, with $1.9 billion for non-Bt growers. (3)
An earlier comprehensive evaluation of the impact on US agriculture of crops developed through biotechnology, which came out from the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy in June 2002, found that six crops genetically engineered to fight insect or weed pests increased yields by 3.8 billion pounds in 2001, saved growers $1.2 billion and reduced pesticide use by over 45 million pounds. (4)
A 2003 study published in Science looked at four hundred field trials in seven different Indian states and found that use of cotton with the anti-insecticidal Bacillus thurengiensis (Bt) bacterium spliced into it increased yields by up to 80 percent compared with non-transgenic varieties. (5)
Another benefit of biotech seeds has to do with suicide prevention. Pesticide self-poisoning, a major public health problem in the developing world, accounts for about one-third of the world’s suicides, killing at least 250,000 to 370,000 people each year. Most of these suicides occur in rural areas of the developing world where high levels of pesticide use in agriculture combined with pesticide storage at home facilitate this particular method of suicide. (6)
So, where do biotech seeds fit into this equation? As Dennis Avery reports, “The world’s farm pesticide toll has been cut radically with biotech seeds that carry their own internal pesticide. A recent study in India has found that biotech cotton has reduced pesticide spraying by 50 percent, and spraying of the most toxic poisons by 70 percent. This is important progress—which should be enough by itself to embarrass Greenpeace and the other anti-technology groups opposing biotech. But the big news on the biotech crop is that they’re slashing the toll from farmer suicides.” (7)
With the exception of nuclear power, there is perhaps no better example of the strength of the irrational fear of new technology overcoming the potential benefits of foods produced with biotechnology, or gene-splicing. No negative health or environmental effects have been observed from these technologies, yet there remains an immensely strong anti-biotech lobby, especially in Europe, where activists have persuaded many governments to thwart new approvals. They have also successfully opposed the use of gene-spliced corn and soybeans as food aid in famine-stricken parts of Africa and Asia. (8)
Regardless, the scientific data on GM crops is increasingly showing a net positive effect on the environment and in the pocketbooks and lives of farmers.
References:
- Yanhui Lu, et al., “Widespread adoption of Bt cotton and insecticide decrease promotes biocontrol services,” Nature online, June 13, 2012
- Alex B. Berezow, “GM crops, organic food & delicious irony,” realclearscience.com, June 14, 2012
- W. D. Hutchison, et al., “Area-wide suppression of European corn borer with Bt maize reaps savings to non-Bt growers,” Science, 330, 222, October 8, 2010
- “Biotechnology helps protect US food crops from pests,” National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, Washington, DC, June 2002
- Matin Qaim and David Zilberman, “Yield effects of genetically modified crops in developing countries,” Science, 299, 900, February 7, 2003
- Andrew H. Dawson, et al., “Acute human lethal toxicity of agricultural pesticides: A prospective cohort study,” PLOS Medicine, DOI:10,1371/journal.pmed.1000357
- Dennis Avery, “Farmers suicides reduced by biotech,” Canada Free Press, August 1, 2011
- Jay Lehr, “Biotech: Enormous potential compromised by self-interest, bad science, and excessive government regulation,” February 22, 2010
