-
Asked by dan_wan to Andy, Cathie, Jules, Les, Ricarda on 29 Jun 2012.
Question: Quite a general question: The GM debate (in mainstream media) has been one that has spanned nearly my entire life so far. That's nearly 20 years. Do you ever think the debate will come to a conclusion? How long do you reckon it could be until the general public do not view GM foods with an element of suspicion? And do you think it will be too late by the time this happens, in terms of producing enough food for an ever-increasing population?
-
Andy Stirling answered on 29 Jun 2012:
Thanks “Dan_wan”! I think the GM debate is much broader than often supposed, so the “general” questions are the best!
Let me take the first question first. A typical academic answer is to point out that it depends on what you mean by ‘the debate’ and ‘conclusion’. A more straightforward answer would be “no”!
To see this, let’s think about the different scenarios. If GM foods grow in use, then the issues currently discussed (around environment, economics, food culture, safety and so on) won’t go away. even if we disagree with them, we can appreciate that greater profile of the technology is likely to make these queries persist in some way. In other technologies that have been adopted, the concerns have not entirely gone away. So scope for debate is not likely to close that way.
And if GM foods decline in use, then the powerful commercial pressures that are currently driving them – at the expense of other plant breeding techniques – are themselves likely to remain in place behind the scenes. Incentives for private firms to develop products on which they can secure greater rents through intellectual property mean that conventional GM technologies are likely to continue to be pushed. So the debate is likely to persist in some form in that case too.
Nor is it necessarily a bad thing for the debate to continue. It is entirely healthy for technologies of all kinds to be subject to critical scrutiny by society. That’s one of the main ways that we decide over time which are the best pathways for innovation and which are the ones to avoid. After all, that’s how we withdrew from innovations like toxic materials (eg: asbestos, benzene, PCBs); CFCs which cause the ozone hole; lead in petrol; use of ionising radiation to measure shoe size; and, perhaps now, fossil fuels. So, it is an entirely good thing for critical debate to continue – both about GM and about its alternatives.
Your second question suggests a presumption on your part that the “public suspicion” you refer to on GM is somehow necessarily destined to diminish – with the question simply being about “how long”? Maybe you’re right that this will happen (albeit – as I argue above – the scope for debate will in some way continue). But this is far from a foregone conclusion. At least equally possible is (as with the other technology controversies I mention above), public suspicions will be compounded and plant and animal breeding innovations will move ahead in other directions beyond GM – like marker assist selection; open source agronomy; participatory breeding practice; various forms of ecological farming … and so on.
And to take your final point, I and other folk in this exchange have answered this anxiety over global food production a number of times, in a number of ways. It is interesting that arguments made in favour of a particular technology, decrying emotive fears about risk, should themselves be so often and so prominently driven by such blinkered anxieties!
Even if the other possible adverse effects of GM are set to one side, we can see in this present forum (like and other discussions) how much scope exists for debate over whether or not – and the extent to which – mainstream GM foods actually do offer an effective means to address food security issues. So, whatever we think, no-one can assert that the issues are clear-cut or without ambiguity.
But even more crucial in this respect (and a point I have tried repeatedly to remind of), is that GM is not the only show in town! As several of my previous responses have tried to show, we do have (many!) other options. I list ten generally more effective strategies for addressing world food supply in my answer to the first question. And I point to other plant breeding techniques above. Yet, concerns that without GM it might be “too late” to address world food supply imply that there is no alternative, or that we cannot do without it. Quite simply, this would an irrational and rather extremist partisan position. I hope this offers an adequate reply to your very useful general question?
-
-
Les Firbank answered on 29 Jun 2012:
I understand where Andy is coming from, and I agree with him. But things may well change, if food becomes much more expensive as many people fear (including myself). Then many people will choose to buy food that’s cheap, as long as it’s safe and nutritious, whether it’s GM or not.
-
Julian Little answered on 3 Jul 2012:
Hi Dan, Really interesting question, and one that has taxed the minds of both politicians, scientists and many others. From one rather important perspective, it has already been accepted. Over 16 million farmers are now growing GM crops on 160 million hectares. For your interest, a hectare is roughly the area of the grass in Wembly. And 160 million hectares? About the size of the UK, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal put together.
Despite this, you are right that the mainstream media has taken a long time to come to terms with the use of technology in agriculture, and I still come across journalists who think that GM was something that was tried a while ago, it didn’t work and is now back in the laboratory; they tend to be quite surprised at the shear scale of the success story.
I think that there is more interest in where your food comes from in this country, but we have to work hard to get people to understand that the reality of farming is very different to their view of it. That rural idyll still exists but is now underpinned by seriously sophisticated agriculture, with GPS satellite imaging helping many farmers determine which parts of their fields need less fertiliser or pesticide than others; where farmers often sell some or all of their crop before they grow it, and where farmers, for example in the US, may grow a GM crop next to a conventional crop, next to an organic crop, all on the same farm. Events such as OpenFarm Sunday (http://www.farmsunday.org) are great ideas, allowing people to get a view of what is happening on nearby farms, and FACE (http://www.face-online.org.uk) is doing fantastic work getting young people an experience of farm life.
Once people understand what farming is, they quickly understand that having the best available seeds can be a serious help to a farmer wanting to reduce his carbon and water footprint, maximising the productivity of his or her land whilst minimising its environmental impact.
But will there ever be a time when people don’t look at GM food in this country with an element of suspicion. Yes there will be, but I don’t anticipate it happening any time soon. Will it require a crisis? I hope not, although I would point out that the number of media calls we get as an industry is roughly proportional to the price of wheat – whenever we see a sudden increase in its price, people (and especially journalists) immediately want to know what ‘we’ are doing about it!!
Comments
josh_stride commented on :
Andy, you make a good point about a position priding itself on an unemotional analysis of facts regularly employing such an emotive justification of the need for GM. I find this same irony characterises the Emotion v Science/Ration metanarrative around this debate; characterising those who have entirely legitimate concerns about a particular line of scientific inquiry as “anti-science” is disingenuous, divisive and, frankly, lazy.
It also vital that, even if GM crops are approved for commercialisation in the UK (and EU), the debate continues. It would be completely wrong and dangerous if approval of one led to de facto acceptance of all. As we know, genetic modification means many things with many different outcomes.
On the issue of food security – and I don’t want to flog a dead horse – but I fail to understand how providing a few massive corporations with yet more intellectual property ownership over what people grow and eat in any way contributes to a secure food system. While I’m aware that much of the (publicly funded) research being done at the moment is not explicitly attached to agri-business, it is surely naive in the extreme not to assume that successful experiments would purchased by the only organisations with the capital, connections and klout to bring these products to market? One only need to look at Beneforte broccoli to see where the fruits of publicly funded research end up. This leads to the somewhat tangential issue of publicly funded research essentially providing R&D and product development for the bio-tech, which we’ll save for another time.
pheed commented on :
Re ‘concerns about a particular line of scientific inquiry’ – opposing the use of a scientific technology may be very reasonable, but oppsing *inquiry* is problematic – how do you know it’s harmful unless you do research on it?
Totally with you on the IP thing, gene patenting is terrifying in its implications.
dingo commented on :
The likelihood of a GM food ever being cheaper than a non-GM food is address in this thread: /gmfood-zone/2012/06/28/silly-question-but-will-the-genetically-modified-food-be-more-or-less-or-the-same-price-and-cost-as-normal-food/#comment-116
getthetruth commented on :
GM is cheaper than organic food. If you cleaned up the product like Organic farmers do e.g. they throw away a lot to make the organic look better quality then GM food would look about the same and still cost less. Do you want GM corn that has not be sprayed with insecticides or non-GM corn that has been sprayed with nerve poisoning insecticides? GM crops could add to organic practices if the organic people weren’t so religious in their belief system
dina commented on :
A more accurate way of putting the choice is not, “Do you want GM corn that has not be sprayed with insecticides or non-GM corn that has been sprayed with nerve poisoning insecticides?” but “do you want GM corn engineered to express an insecticide in every cell, or non-GM conventional corn that might have been sprayed with insecticides (even though prior to the advent of GM corn, farmers had got very good at growing corn without any insecticides at all), or organic corn, which is not GM and hasn’t been sprayed with synthetic insecticides?”