Tends to happen around me for SOME reason.... 
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- Edit 1Before modification by Joel at 17/09/2012 05:36:41 PM
Sixty meters is quite a long way; if you could kick a football that far you could break the NFL record for longest field goal, and in the row-upon-row, line-upon-line of commercial agriculture we are talking hundreds, if not thousands, of plants capable of cross-pollinating anything within 60m in all directions. Fertile crops pollinated by sterile ones would not be so occasional, and each such occasion is one generation that will not reproduce. In the case of commercial crops destroyed in harvesting, that means a generation that will never reproduce. It might not be a rapid process, but is an inexorable one as sterile plants become ever more dominant and fertile ones become, not only less common naturally, but less popular with commerical farmers seeking (currently) inexpensive seed more robust than traditional stocks.
Except that we’re talking about commercial farming here, millions of hectares of mono-culture, even at the extreme outlier of 60m (I’ve checked and the effective range is quoted as between 5m and 20m). One of the main principles is that you don’t get many plants around the mono-culture, let alone any could cross pollinate with the crop you’re growing. Any areas where wild crop plants grow is already taken up by farming, any areas that aren’t used for farm land are going to be unsuitable for anything close to the crop plant so cross fertilization does not occur. You’re not going to wipe out your next door neighbours crop because farms aren’t that close and their crops are too dense to allow fertilization to occur at any meaningful rate. Not only do you require that the 60m area contain plants that are capable of being “fertilized” by the crop plant but you also require that enough of the 400-600 kernals per plant are fertilized by the “infertile” pollen that produces the inactive seeds. Even then you’re looking at reduced seed count and given most crop plants are selfing, that impact is going to be tiny based on density alone.
On that one I will just refer back to the Canadian and UK articles suggesting current spacing between GMO and non-GMO crops might be insufficient, and that government action may be necessary to increase it to sufficient levels (I am not sure if either paper draws any conclusions about what constitutes "sufficient.")
There is really only one way for that to end: With the worlds farmers purchasing all their seed from seed manufacturers, particularly as the latter aggressively pursue and win "copyright infringement" cases when farmers manage to find a few GMO seeds that, against all odds, are somehow fertile, and replant them, only to have their manufacturers indignantly litigate against them for growing food without paying a fee for the privilege.
You won’t find any argument from me here and it’s sickening. You shouldn’t be allowed to aggressively protect food like that.
That, and its capacity to drive non-GMOs to extinction, are my principal concern. Like I say, I am not insensitive to general ecological concerns and the effects on other species present, but I do not want to be at the mercy of industrial agriculture. Or at least, no more than I already am; in America, Thomas Jeffersons ideal of self-sufficient and therefore free yeoman farmers received a mortal blow from the Civil War, and the Great Depressions Dust Bowl finished it. Now we work for someone else to earn our living, until we can no longer do so, then pray we get enough from Social Security to feed and house us, and that Medicare can keep us hale enough to enjoy a few years of retirement before we die.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/agriculture/farms_and_farmland.html
According to those census figures, corporate farming is not so pervasive as I had feared, but the average farm size is not quite 450 acres. That is commercial, not subsistence farming, and the increasing prevalence of GMOs must inevitably make those and all farms dependent on those who own not only the seed, but its DNA. When farming without a licensing agreement becomes illegal (as it already has in many cases) we are all in trouble.
The naturally occurring crops GMOs crowd out are planted in the same tilled cultivated areas; they are just not as well suited to prosper there (in many cases, that is the whole point.) Perhaps I should be more concerned about BT-maize driving monarch butterflies to extinction by poisoning the natural milkweed on which they feed, and I am not indifferent to that concern, but my primary concern is allowing Monsanto and ADM to between them monopolize all agriculture on the planet.
Under the same conditions, unmodified corn will naturally be smothered BT-maize in short order, because it has all the competitive advantages of the other, plus many the other lacks. If experimentation is needed to confirm the obvious, it is not difficult: Plant a field with unmodified corn next to an equal sized field planted with BT-maize, and see how many of each plant are around in successive generations. I am fairly confident you will find the unmodified corn disappears quickly.
Under the same conditions, unmodified corn will naturally be smothered BT-maize in short order, because it has all the competitive advantages of the other, plus many the other lacks. If experimentation is needed to confirm the obvious, it is not difficult: Plant a field with unmodified corn next to an equal sized field planted with BT-maize, and see how many of each plant are around in successive generations. I am fairly confident you will find the unmodified corn disappears quickly.
You don’t get GMO farming and non-GMO (although naturally occurring is totally misleading, it’s like calling a Dalmatian naturally occurring) crops in the same areas because anywhere with decent legislation doesn’t allow it (something the US needs to work on, their laws on the use of miticides in varroa mite control are a continual annoyance to me). There isn’t any area of non-GMO crops for the GMO’s to “crowd out”, it’s all going to be taken up with the GMO in the first place because farmers like to maximise their yield with monoculture. On the issue of patenting, again, you won’t find any objection from me but it’s the same with medicine, it’s a cultural issue, not an agricultural one.
If you are in areas with heavy moth pest action (and with mono-culture you always are), then yes BT Maize will survive longer than the non-GMO maize, this is the whole point of the BT toxin, it kills the pests. It will eventually (and this would be an incredibly slow process) take over the plot where the non-GMO was, but only because the pest had wiped out the non-GMO. What wouldn’t happen was you leave it for 10 years and find your garden and everyone elses totally dominated by BT-maize, you still need to do all that farming stuff.
(Note: I edited the first sentence of my second paragraph above because it said just the opposite of what I intended, though you seem to have understood it rightly.)
We are still talking natural selection, which was my initial point there: Artifical (i.e. human) factors promote growth by both GMO and non-GMOs, but natural ones hostile to the original species are inevitably more destructive to varieties not genetically designed to resist them, so they disappear over time. Further, as GMOs predominate ever more they consume more and more of finite resources all varieties require. That is especially true when GMOs higher yields and hardiness influence grower preference for one or the other. Natural and artificial selection combine for an environment where non-GMOs cannot subsist even if not sterilized by neighboring GMOs. Indeed, for whatever reason, we may already be there: http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/transgenic.html
Note in particular the first sentence of the second paragraph: "In 1999, transgenic crops were grown on 63.1 million acres in the U.S., constituting 72% of the global acreage of these crops."
That was 12 years ago; I think it safe to say the numbers have increased since.
This is legal, not scientific, paper from Penn State, but still instructive. http://law.psu.edu/_file/aglaw/Impacts_of_Genetically_Modified.pdf
Page 3 briefly summarizes Monsantos infamous (and successful) Canadian lawsuit against Percy Schmeiser for planting seeds produced by HIS OWN CROPS after they were cross-pollinated by neighboring GMO canola. Despite, indeed, BECAUSE he never bought Monsantos GMO seed he could not lawfully re-plant seed of his own, because it was NOT his own: It was Monsantos, due to his plants being cross-pollinated by plants they created.
Pages 4 and 5 cover the danger of GMO cross-pollination to non-GMO crops grown for their market, but note particularly the page 5 reference to GMO Starlink corn found in commercial taco shells, despite the fact Starlink had not received FDA approval for human consumption.
Cross-pollination is a real occurrence and thus concern, and at distances far greater than 20 or even 60m. The following IS a scientific article from Ohio State noting that 99% of pollen is desposited within 60m of corn plants, but PREVENTING cross-pollination (i.e. reducing it to 0%) is not possible even at a distance of a third of a mile. http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0153.html
Finally, not a scientific study, but a scientific article in Scientific American (generally regarded as a reputable publication:) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=genetically-modified-crop
Apparently one can not swing a dead cat without hitting GMO canola in ND, even including a variety with "stacked" GMO traits Monsanto has been been unsuccessfully trying to engineer in the lab for years: Various of their other varieties got loose, cross bred and did it for them. Guess who still owns it (hint: NOT the state of ND, even though it is growing on public land.) I can not speak to the less objective allegations in the articles comment section, but they are certainly logical enough: Since Monsanto routinely sues for copyright infringement when they find seed produced from GMO pollen growing outside licensed fields, even (especially) where GMOs are not sterile it is only a matter of time until their ever more prevalent numbers pollinate ALL non-GMO crops, which then become Monsantos property RETROACTIVELY.
GMOs need not crowd out or out-endure non-GMOs, only pollinate them (impossible to prevent) and, bit by bit, all crops will be GMO, whatever is initially planted.
I do not think that a uniquely US problem; again, the studies I cited on the need to increase distance between GMO and non-GMO crops, a need great enough both studies suggest could require government intervention, were from Canada and the UK.
Oh and as I said earlier (might have been to someone else), the BT monarch butterfly paper was nonsense and debunked by several scientific organisations rather quickly (I know one of the people who did the debunking).
I have heard much criticism in both directions on that one, so would like to see more research but, again, while that does concern me, it is not my PRIMARY concern.
Going to address your last paragraph in a few sections:
Firstly the Soy issue with reduced fertility. I’m not sure whether the hamster paper was ever published (which is usually a bad sign) but this was done in rats a year or so ago and the reduced fertility (which occurred in both non-GM, GM but not the control) was due to weight loss as soy is a pretty rubbish diet to feed rodents. I can’t find the hamster paper on google scholar (I’m not in work so I don’t have access to anything else) but if you know where it is then feel free to link it.
Firstly the Soy issue with reduced fertility. I’m not sure whether the hamster paper was ever published (which is usually a bad sign) but this was done in rats a year or so ago and the reduced fertility (which occurred in both non-GM, GM but not the control) was due to weight loss as soy is a pretty rubbish diet to feed rodents. I can’t find the hamster paper on google scholar (I’m not in work so I don’t have access to anything else) but if you know where it is then feel free to link it.
This was the first I have heard of it, but if both non-GMO and GMO soy had that effect under otherwise identical conditions, that is sufficient. It does rather undermine the notion of soy as a panacea substitute for things of trivial importance (e.g. meat and milk
) but that is another issue.The herbicide article is interesting but only in that it is pure conjecture, it makes lots of assumptions based on individual studies (and often speculation based on unpublished data). I don’t have access to any of the papers he listed (and several are unpublished) as they only show up as references to a 1993 paper not listed online. The speculation about the pat and bar genes is about as unscientific as you’ll find, not only is it unsound and draws conclusions from papers that only vaguely allude to what they’re talking about (the bee gut yeast enzyme paper I’ve read before and citing it to back up what he said wouldn’t get past the first reading of paper submission at a decent journal). You can’t take any of their claims seriously when you consider uptake rates and the actual mechanics of metabolism. It’s a great area to sell conspiracy theories but any valid concerns are published in decent journals (and very are, regularly), once you model the nonsense you see it’s just that, nonsense.
I would need to study it far more than I am willing to now to dismiss it on the basis of metabolic mechanics, because many substances are metabolized slightly or not at all and/or long persistent in the system even when they are metabolized. Heavy metals come most prominently to mind; the body does not simply purge them in a matter of a few months, and even relatively small concentrations can be harmful, even lethal. I mainly included those articles as examples of concerns rather than smoking guns. The above links DO strike me as smoking guns, from far more objective and scholarly sources.
Your paper on the herbicide is a problem with over-spraying of herbicides, something GMO’s would hopefully help to alleviate (although with bad farming that can be the opposite). It isn’t an issue with GMO’s. I’m not sure what you mean by the “could be masked by GMO’s resistance” though; you’ll have to elaborate further.
What I meant by that is that dangers from GMO produced toxins may not be immediately evident if the GMO is itself resistant to them, particularly in commercial monocultures. If the only noticeable organism for miles in any direction is one engineered to resist the toxins it produces it could be some time before those toxins leech through the water table to more susceptible organisms. If one never examined any species but cobras the logical and likely conclusion would be that cobra venom is harmless, but having observed its effect on other species we know better.
The I-SIS thing, I’m not even going there. I’m not going to try and defend anything written by them (or indeed anything from now on that isn’t from a peer-reviewed journal) because if they could provide decent sources they would.
Yeah, OK, fair enough; again, that was mainly to illustrate rather than substantiate some of my concerns, and I do not pretend those particular sources objective.
For the scientific paper you have listed, as the abstract so nicely puts it; the actual findings weren’t “everythings going to turn herbicide-resistant and toxic” more this;
We find that in many cases, careful attention needs to be paid to the spatial arrangement of GM crops in relation to non-GM crops in order to ensure that GM contamination is not ubiquitous. The relative ease of system-wide cross-pollination of farmland by GM crops indicates that significant external costs could be imposed on a typical farmer because of the inability to certify produce for sale in potentially lucrative GM-free markets. The analysis suggests that the potential for market failure in this industry may justify a need for government action, and that innovative and flexible regulatory structures will be needed to handle the wide range of co-mingling risks posed by differing crops.
i.e, if you’re planning to try and grow non-GM and GM crops together, then be careful how you space them because they can transfer and it will ruin your profit margin if you can’t meet industry standards for GM-free markets. The “market failure” is that you won’t be able to declare your products 100% GM-free, not that everything is toxic and unkillable without buckets of herbicide. This is a sentiment I whole heartedly agree with, if you’re trying to grow GM and non-GM in the same area be careful or you’ll have to sell it all as the cheap GM stuff because you’ll get minor contamination for that batch of crop and next year you’ll have to do it right.
Edit: I'm not saying GMO's can be used carte-blanche, they have to be used responsibly, but just that they aren't "bad".
We find that in many cases, careful attention needs to be paid to the spatial arrangement of GM crops in relation to non-GM crops in order to ensure that GM contamination is not ubiquitous. The relative ease of system-wide cross-pollination of farmland by GM crops indicates that significant external costs could be imposed on a typical farmer because of the inability to certify produce for sale in potentially lucrative GM-free markets. The analysis suggests that the potential for market failure in this industry may justify a need for government action, and that innovative and flexible regulatory structures will be needed to handle the wide range of co-mingling risks posed by differing crops.
i.e, if you’re planning to try and grow non-GM and GM crops together, then be careful how you space them because they can transfer and it will ruin your profit margin if you can’t meet industry standards for GM-free markets. The “market failure” is that you won’t be able to declare your products 100% GM-free, not that everything is toxic and unkillable without buckets of herbicide. This is a sentiment I whole heartedly agree with, if you’re trying to grow GM and non-GM in the same area be careful or you’ll have to sell it all as the cheap GM stuff because you’ll get minor contamination for that batch of crop and next year you’ll have to do it right.
Edit: I'm not saying GMO's can be used carte-blanche, they have to be used responsibly, but just that they aren't "bad".
My impression of the Canadian and UK article was "if you’re planning to try and grow non-GM and GM crops together, then be careful how you space them because they can transfer," BUT that "together" in this case means "within the same county or province, if not nation."
Think of it this way: On a 450 acre farm (the average US size) how much cross-pollination occurs if 0.1% of pollen is scattered a third of the mile in four directions?