In my presentation I will advance five major conclusions about the experience with GM crops from the
mid-1990s to the present and make four guesses about the future directions and issues regarding GM
crops. Note that each conclusion would be regarded as speculative, if not downright incorrect, by many
observers. While I do believe that each observation or conclusion is essentially correct, each should
be regarded as a hypothesis, or as a notion aimed at prompting you to think about the "big picture" concerning biotechnology and agriculture.
Conclusions about the experience with GM crops
- Both proponents and opponents of GM crops tend to portray all of them as being fundamentally
of the same type or class. But the socioeconomic implications of GM crops are highly crop-specific.
Their environmental and social implications are often location-specific as well. Some GM crops (HR
soybeans, Bt cotton) are major successes. Some (Flavr-Savr tomato, Bt potato) are relative failures. Some
widely discussed technologies such as "golden rice" will probably never come to pass. No one factor
accounts for relative success or failure. Biotechnology should not be evaluated as good or bad as a class,
but rather on a technology-by-technology basis, taking into account interactions with the social and
natural environment.
- Farmers adopt GM crops in spite of -- rather than because of -- their profitability. Nearly half of
adopters reported they experienced no increase or even a decrease in net profits per acre. But these
crops are still attractive to many farmers. Why?
- The major attraction of GM crops is that they substitute for management and make management
decision-making more routine. HR soybeans will doubtless have the most significant structural
implications of all the GM crop types because of their widespread adoption and because they remove
many of the management barriers to very large-scale cultivation of soybeans.
- In the U.S., operators of larger farms adopt GM crops more frequently than smaller operators, but
the "scale-bias" of GM crops is much less than for other new technologies, such as rBST or precision
farming.
- Outside of the U.S., Canada, and Argentina, there is relatively little GM crop acreage in the world.
About 65 percent of all land planted with GM crops in 2001 was devoted to just one crop (HR soybeans)
in one country (the U.S.). Yet, much of the rhetoric, and a good share of the activity, associated with GM
crops is focused on the developing countries. Why?
What comes next?
- The U.S. and European Union (plus East Asia and Oceania) probably are at a stalemate over
approval and regulation of GM crops. The 1999-2000 GM crop controversy is increasingly blowing over
in the U.S., while the opposition to GM crops in Europe (by the public, and to a significant extent by
national agricultural and/or environmental ministries) is as strong as ever. Each of the two major "sides"
to the GM crop controversy has shifted its attention to leaders, scientists and farmers of the developing
world. Ultimately what is most at stake is the integrity of opposing regulatory institutions and cultures
-- the precautionary principle in the EU, and cost-benefit-type risk assessment in the U.S.
- Do not be surprised if global conflicts over GM crops and over agricultural policy lead to a rollback
of some of the provisions of the mid-1990s World Trade Organization agreement. The implications
of this are not at all clear, however.
- Do not be surprised if the GM debate dies down as scientists find non-transgene approaches
(e.g., -assisted selection) and as scientists and biotechnology firms alter their research priorities.
Sophisticated Non Government Organizations are not much opposed to virus-resistant crops and to crops developed through
-assisted breeding.
- Most consumers (in the U.S.) are not persuaded at all that biotechnology is good or ought to
be pursued because it increases productivity or reduces agricultural product or food prices. Look for
changes in biotechnology research goals, and in discourses about why biotechnology is valuable.
Bibliographic Suggestions:
- Susanna Hornig Priest, A Grain of Truth: The Media, the Public, and Biotechnology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
- Paul B. Thompson, Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective (Chapman and Hall, 1999).
National Research Council, Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation
(National Academy Press, 2002), Chapter 1.
-
Daniel Charles, Lords of the Harvest (Perseus Publishing, 2001)
Some examples of my work are:
- Frederick H. Buttel and Robert M. Goodman (eds.), Of Frankenfoods and Golden Rice: Risks, Rewards, and Realities of
Genetically Modified Foods (Madison: Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 2001).
- Frederick H. Buttel, "The Adoption and Diffusion of GM Crop Varieties: The "Gene Revolution" in Global Perspective,
1996-2001." PATS Staff Paper Series, Paper No. 6 (Madison: Program on Agricultural Technology Studies,
University of Wisconsin, March, 2002;
http://www.wisc.edu/pats/pdf documents/staffpaper6.pdf
- Lucy Chen, Bradford L. Barham, and Frederick H. Buttel, "Update on the Adoption and De-Adoption of GMO
Crop Varieties in Wisconsin." Wisconsin Farm Research Summary No. 6 (August); Madison: Program on
Agricultural Technology Studies, University of Wisconsin, 2001; http://www.wisc.edu/pats/pdf documents/researchsummary6-3.pdf
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