Thread: Stop Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth

Stop Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth
Published: 17 April 2009 11:22 | Changed: 20 April 2009 18:12
As the world clamours for food, the environmentalist lobby continues to oppose genetically modified crops. How much longer?
By Hidde Boersma

http://www.nrc.nl/international/Opin...s_of_the_Earth


In places as far apart as Egypt, Cameroon and Haiti people rioted for more food last year with dozens of deaths as a result. The world's population is increasing and food prices follow close behind. There is simply not enough food to go around. An obvious solution is to increase food production by using more land for agricultural purposes, but this can only be done at nature's expense. Increasing the productivity of the existing farm land is a better idea. Biotechnology and genetic modification offer a way out.

Scientists have succeeded in increasing corn and wheat productivity by several dozens of percents. A new type of rice has been developed that is more resistant to flooding, and wheat has been genetically modified to better withstand draughts. Both crops would give local populations more reliable harvests.

Unfortunately, none of these genetically modified crops are being cultivated in Europe. Their introduction is opposed by Greenpeace and other environmental organisations. Even experimental fields, where the impact of GM crops on the environment are tested, are destroyed on a regular basis by environmental groups. Most recently, two test fields run respectively by the agricultural university of Wageningen and the potato starch company Aveve in Groningen met with that fate.

It seems the environmental organisations are not that interested in the test results. Maybe they're afraid of having been wrong all these years, if it turns out that the damage to the environment is not that bad. It doesn't seem to bother them one bit that their guerrilla tactics are putting lives at risk.

One would think that the green movement would have plenty of smart people; many a biology student has ended up there. And yet, the environmentalists still don't seem to realise that genetically modifying food is little more than an enhanced way of improving crops by crossing them. Have they ever compared a wild strawberry with one from a greenhouse? Or an original corn cob with a contemporary one? The latter has become a whole different thing just by crossing. But the green movement never mentions this.

Crossing plants has the same effect as genetically modifying them except that it is slower and less efficient. For instance, it took no less than forty years to make the potato plant resistant to the pathogenic Phytophtera fungus, which causes potato rot. Researchers in Wageningen managed to do the same thing in two years through genetic modification, and the resulting potato plant was six times more resistant than its crossed variation. Alas, the Wageningen potato plant is also a long way from being introduced to the market.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth say genetically modified crops damage the environment. But dozens of articles in authoritative scientific publications such as Nature and Science paint an entirely different picture: the impact of genetically modified plants is negligible. The hundreds of thousands of hectares of GM crops that were cultivated in recent years have not caused any damage to the environment worth mentioning.

Still, because of the influence the environmental lobby wields, many companies are afraid of investing in gentech crops. What's more, the cost of research and development has increased manifold because of the risk analysis requirements, which are entirely disproportionate in comparison with what is required for traditionally crossed crops.

Add the costs from sabotage and other guerrilla tactics used by the environmental fanatics, and only the largest biotech multinationals such as Monsanto and Bayer can still afford to develop GM crops. It is a cynical thing that it is precisely the dogmatic position taken by the environmentalists that is driving the monopolies of the multinationals, the very thing the environmental movement so vehemently opposes.

How much longer are politicians going to allow themselves to be held hostage by the environmental movement? How many more food riots do we need before the environmental movement is ready to let go of its dogmas? If we want to meet the goal set by the G8 to double food production by 2050, the time to invest in biotechnology is now.
Hidde Boersma is a freelance science journalist.