Genetic modified organisms

The genetic modification of organisms started with the green revolution, when it was necessary to modernize agriculture to increase food production. The GMOs promise to increase nutrition and the efficiency of agriculture while lessening impacts on the planet’s environmental system. However, they also may pose risks that are not yet well understood, and this concern has given rise to protests around the globe from consumer advocates, small farmers, environmental activists, and opponents of big business.

The genetic modification of crops and livestock is one type of genetic engineering, a process whereby scientists manipulate an organism’s genetic material in the laboratory by adding, deleting, or changing segments of its DNA. GMOs are organisms that have been genetically engineered using recombinant DNA, genetic material patched together from the DNA of different organisms. In this process, scientists break up DNA from multiple organisms and then splice segments together, placing genes that produce certain proteins and code for certain desirable traits -like rapid growth, disease and pest resistance, or higher nutritional content – into the genomes of organisms lacking those traits. An organism that contains DNA from another species is called a transgenic organism, and the genes that have moved between them are called transgenes. To se an animation of the transgenic mouse, click here.

Genetic alteration of plants and animals by humans is not something very new. Mendel was actually the first one. However, there is a difference between Mendel’s GMOs, selective breedings, and the ones from genetic engineering, and it lays is on the technique:

• Selective breeding mixes genes from individuals of the same or similar species, while with recombinant DNA technology, scientists mix genes of organisms as different as viruses and crops, or spiders and goats.
• Selective breeding deals with whole organisms living in the field, and genetic engineering involves lab experiments; it deals with genetic material apart from the organism.
• While traditional breeding selects from among combinations of genes that come together on their own, genetic engineering creates the novel combinations directly.
• Traditional breeding changes organisms through the process of selection, while genetic engineering is more akin to the process of mutation.

The impacts of GM crops are many, however, there is no study or research yet to prove them, nevertheless, some of these consequences have been already seen in some places. Eitherway, the concerns are:

• That the new foods might be dangerous for people to eat, since the transgenics are a mix of genes of different species. Apparently speaking, transgenical food is the same, however, genetically speaking, they’re different from eachother despite the fact that the genes of the transgenes are the same in all transgenic. That happens because the place on the transgenics DNA where the intruders gene is put is not aways the same. The genetic engineering haven’t found a way to do that yet. Therefore, the consequences that these new DNA combinations might cause to our organisms are still unknown;
• That pests would evolve resistance to the supercrops and become “superpests”;
• That the transgenes would be transferred from crops to other plants and turn them into “superwheeds”;
• That the pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) used become stronger and stronger to fight pests, and pollute the water, the air, and the soil.
• That transgenes might ruin the integrity of native ancestral races of crops;
• That the transgenics monocultures might reduced biodiversity, because many fewer wild organisms are able to live in monocultures;
• That natural seeds might disappear, substituted by GM;
• That food supply might be dominated by a few large agrobiotech corporations that develop GM technologies. Those corporations would be Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, Dow, DuPont, and BASF;
• Much of the research into the safety of GM organisms is funded, overseen, or conducted by the corporations that stand to profit in their transgenic crops are approved by regulators.

Knowing about the possibilities of these problems, critics argue that we should procced with caution, adopting the precautionary principle, the idea that one should not undertake a new action until the ramifications of that action are well understood. In a few words, we could think of GM as a medicine, a medicine that might “cure” all our problems. However, if we look at the side effects on it’s package leaflet, well… they’re pretty bad…

People of different cultures have reacted differently to GM. European consumers have expressed widespread unease about possible risks of GM technologies, so their governments demand that GM food is labeled as such. In the US, however, consumers have accepted the crops approved by US agencies, and they don’t realize how much of their food contains GM products. Yet, there are still many things to be studied and thought… that’s polemic that has to be discussed.

Green Revolution

Green revolution is the introduction of industrialized agriculture to the developing world in the mid- and late- 20th century and it allowed the production of greater quantity and quality of food. This industrialization became necessary because people realized that farmers could not keep cultivating more land to increase crop output, than, agricultural scientists devised methods and technologies to increase crop output per unit area of existing cultivated land.

This new agriculture uses synthetic fertilizers and chemical pesticides; special types of grains that are more resistant to wind and diseases and produces high yields -transgenics; and heavy equipment powered by fossil fuels.

These developments had mixed effects on the environment. The use of already-cultivated land reduced pressure to convert additional natural land for new cultivation. As a matter of fact, between 1961 and 2003, food production rose 150%, population rose 100%, and the area converted for agriculture increased only 10%. Therefore, the green revolution prevented some degree of deforestation and habitat conversion when many countries were experiencing their fastest population growth rates.

However, there also are many negative sides that we must pay attention to:

• The intensive application of water, fossil fuel, innorganic fertilizers, and synthetic pesticides worsened pollution, and soil problems like erosion, salinization, and desertification;
• As monocultures made planting and harvesting more efficient, the increased output reduced biodiversity, because many fewer wild organisms are able to live in monocultures than in native habitats or amid tratitional small-scale polycultures;

• When all plants in a field are genetically similar as in monoculture, all are equally susceptible to viral diseases, fungal pathogens, or insect pests that can spread quickly from plant to plant. Therefore monocultures bring some risks of cataqstrophic failure;
• Many yields are declining in some regions because of the decline in soil quality from the heavy use of fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation.

Green revolution and population

It is really important to understand the reason why the green revolution happened.

The transfer of technology to the developing world that marked the green revolution began in the 1940s, when US agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug introduced Mexico’s farmers to a specially bred type of wheat that produced large seed heads, was short in stature to resist wind, was resistant to diseases, and produced high yields. Within two decades of planting and harvesting this specially bred crop, Mexico tripled its wheat production and began exporting wheat. After this huge success, the wheat was taken to India and Pakistan, and soon, many developing countries were doubling, tripling, or quadrupling their crop yields using selectively bred strains of wheat, rice and corn, among others.

In the 1960s, India’s population, for instance, was skyrocketing and it’s traditional agriculture was not producing enough food to support the growth. By adopting green revolution agriculture, India sidestepped mass starvation. In the years since intensifying its agriculture, India has added several hundred million more people and continues to suffer widespread poverty and hunger.

Still, because of the huge problems brought by the green revolution, we can’t think of it as the solution of our food supplies problem. In fact, Borlaug  called his green revolution methods “a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation”.