Results for “genetically modified crops” 10 found
GM Crops Not Increasing Yields
The NYTimes has an excellent feature on genetically modified crops, written by Danny Hakim joined by Karl Russell on data. The usual story is about a battle between fears of contamination on one side and the potential of increased yields on the other but the Times story is about how genetically modified crops have failed to increase yields or reduce pesticide use. This has been discussed in the scientific literature for a few years (e.g. here) and Tom Philpott at Mother Jones has covered the story earlier but the Times story really brings it home in a dramatic way. The graphics are especially good.
Here’s one graph showing corn crop yields in the United States, which uses GMOs, and Western Europe which does not. See the difference?
Addendum: Some good further discussion here, h/t ant1900 in the comments.
Publication day for *An Economist Gets Lunch*
Adam Ozimek writes:
Cowen’s history of how American food came to be so mediocre is a strong counterargument to those who look to blame the phenomenon on commercialization, capitalism, and excess of choice. In contrast to the usual narrative, Cowen tells us how bad laws have played an important role in shaping our food ecosystem for the worse over time. This includes prohibition’s negative and long lasting impact on restaurants, and the government aggressively limiting one of our greatest sources of culinary innovation: immigration. This is not to lay the blame entirely on the government. Television and a culture that panders to the desires of children have also incentivized poor culinary trends.
The book contains many other other important arguments against popular food ideas, including defenses of technology and agriculture commercialization against critiques of locavores, slow foodies, and environmentalists. For example, if you live in an area where it takes a lot of energy and resources to grow food — like the desert — the most environmentally friendly way may be to grow it somewhere else and ship it. An apple grown locally may be refrigerated for months, which consumes a lot of energy, whereas it may be both fresher and better for the environment to grow it elsewhere and ship it in from afar by boat. He also defends genetically modified crops as the likely cures to the biggest food problem we have today, which is not obesity but malnutrition.
But Cowen is not an apologist, and he doesn’t argue that we can just deregulate our way to a better food system. In fact he has many words of support for policies and values often supported by progressives.
…If there is one overarching lesson it is that looking at food through the framework of supply and demand can help you both understand our food system better, and also help you be a smarter consumer and get more out of every meal.
You can pre-order the book on Amazon here. For Barnes & Noble here. For Indiebound.org here.
Amish futurists
The title of the post is not an oxymoron. The Amish have been enthusiastic adopters of genetically modified crops. Ironically, the higher productivity of the crop substitutes for the fact that the Amish harvest it by hand. Less ironically the GM crops use fewer pesticides and herbicides.
Amish scholars say genetically enhanced
crops are not inconsistent with the simple life that is central to Amish
beliefs because it helps them continue their ties
to agriculture, allowing families to
work together.
Hat tip to Stewart Brand’s recent essay Environmental Heresies which also contains this insight on a question that has long bothered me.
Why was water fluoridization rejected by the political right and
“frankenfood” by the political left? The answer, I suspect, is that
fluoridization came from government and genetically modified (GM) crops
from corporations. If the origins had been reversed–as they could have
been–the positions would be reversed, too.
Give Thanks to the Green Revolution
It’s well known that the Green Revolution dramatically increased crop yields. In a new paper, Gollin, Hansen and Wingender use a general equilibrium model to show that the effects were even more far reaching. For a given acre, the Green Revolution raised the yields of some crops by 44% between 1965 and 2010. But the total effect was even larger because higher yields incentivized farmers to substitute away from lower-yield crops into higher yield crops. Moreover, higher yields meant that less farm labor was required which shifted populations into manufacturing. When one takes into account all of these knock-on effects the authors find substantial effects on GDP. Indeed, the authors estimate that if the Green Revolution had never happened GDP per capita in the developing world would be half of its current level.
More realistically, if the Green Revolution had been delayed by ten years incomes in the developing world would be 17% lower today. In terms of cumulative GDP what this means is that the investments which made the Green Revolution possible were responsible for some US $83 trillion in benefits.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Green Revolution simultaneously prevented many people from starving but also reduced total population because of reduced fertility. The Green Revolution also meant that less land was used for farming not more.
As Tyler argues in Stubborn Attachments (see also this video) growth is a moral imperative. A ten year delay in the Green Revolution could easily have happened. Indeed, it is happening now.
Anti-GMO Research Under Fire
Nature reports that some of the research most-cited by opponents of genetically modifying crops appears to have been manipulated. In particular, images appear to have been altered and images from one paper appear in another paper describing different experiments with different captions.
Papers that describe harmful effects to animals fed genetically modified (GM) crops are under scrutiny for alleged data manipulation. The leaked findings of an ongoing investigation at the University of Naples in Italy suggest that images in the papers may have been intentionally altered. The leader of the lab that carried out the work there says that there is no substance to this claim.
The papers’ findings run counter to those of numerous safety tests carried out by food and drug agencies around the world, which indicate that there are no dangers associated with eating GM food. But the work has been widely cited on anti-GM websites — and results of the experiments that the papers describe were referenced in an Italian Senate hearing last July on whether the country should allow cultivation of safety-approved GM crops.
In case you haven’t been paying attention
And now the world’s largest general scientific society is weighing in on the debate.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science says labeling would “mislead and falsely alarm consumers.” The AAAS – best known for publishing Science magazine – says genetically modified foods are fundamentally no different from conventionally bred foods. In fact, the organization says they are tested more extensively than most new crop varieties.
And:
Opponents of genetically modified foods have a variety of concerns. Some have a gut feeling that these crops are unwholesome. Others worry that the technology is driven simply by corporate profits for seed companies as well as herbicide producers. Indeed, industry has poured nearly $41 million into advertising to defeat the ballot measure, with “No on 37” TV and radio ads warning that the labels could lead to higher prices at the store, according to The Wall Street Journal. ..
Sometimes worries about genetically modified foods are expressed as concern over food safety, but the AAAS says that concern isn’t supported by the science.
“Civilization rests on people’s ability to modify plants to make them more suitable as food, feed and fiber plants and all of these modifications are genetic,” the AAAS statement says.
Here is more, with hat tip to Michael. Isn’t it time for some of the respected left-wing economists to weigh in on this one?
Michael Pollan on Proposition 37
I am a big fan of the food writings of Michael Pollan, but his recent opinion piece on GMO labeling could be stronger.
His argument for voting “yes” on mandatory labeling is mostly mood affiliation, namely that this is part of some broader battle against “Big Food.” He doesn’t for instance consider how the Proposition may damage many smaller farmers, or that GMOs seem to lower carbon emissions and otherwise help the environment. Here is yet another discussion of benefits, or see this survey post.
His final and in fact main argument contains a simple error in economics, all too common among food writers:
…to date, genetically modified foods don’t offer the eater any benefits whatsoever…
He forgot to mention that they increase supply and lower price. Quick question: how did the GMO products otherwise obtain market share?
For the pointer I thank Michael.
Should there be required labeling of GMOs?
Here is one on-the-mark take (of many):
…there have been more than 300 independent medical studies on the health and safety of genetically modified foods. The World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association and many others have reached the same determination that foods made using GM ingredients are safe, and in fact are substantially equivalent to conventional alternatives. As a result, the FDA does not require labels on foods with genetically modified ingredients because it acknowledges they may mislead consumers into thinking there could be adverse health effects, which has no basis in scientific evidence.
Or try the National Academy of Sciences from 2010:
Many U.S. farmers who grow genetically engineered (GE) crops are realizing substantial economic and environmental benefits — such as lower production costs, fewer pest problems, reduced use of pesticides, and better yields — compared with conventional crops, says a new report from the National Research Council.
Here is a good NYT summary Op-Ed on that report. There is not the scientific evidence for Mark Bittman’s recent evaluation that:
G.M.O.’s, to date, have neither become a panacea — far from it — nor created Frankenfoods, though by most estimates the evidence is far more damning than it is supportive.
It’s the tag there that is problematic. He doesn’t offer a citation, nor has he in past columns offered convincing material to back this evaluation (you can read here for a somewhat more detailed account from Bittman; it simply minimizes benefits and does not support “by most estimates the evidence is far more damning than it is supportive”). This earlier critique of Bittman is on the mark on virtually every point.
The standards of evidence being applied here are extremely weak. In that last Bittman link he wrote that:
…The surge in suicides among Indian farmers has been attributed by some, at least in part, to G.E. crops…
The link is to a sensationalistic Daily Mail (tabloid) story, yet that gets translated into “has been attributed by some.” In that story, the suicides were caused by indebtedness and supposedly the debts were in part caused by a desire by farmers to buy GMO crops. In comparable terms one could write that anything one spends money on could cause suicide through the medium of indebtedness.
By the way, the Wikipedia treatment gives some more detailed citations suggesting that GMO crops are not a significant cause of farmer suicides in India. The most careful study of the matter reports this:
We first show that there is no evidence in available data of a “resurgence” of farmer suicides in India in the last five years. Second, we find that Bt cotton technology has been very effective overall in India. However, the context in which Bt cotton was introduced has generated disappointing results in some particular districts and seasons. Third, our analysis clearly shows that Bt cotton is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the occurrence of farmer suicides. In contrast, many other factors have likely played a prominent role.
I would in fact be more supportive of the GMO labeling idea if renowned food writers such as Bittman, and many others including left-wing economists, would come out and boldly proclaim the science about GMOs to their readers. Too often the tendency is to use a “I’ll try not to say anything literally incorrect, while insinuating there are big problems” method of scoring points against big agriculture. (Another common trope is to switch the discussion to “distribution” and to suggest, either explicitly or implicitly, that a net benefit technology such as GMOs is somehow unnecessary or undesirable; dare I utter the words “mood affiliation“?) GMO labeling is the one issue which has gained legal traction, so critics of “Big Ag” just can’t bring themselves to give it up.
Bittman’s whole column is about GMOs, but he gets at the important point only in his final sentence:
[With better information] We’d be able to make saner choices, and those choices would greatly affect Big Food’s ability to freely use genetically manipulated materials, an almost unlimited assortment of drugs and inhumane and environmentally destructive animal-production methods.
Overuse of antibiotics and animal treatment (both cruelty and environmental issues) — now those are two very real problems, backed by overwhelming scientific evidence. The fact that the California referendum is instead about GMOs — which have overwhelming scientific evidence for net benefit and minimal risks — is the real scandal.
It’s time that our most renowned food writers woke up to that difference. In the meantime, they are doing both us and themselves a deep disservice.
Frankenfoods and the environment
Can genetically-modified foods help us clean up the environment? Jonathan Rauch says yes. We will need fewer herbicides, less irrigation, and we will have less need to farm on environmentally sensitive lands. By limitating habitat destruction we will support biodiversity.
Molecular biologist Don Doering goes further:
[He] envisions transgenic crops designed specifically to solve environmental problems: crops that might fertilize the soil, crops that could clean water, crops tailored to remedy the ecological problems of specific places. “Suddenly you might find yourself with a virtually chemical-free agriculture, where your cropland itself is filtering the water, it’s protecting the watershed, it’s providing habitat,” Doering told me. “There is still so little investment in what I call design-for-environment.”
Rauch goes out on a limb:
I hereby hazard a prediction. In ten years or less, most American environmentalists (European ones are more dogmatic) will regard genetic modification as one of their most powerful tools. In only the past ten years or so, after all, environmentalists have reversed field and embraced market mechanisms–tradable emissions permits and the like–as useful in the fight against pollution. The environmental logic of biotechnology is, if anything, even more compelling. The potential upside of genetic modification is simply too large to ignore–and therefore environmentalists will not ignore it. Biotechnology will transform agriculture, and in doing so will transform American environmentalism.
African food scandal
Zambia, Lesotho, Malawi, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe — not exactly marvels of good nutrition — have been destroying food shipments from America. Why? This will sound like a sick joke, but they are afraid of genetically-modified foods. These countries have now expressed official opposition to American food entering their country, at a time when almost 3 million Zambians, to cite just one example, desperately need food aid.
There is another villain in the story, namely some of the European nations. The Africans fear that if they accept genetically-modified foods, the seeds will mix with their current crops. Europe will then be reluctant to import African foodstuffs. By the way, Greenpeace opposes the food shipments as well.
Peter Pringle offers a good survey of the debates on genetically-modified foodstuffs.