Genetically Modified Sugar Beets - a Bad Bet, at the Worst Time!

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The US sugar beet industry is threatening to venture into the world of genetically modified (GM) crops, hoping to introduce a new gene-spliced variety by Monsanto as early as spring 2008. The timing couldn't be worse with more than 50% of Americans saying they would reject GM foods if given a choice. There is a significant industry and consumer effort underway worldwide to remove all GM ingredients from the natural food industry and to provide consumers with handy non-GMO shopping guides.

And if that weren’t enough, recent evidence confirming that GM foods are dangerous to health is inspiring more and more physicians to prescribe non-GM diets to their patients. With all this, how the can sugar beet industry be serious about GM sugar beets? It appears that they are relying on Monsanto and the biotech industry for critical information. Oops.

BIOTECH PROMISES COME UP SHORT

For more than a decade, biotech advocates spread promises of an unprecedented economic boom, but according to the San Francisco Chronicle, most of their hoopla remains “in the ‘promise’ category - and has been each year.” Their “smorgasbord of marketing claims,” writes the Asia Times, just adds to “the credibility problems that are piling up against genetic engineering.” The Wall Street Journal reported, “Not only has the biotech industry yielded negative financial returns for decades, it generally digs its hole deeper every year.” The Associated Press says it “remains a money-losing, niche industry.”

In spite of their poor track record, advocates continue to convince politicians and others to invest in their infant technology. “This notion that you lure biotech to your community to save its economy is laughable,” said Joseph Cortright, an Oregon economist who co-wrote a report on the subject. “This is a bad-idea virus that has swept politicians and economic development officials.”

Nowhere in the biotech world is the bad-idea virus more toxic than in its application to GM plants. Not only does the technology under-deliver, it consistently burdens governments and entire sectors with losses and problems. The Canadian National Farmers Union (NFU) observed, “Corporate and government managers have spent millions trying to convince farmers and other citizens of the benefits of genetically-modified crops. But this huge public relations effort has failed to obscure the truth: GM crops do not deliver the promised benefits; they create numerous problems, costs, and risks.”

In Europe, virtually the entire food manufacturing and retail industry responded to consumer pressure by banning GM ingredients. Because of the difficulty of segregating GM from non-GM crops, importers simply rejected all food crops from the US if any of that species were modified.

When Canada became the only major producer to adopt GM canola in 1996, it led to a disaster there as well. The premium-paying EU market, which took about one-third of Canada’s canola exports in 1994 and one-fourth in 1995, stopped all imports from Canada by 1998. The GM canola was diverted to the low-priced Chinese market. Not only did Canadian canola prices fall to a record low, Canada even lost their EU honey exports due to the GM pollen contamination.

The decision to end the GM moratoria in Victoria and NSW has been based in part on the reduction in pesticide use since the introduction of GM cotton. The proponents neglect to mention that there has been a similar reduction in pesticide use in the non GM cotton that is grown as part of the mix to stop insect resistance to the GM cotton. This reduction has been due to integrated pest management (IPM). The genetic modification only reduces the need for insecticides for one of the many pests that attack cotton and still needs pesticides for the other pests.

The value of Australia’s cotton industry has crashed since the introduction of GM. In the past around 300,000 hectares of cotton was grown annually. The 2005/06 crop was 220,000 hectares and by last year approximately 135,000 hectares were grown. This year, the Australian Newspaper stated that it is estimated that the crop will be 65,000 hectares.

The real problem has not been insect pests – it is water. GM cotton is water hungry. Contrast this to the booming organic cotton industry around the world. Organic systems are water efficient and comparison trials have shown that they get higher yields than GM cotton. India, Egypt and many Central Asian countries are expanding production of organic cotton despite the drier worldwide conditions caused by climate change.

Hawaiian farmers, politicians, and scientists succumbed to the bad-idea virus and introduced the GM papaya in 1997 hoping it would “save the industry.” Japan, which had been consuming 60% of Hawaii’s market, shut its doors to the unwanted GM variety. The papaya price immediately dropped from $1.23 per kilo to just $.89, and has since fallen below 80 cents - well under production costs. The islands have lost half of their papaya farmers and 28% of papaya acreage.

GM crops not only close markets and plunge prices, they force governments to shell out huge sums. According to Charles Benbrook, PhD, former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Agriculture, the US government payments to farmers are up by $3 to $5 billion annually due to GM crops. He says growers have only been kept afloat by the huge jump in subsidies.

Those farmers who stick with non-GM varieties are also penalised, as market prices drop across the board. If farmers want to keep their non-GM buyers, they typically have to spend more on GMO testing, buffer zones, and segregation systems including separate storage and shipping channels. Even then, they risk contamination and lost sales.

In spite of biotech industry assurances that contamination wouldn’t be a problem, it has been a consistent and often overwhelming hardship for seed dealers, farmers, manufacturers, even whole food sectors. The biotech industry recommends buffer zones between fields, but these have not been competent to protect non-GM, organic, or wild plants from GMO’s. A UK study showed canola cross-pollination occurring as far as 16 miles.

But pollination is just one of several ways that contamination happens. There is also seed movement by weather and insects, crop mixing during harvest, transport, and storage, and very often, human error. The contamination in North America is so great, it is difficult for farmers to secure pure non-GM seed. In Canada, a study found 32 of 33 certified non-GM canola seeds were contaminated. Most of the non-GM soy, corn, and canola seeds tested in the US also contained GMO’s.

There is no technology to fully eradicate GM contamination from the environmental gene pool. Thus, the self-propagating genetic pollution caused by today’s GMO’s could theoretically outlast the effects of global warming and nuclear waste.