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Not So Golden Silence on GM Rice
By Thomas R. DeGregori
Recently, I posted a piece on the discovery of the potential for a serious allergenic response from a foodstuff that was being promoted as a non-genetically-modified (non-GM) alternative to GM soybeans. There was almost total media silence on this matter even though the research itself was published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal. ACSH Nutrition Director Dr. Ruth Kava recently noted yet another case of media silence, but before I describe the parallels and differences in the two cases, allow me to conjure an imaginary scenario.
Good News Is Only News If It's Genetically Pure
Let us imagine that in a peer-reviewed article in a leading scientific publication -- one of the world's most prestigious journals -- a comparison of farmers' health found that those who grew genetically-modified rice were less healthy than those who grew conventional rice. Is there any doubt that this would have become a major media story, with that one study being described as having "proven" the dangers of genetically-modified crops and closed out the need for further inquiry? One can almost hear the NPR interviews with the researchers and the comments of the non-governmental-organization (NGO) "scientists." One can further imagine the legions of the NGO environmentalists, back-to-nature, and "organic" enthusiasts contacting their local media to make sure the story was not ignored and that it was "correctly" interpreted. Add in letters-to-the-editor and call-in shows and one could expect a blizzard of publicity and concern over the health and wellbeing of poor farmers around the world. In fact, one does not even have to imagine a peer-reviewed article -- a non-peer-reviewed, NGO-funded study would probably have been sufficient to cause a ruckus.
In fact, research "assessed" both the "productivity and health effects" of "insect-resistant GM rice in farmer's fields" in China. The study was published in Science (29 April 2005) and authored by two distinguished Chinese scientists and two distinguished American scientists (Huang et al. 2005). The research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Science, so one could hardly accuse it of having either a corporate bias or for that matter one favoring the position of the U.S. government on this issue. On top of all of that, there were press releases from the universities that were home to the American researchers and very good stories by the Associated Press and others on this issue, posted on a number of very popular news groups for agricultural scientists. In case you haven't guessed it by now, the research found that farmers who planted insect-resistant GM rice had increased yields and their households experienced no pesticide-related illnesses in contrast to those planting conventional rice, who continued to experience these pesticide-related problems. (The reduced need for pesticide with the GM variety would obviously lead to reduced pesticide-related illnesses. And one does not have to accept the anti-pesticide hysterics of the chemophobes to recognize that dose makes the poison and that what may be safe levels for consumers might be part of a cumulating dose received by the farmer applicator.)
The author's words from the article abstract nicely state the research conclusions: "Farm surveys of randomly selected farm households that are cultivating the insect-resistant GM rice varieties, without the aid of experimental station technicians, demonstrate that when compared with households cultivating non-GM rice, small and poor farm households benefit from adopting GM rice by both higher crop yields and reduced use of pesticides, which also contribute to improved health" (Huang 2005).
If you haven't heard about this research, it is quite likely because its findings were favorable to a GM crop. The study was intelligently designed and carried out, was useful and informative, and revealed few surprises to those who knew the scientific issues involved. But it is not what someone in the media who has been under a steady barrage of anti-GM propaganda would expect, so it should have been news to them. It apparently wasn't! We are talking about small, poor, or at least low-income farmers being better off economically and healthier. These are the farmers that the anti-biotech NGOs purport to be defending. But the farmers aren't doing things the way anti-tech NGOs want them to, through low-tech and "sustainable" agriculture methods -- the farmers are using cutting-edge technology and science capable of delivering similar benefits to the poorest farmers around the world.
Science vs. Starvation in the Developing World
The study was very well done. The farm groups for the conventional and GM planting were carefully matched and no payments or subsidies were provided other than making GM seeds available at the same price as conventional varieties. Even more important, there were no special instructions provided on planting or pesticide use, yet there was an "80% reduction in pesticide usage and a reduction in their adverse effects" along with a 6 to 9% increase in yield.
As someone who has been involved in developing-country agriculture in a variety of locations, including Asia, I was pleasantly surprised by a number of points. I have talked with farmers in countries where extensive pesticide use was a relatively recent event either in their lifetime or in the village memory. They remember the frequent crop failures that preceded pesticide use and are therefore reluctant to cut back on pesticides. So-called tradition-bound farmers were quick to adopt the technology of the Green Revolution and having experienced its enormous benefits were justifiably concerned about losing them. An integrated pest management (IPM) project that I studied actually "paid" selected farmers to use less pesticide by guaranteeing his or her crop. Guaranteeing the crop is often a good way to introduce an agricultural innovation to an area. I once asked a farmer outside of the IPM project what he would say if I told him that a farmer across the valley was spraying about one fifth (about the same reduction as the China study) the pesticide that he was and getting the same crop. He replied that he simply would not believe me.
I have often argued that farmers want to use as little pesticide as possible, since it costs them money. This is even more true in poor countries, where pesticide costs can be a significant fraction of household income. But farmers also don't want to lose their crop. Thus, the study published in Science was a pleasant surprise, showing us how quickly farmers can develop an understanding of the potential of insect-resistant rice and reduce their pesticide use without any technical assistance or advice in their decision-making process. Farmers aren't stupid, but they are cautious and there must have been a number of solid indicators of plant health and protection, or insect resistance, that led them to reduce pesticide use so significantly.
Modern Farmers Are Healthier Farmers
In the late 1980s and early 1990s (with a few echoes to the present), there were any number of unsubstantiated reports of thousands of deaths from pesticide use by those opposed to its usage -- though these accounts routinely include deaths where the pesticide was used to commit suicide. Still, consistent with my view of the lack of dangers from pesticide residue on food, I recognize that the level of exposure for farm workers can be a problem. Even if one argues that most estimates exaggerate the sickness and deaths, one characteristic pervades virtually all estimates, namely, illness and death associated with pesticide use is vastly greater in poor countries than in developed countries.
My experience in Asia and elsewhere leads me to believe that the health benefits from the reduction in pesticide use in China would be easily matched in most of the developing world. I have observed farmers spraying without protective clothing and, in one case, a farmer spraying a cabbage patch starting from the top of a hill and working his way down, spraying right on top of what was drifting down from his spraying the previous rows. I have worked with farmers who finished spraying and sat down to eat with their hands without the option of washing them, except in a canal with floating fecal matter.
Since pesticide use is an essential component of getting yields to feed the world's population, I have long favored programs for teaching safer methods of pesticide application -- and for very labor- and often knowledge-intensive programs of insect-"scouting" and IPM -- to try to reduce pesticide use without loss of output. Now, with the help of biotechnology, small farmers can reduce pesticide use, increase yields and income, and protect their health.
Many of those now silent on the latest study are precisely those who have been screaming about the dangers of pesticide use. They should be on the rooftops shouting hosannas to biotechnology and promoting the use of insect-resistant crops. Undoubtedly, there will be some attempts to refute or discount the study by those who refuse to accept any positive evidence on GM. However important the recent study may be -- and it is important -- it is also consistent with a series of studies on reduced pesticide use as a result of GM crops. Unfortunately, the silence on this study will in no way be matched by a corresponding silence over the next NGO-funded claim of GMO harm -- that report will inevitably come and be widely reported as fact. Those of us who are supportive of efforts to use science and technology to help the poor improve their lot in life (and the world's population to improve the conditions of life) need to find new ways to reach the media to get our side of the story reported.
REFERENCE:
Huang, Jikun; Ruifa Hu; Scott Rozelle, and Carl Pray. 2005 Insect-Resistant GM Rice in Farmers' Fields: Assessing Productivity and Health Effects in China, Science 308(5722):688-690 , 29 April.
Dr. Thomas R. DeGregori, Professor of Economics, University of Houston and Board of Directors of the American Council on Science and Health, has extensive overseas experience as a development economist, including work as a policy advisor to donor organizations and developing countries. He is widely published and his most recent books include: Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate; The Environment, Our Natural Resources, and Modern Technology; and Agriculture and Modern Technology: A Defense (all from Blackwell) and Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food Safety, and the Environment (from the Cato Institute). His homepage is http:www.uh.edu/~trdegreg and his e-mail address is trdegreg[at]uh.edu.
Thomas R. DeGregori (May 5, 2005)
from Tom DeGregori
I was contacted by a journalist from China concerning my posted piece, Not So Golden Silence on GM Rice, American Council on Science and Health, Health Facts and Fears.Com, http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.547/news_detail.asp commenting on a outstanding article in Science on the heath benefits of growing GM rice in China. My comments reminded him "that in China, media also remain silent on GM's benefits, and overwhelmingly bad-mouthing GM crops." He then informed me of Greenpeace's response to the study as follows:
Greenpeace presented a press release, see http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/releases/new-study-points-to-likely-sou." But most of it is irrelevant to the study.
In an endnote, it states that Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in China resulted in a reduction of pesticide use of over 45% (I'm wondering why the most relevant part is in such a corner), which implies that farmers have better choice. So I would like to know, whether the IPM is such effective, and from economic perspective, and can IPM show significant benefits than the adoption GM crops? Is that any sound research support Greenpeace claim?
I thought that others might also be interested in my response:
Thank you for you email. Let me answer at this time as best that I can in a limited time period.
First, let me say how delighted that I am that you discovered my posted piece on the ACSH website. My editor will be pleased to know that people around the world are monitoring it. Let me also say that I read the Greenpeace news release and the FAO report which Greenpeace claims supports their argument. I also consider it unfortunate that the media in China fails to recognize the successes of biotechnology although the article in the issue of Nature (Cyranoski 2005) that is out today indicates that this may be changing.
Now on to the substantive issues: Somehow activists groups seem to claim a proprietary right to IPM, manure and even the term, sustainable agriculture as if the rest of us are knowingly advocate unsustainable agriculture. As Dr. Norman Borlaug has often stated, the farmer should use every means at his or her disposal. IPM is just one set of many tools for the farmer to raise his or her crop. As Dr. Borlaug states it, using manure does not preclude the necessity of using additional fertilizer. IPM can mean many things but under that rubric are a variety of useful tools that can be helpful in raising a crop. It is not a form of magic as many of its ideological proponents seem to be asserting, nor is it a refutation of modern agronomy as the Greenpeace press release seems to imply. It should be noted that biological controls that are normally considered as IPM have produced some spectacular failures releasing predator species that have multiplied out of control while also having some successes. There is no one form of IPM that is a success in all circumstances. I know of no working scientist in agriculture who is opposed to including IPM techniques in his or her bag of tools. If one listened to the activists, one would think that modern agriculturalist are totally opposed to IPM which is simply not the case. When done correctly, IPM is predicated on a vast array of scientific inquiry from a multitude of disciplines and fields. A research institution such as IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) which is promoting biotechnology research and has been at the cutting edge of science in agriculture, has also developed some of the most effective low cost IPM programs.
I have seen IPM programs in Asia that have contributed to successful agriculture but almost always as part of a larger package of modern agricultural practice. For example when there is an emerging pest infestation problem, IPM practices such as "scouting" for bugs might be combined with the introduction of a new more resistant variety of a crop such as rice. The purpose of "scouting" would be to reduce pesticide use by better identifying when there is the need to spray and when not to spray. Let me also note that these programs can be labor intensive and require considerable training. In the U.S., "scouting" is a part of cutting edge practices called "precision agriculture" which involves a variety of low tech elements -low cost rain gauges, temperature measurements - coupled with GPS, computers and expert systems programs to determine when and what to spray and when not to spray. It has been my experience that when you truly have an INTEGRATED Pest Management program that succeeds thanks to a variety of modern techniques, the ideologues will extract out an IPM component such as scouting and attribute the success solely to it ignoring such items as a more resistant strain of the crop or a new pesticide.
Setting up the program can also be expensive where entomologists are involved in studying the patterns of predator-prey relationships. In the early 1990s, I had the opportunity of having an extended discussion with an entomologist in Central Java who was deeply committed to IPM and who had previously been involved in IPM attempts in the United States. He readily admitted that most of the attempts in the U.S. had failed and that what he was learning in Central Java might not be applicable in West Java, a short distance away. The program itself was very expensive per farmer trained and therefore trained very few though it was able to harvest a great deal of international publicity. Not only that, for reasons that escaped me then and now, the promoters were asking for additional funding to re-train those that they had trained. By my calculations at the time, the cost to train the 30 million Indonesian farmers in IPM in the first year alone would have consumed the entire budget for the 6 year program for all of Indonesian agricultural (including all crops and fisheries) education (including schooling at all levels and research institutions), training and extension (including maritime). The IPM program had much value from what we could learn from it but it was not a panacea for the country's agricultural needs.
The FAO report [Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Green Farming in Rural Poverty Alleviation in China, http://www.unescap.org/rural/doc/ipm2002/ch04.pdf ] that Greenpeace cites notes the potential of biotechnology on page 35 and also notes that GM crops have been limited to Hubei and Shandong Provinces "owing to the debate on rosks"(It is a good, useful report but fails to support Greenpeace's press release.).They fail to note that not only has FAO supported biotechnology (much to the publically pronounced pain of the NGOs who claim to have been "betrayed") but it has a long history of supporting any number of heroic breeding techniques such as mutation breeding using either chemical carcinogens or radiation. Much of modern agriculture would be unthinkable without them but clearly the short and long term outcomes for mutation breeding are far less predictable than is the case for GM crops. Let me add, the foodstuffs produced by these techniques probably account for 60 to 70% of the produce found in "organic" food stores that post signs claiming to be "GM-free." (Click-on to my webpage below and the click-on to the link to my piece, Pure But Not Yet, for details) My understanding is that Greenpeace spends more money each year to oppose GM crops than the total spent by Patrykus and Beyer to develop the golden Vitamin A rice.
Greenpeace has learned that it is easier to frighten people than to inform them and they have been very successful at it. Thus though it saddens me to learn that successful GM is not publicized in China, it does not surprise me. The opposition to GM, such as the campaign against GM maize for famine relief in Africa, is to me, nothing short of criminal. I have worked in Africa, Asia and elsewhere and have seen famine and hunger and it is not pretty and I object to Northern-based and funded NGOs campaigning against ways of helping to meet the food needs of the most unfortunate members of humanity. But don't let me get off on this tangent. There is simply no solid science in Greenpeace’s fear mongering and it is my hope that the Science article and the Nature article below are truly a signal that China will move ahead in this endeavor.
One final thought on the Science article that I did mention in mine but not in sufficient detail - Unfortunately, I do not have the time to go into detail here except to indicate how pleased I was to learn how much of what used to be very intensive extension and support programs, was carried out in China by the farmer's themselves. The Green Revolution often involved not only introducing new seeds but also new pesticides (farmers have always tried various schemes to protect crops such as poisons like arsenic) and fertilizer since they were getting larger yields and therefore taking more nutrient out of the soil which had to be replaced. Often there were first demo plots than selected farmers to champion a new "technological package" often with a guaranteed crop and then extension to help the farmer with credit for the needed inputs and technical assistance such as when to plant crops with different length of growing season etc, etc. etc. What astounded me most about the process described in the Science article was the lack of need for technical assistance to achieve the results indicated. Whatever the research costs to develop the GM crops maybe, it does appear that for rice, the results realized came at a very low cost. Scientists will likely be working for some time on new techniques for planting etc so that need for agricultural extension will continue but it would appear that some GM crops, building on the acquired Green Revolution knowledge and practices, will need very little help to realize yield and health benefits. I am personally, very excited by the possibilties of what the resarchers observed in the their study.
If it is true, as Greenpeace claims that "farmers have better choice," then why doesn'r Greenpeace let the farmers themselves choose rather then forcing Greenpeace's choice upon them by denying farmers the transgenic options?
I hope that you as a journalist will help to spread this very important message of potential benefit to farmers throughout China, Asia and the rest of the world. I will be in Beijing from June 12th through the 23rd if for any reason you would like to meet me and continue our discussion. My purpose there will be to learn more about what China is doing in the area of transgenic food crops.
However long this reply may be, it may not answer your question completely as the issue is complcated but there are answers. I hope that I have been helpful
All the best!
Tom DeGregori
REFERENCE: Cyranoski, David. 2005. Pesticide results help China edge transgenic rice towards market, Nature 435(7038):3, 5 May.
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