GMO Myths and Truths

6. CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY USE
Climate change is often used as a reason to claim
that we need GM crops. 1 But the evidence suggests
that the solutions to climate change do not lie in
GM. This is because tolerance to extreme weather
conditions such as drought and flooding – and
resistance to the pests and diseases that often
accompany them – are complex traits that cannot
be delivered through GM.
Where a GM crop is claimed to possess such
complex traits, they have generally been achieved
through conventional breeding, not GM. Simple
GM traits such as pest resistance or herbicide
tolerance are added to the conventionally bred
crop so as to put the biotech company’s “brand”
on it after the complex trait is developed through
conventional breeding.
While the resulting crop is often claimed as
a GM success, this is untrue. It is a success of
conventional breeding, with added GM traits. The
GM traits do not contribute to the agronomic
performance of the crop but make the crop the
property of a biotech company and (in the case of
herbicide tolerance) keep farmers dependent on
chemical inputs sold by the same company.
Section at a glance
u GM will not solve the problems of climate
change. Tolerance to extreme weather
conditions involves complex, subtly regulated
traits that genetic engineering is incapable of
conferring on plants.
u Most GM crops depend on large amounts
of herbicides, which in turn require large
amounts of fossil fuels in manufacture.
u No GM nitrogen-use-efficient crops have
been successfully commercialised even
though promoters of the technology have
been promising them for more than a decade.
u Conventional breeding is far ahead of GM in
developing climate-ready and nitrogen-useefficient
crops.
u Additional means to cope with climate
change include the many locally-adapted
seeds conserved by farmers across the world
and agroecological soil, water, and nitrogen
management systems.
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