Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

Pesticides
65
The Assessment text
Synthesis Report
Studies on GMOs have also shown the
potential for decreased insecticide use,
while others show increasing herbicide
use. It is unclear whether detected benefits
will extend to most agroecosystems or be
sustained in the long term as resistances
develop to herbicides and insecticides.
(pp. 40-42)
Agroecosystems are also vulnerable to
events and choices made in different
systems. Some farming certification
systems, e.g. organic agriculture, can be
put at risk by GMOs, because a failure to
segregate them can undermine market
certifications and reduce farmer profits.
Seed supplies and centers of origin may
be put at risk when they become mixed
with unapproved or regulated articles in
source countries. (pp. 43-44)
There is an active dispute over the
evidence of adverse effects of GM crops
on the environment. That general dispute
aside, as GM plants have been adopted
mainly in high chemical input farming
systems thus far, the debate has focused
on whether the concomitant changes in
the amounts or types of some pesticides
that were used in these systems prior to
the development of commercial GM
plants creates a net environmental benefit.
Regardless of how this debate resolves,
the benefits of current GM plants may not
translate into all agroecosystems. For
example, the benefits of reductions in use
of other insecticides through the
introduction of insecticide-producing (Bt)
plants seems to be primarily in chemically
intensive agroecosystems such as North
and South America and China. (p. 45)
(From Agriculture at a Crossroads: The
Synthesis Report by IAASTD, ed.
Copyright © 2009 IAASTD. Reproduced
by permission of Island Press,
Washington, D.C.)
Again, this may be because it is not easy to achieve these complex phenotypes (Sinclair
et al., 2004; Varzakas et al., 2007; Zamir, 2008), it is not easy to acquire all the enabling
technologies for commercialization (or even humanitarian release) (Graff et al., 2003;
Spielman, 2007), possibly these products have not passed early safety tests, or there are
few business models that make these kinds of products profitable for the private sector
(Delmer, 2005; McAfee, 2003).
The private sector logically focuses on crops such as corn and soybeans where markets are
large, which leaves the development of small specialty crops for the United States and
subsistence crops important to the developing world mostly in the hands of the public sector
(Atkinson et al., 2003, p. 174).
Whatever the reasons that traits outside of the “big two” have not been a priority, the
Assessment’s authors had little beyond promise and speculation to extrapolate from existing
GM crops to a world in which genetic engineering would be delivering a significant number
or variety of products to change the circumstances of poor and subsistence farmers
(Heinemann, 2008b).