Today, technologically advanced modern agriculture, which is heavily dependent on genetically modified seeds in North America and other large food producing nations, is under assault by those who blame biotechnology for supposedly encouraging monocultural farming. Biodiversity, they say, is being threatened. And some even suggest human health is being endangered as a result.
Monoculture–a name screaming for meaning
In a Nebraska field, thousands of acres of winter wheat appear to stretch to the horizon. In California, workers pick strawberries in a field that has grown no other crop for the past eight years. And in Maryland, a single tomato plant grows in a single pot.
What do these have in common? They could all fall under the phrase “monoculture.” Okay, that last one with the tomato is a bit of a stretch, but it underscores how many critics and supporters of modern agriculture, including anti-GMO activists, point to monoculture as either what Michael Pollan calls the “great evil of modern agriculture” or the very thing that releases us from having to spend all day raising food. In addition, critics point to monoculture as a major reason for the loss of biodiversity in agriculture.
So, what is “monoculture” and is it bad or good? Andrew Kniss, a plant scientist and weed expert at the University of Wyoming, is one of many scientists who think that the name doesn’t do the practices justice. On the surface, all monoculture means is that you’re growing just one crop in an area. But how big an area is needed to become anointed “monoculture”? And how many years must a crop be grown in that area before it’s “monoculture”? Most critics appear to use the term when something bad happens: a blight, crop failure, or loss of biodiversity (in the form of native plants, pollinating insects, or or microorganisms).
But monoculture also has a good side. Just having one crop in the field allows mechanization of agriculture. Mechanized farming allows faster, efficient planting, weeding and harvesting. This frees us to discover other ways to spend our time and make a living.
Kniss suggests that a focus on genetic biodiversity in farming can help reduce the problems of monoculture. Examples such as the Irish Potato Famine show what happens not just with planting one crop, but a crop that is genetically very, very narrow. More genetically diverse potatoes (or any other crop) can protect against the bad side of monoculture. And while organic food supporters point to crop rotations as a potential salve to monoculture, just switching between crops in alternate years doesn’t bring the kind of diversity that can prevent the downsides of mechanized farming.
What does the science say?
Anti-GMO activists have long claimed that genetic modifications (and monoculture that they claim is boosted by these modifications) are responsible for extinctions of species and losses of diversity that have been plaguing the planet for some 10,000 years now. And, to continue the parallel with beliefs versus science, the Convention on Biological Diversity had been diverted by anti-GMO activists; the “so-called principle of biosafety is not based on any valid scientific principles, and working it up through the Cartagena Protocol…has given license to those who for personal reasons, presumably of a political nature, wish to vent their spleen,” wrote Peter Raven, president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden and international authority on plant biology, who was involved in the formation of the Convention.
How the spleen is being vented in this case:
- GMOs make us concentrate on only a few crops. Many anti-GMO activists claims that GMOs “reinforce genetic homogeneity and promote large scale monocultures,” thus contributing to declines in biodiversity.
- Genetically modified crops grow in a dynamic environment and interact with other species of the agro-ecosystem and surrounding environment. As “biological novelties to the ecosystems,” a 2005 review paper by Maria Garcia and Miguel Altieri warned, GM crops may potentially affect the “fitness of other species, population dynamics, ecological roles, and interactions, promoting local extinctions, population explosions, and changes in community structure and function inside and outside agroecosystems.”
- GMs push other crops out, forcing us to only grow corn, rapeseed, soybean and canola, according to the Center for Food Safety.
- Thousands of acres of rainforest are cleared every day to make way for “monoculture genetically engineered crops,” warns the site Planet Earth Herald.
- And in this video, activist Vandana Shiva discusses biodiversity as a spiritual commitment, claiming that while conventional practices give life, genetic engineering “is a death knell to biodiversity.”
Let’s look at the numbers. Currently, about 7,000 plants are eaten by humans. Of those, just four provide half of all food production, and 15 species of plants provide two-thirds of all food produced on earth. Meanwhile, over the past 10,000 years, the rate of species extinction has accelerated, from about one species per million every year 10,000 years ago to hundreds of species per million per year today. While the planet has about 12 million species (of which we’ve named just under 2 million), species extinction—the destruction of biodiversity—is legitimate concern, if not alarm.But what’s causing it? Genetically modified crops, using transgenic techniques, did not exist 10,000 years ago. But agriculture did.
When we first started breeding plants and animals and plowing land to grow these plants and animals, there were a few million humans on the planet. Now there are just shy of seven billion. About 11 percent of the planet is used for cultivation, a process that always has involved destruction of native habitats, removal of unwanted plants (weeds and otherwise), and gradual disappearance of bugs, birds and other animals that feed on both wanted and unwanted plants. No matter what the method: plowing, tillage, burning, pesticides or genetic engineered crops; all are involved with using land in a way that does not encourager biodiversity.
So, what really harms biodiversity? Are GMOs responsible for increased extinctions, plowing under of rainforest land, and infestations of invasive plants and animals? In short, no. Diversity depends on two things: habitat destruction and climate change.
What can GMOs do?
By enhancing resistance to insects, weeds, fungus and other pests, genetically engineered food has help improve biodiversity in agricultural areas (or at least has decreased the rate of habitat destruction). Since pesticide use has been reduced, yields have increased and quality of crops (that is, with less damage by pests) has been boosted.
Researchers estimate that genetic engineering, because of higher yields, has saved more than 6.4 million acres of land from cultivation for grains and oil seed, and encouraged the adoption of conservation tillage practices (plowing and arranging farm acreage to preserve water and soil).
Genetic engineering can enhance ignored and hard-to-grow crops, and improve the yields of existing ones (again, reducing the amount of land needed for farming). Newer gene-editing techniques such as Zinc Finger Nucleases and CRISPR/Cas9 can precisely edit a plant genome and control expression of desired traits, without the need for splicing a DNA sequence from another organism. These technologies can be especially valuable in improving crop yield and quality in drought-ridden areas, using less soil.
And addressing drought is becoming increasingly important. Global climate change already is affecting food output, and will only make it harder to grow enough food for an additional two billion people by 2050. Genetic engineering of drought and flood resistant crops, or developing other crops that can adapt to climate shifts, is essential.
What does climate change have to do with biodiversity? Plenty—finding new genetic traits in cultivars can produce new plants that tolerate drought. And in some areas (some studies used forests as an example), we may be able to introduce new species in areas where climate change has made conditions challenging for older species. There’s much more need for science-based solutions to today’s agricultural problems instead of finger-pointing at GMOs or mechanized agriculture.
Andrew Porterfield is a writer, editor and communications consultant for academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. He is based in Camarillo, California. Follow @AMPorterfield on Twitter.
