***** war in the English countryside

[D.L.]

        C. Heartfield,


    First, it has to be said that a company like Monsanto will certainly
expose any number of people to any kind of danger if there's money in it.
Fortunately, the idea of genetically modified crops scares people so much
that the regulation had been quite tight.  In fact the looseness that the
scientific community now treats xenogenetic products with may itself be a
product of those scare days.  I had a friend who was a "plumber" (as
geneticists liked to call themselves - "plumbing the inner workings of
life" ) and he described some poor scientists at university in a field of GM
strawberries that had two modified alleles.  One was for a naturally
occurring
"anti-freeze" protein and the other created a lysine deficiency in the plant
so that it could not survive without constant feeding including pure lysine.
That was, and is, a standard precaution taken when modifying organisms in
the laboratory so they don't get out.  Anyway, here are these poor
scientists in 95 degree heat walking around a New Jersey strawberry patch
with full biohazard gear on to protect them from strawberries.  Needless to
say that by the end of the day the protective suits were wrapped around
their waists and they were eating the strawberries by the handful.

    The days of the full protective suits are gone because there have been
no incidences that I know of where GM plants hurt anybody.  That does not
mean they don't pose subtle dangers.   It's just that scientists have a real
hard time being afraid of the things after all the hoopla came to nothing.

    Now it is the public's turn to panic as the things darkly spoken about
come out of the labs and into the fields.  The climate of over-reaction is
particularly acute and it has even clouded the judgment of scientific
journalists.  When maize, genetically modified to contain some naturally
occurring pesticides, was found to spread some pesticide-containing pollen
to surrounding milkweed, scientific journalists were alarmed at the deaths
of
the some monarch butterflies who use the milkweed and treated the discovery
with the kind of soul-searching self-doubt scientists always have when an
experiment goes wrong.  Meanwhile, the point of introducing a pesticide into
the genes of maize is clearly not to eliminate pesticides in the field.
This is still the business of killing bugs, after all.  The point is to
reduce the
*amount* of pesticide and to target it more specifically than, for example,
a farmer dragging a sprayer behind his tractor.  Clearly a crop-dusting
airplane would do in the monarch butterflies far more completely when
full-strength pesticide powder dropped onto their milkweed instead of GM
pollen.

    People's shock that the GM maize was killing some butterflies comes
straight out of the misconception that nature is beneficent and benign.
They are surprised, for some reason, that a natural pesticide kills bugs.
Possibly they think it should just scare the bugs or gives them a tummyache.
However,
when you are a bug even getting scared or being made to have a tummyache is
fatal because you don't eat properly.  Getting pest insects not to eat
properly is the entire point of pesticides.  That GM Maize killed some
monarch butterflies is bad.  That species is under enough threat.  However,
one has to ask whether the butterflies would do even worse under a regime of
sprayed pesticides.  One needs also to wonder what other rare and precious
but less glorious-looking creatures will be done in by a system that chooses
pesticide spraying over the occasional drift of insect-hazardous pollen.

    Of course there is the idea that farming could be done without
pesticides.  I think two things:  First, that is a laudable but impractical
goal.  Even some organic farmers use natural pyrethrins and, again, these
are pesticides just as surely as any others.  Second, the cult of the small
farmer - another "golden age" idiocy - is one of the things that has brought
pesticides into such wide and irresponsible use.  Small farmers can't take
losses well.  They lack economies of scale to ride out the lean times so
they use any and all methods to increase yields.  Large, industrial farms
can handle losses, and therefore more regulation, because they have these
economies of scale.  This is true in any low-margin business.  More
importantly perhaps, large industrial farms are less sympathetic characters
when they get weepy over new regulation.   The pathos of a farm family
looking on while their equipment is auctioned off after a bankruptcy has
softened the hearts of many legislators otherwise enthusiastic to regulate.

    If Britain and Europe don't want GM crops that's fine.  Before claiming
victory, however, they should take an account of what's won and lost.  They
should keep in mind that the story of 100-acre gentleman farmers selling
organic apples and aubergines is not the story of agriculture.  Agriculture
is thousands and thousands of acres of grains and staples.  Those thousands
of acres attract and produce hordes of pest insects.  Unless people get a
taste for locusts and corn borers there will be a need to quell  these
insects en masse.  You can't change biology. Food means bugs.  An organic
fruit grower may be able to lovingly flick away the caterpillars off each
precious pear bound for Harrod's, but this method is impractical for a
thousand acres of winter wheat.  GM crops may be dangerous in some way.
Shortages, bankruptcies and the present methods of agriculture are also
dangerous.  Bugs are dangerous.  Life on the farm is no day at the beach.


    peace