What about GMOs?

This new blog article is an important follow-up to the article I posted on December 15 about Norman Borlaug, known as “the man who fed the world.” One of my respected Thinking Friends responded with a lengthy email about the problem of GMOs, and that is an important concern that needs careful consideration.  

Facts about GMOs

Since I am not a scientist and have limited knowledge about botany (plant biology) or genetics, I can say little about the technical aspects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), I have, however, done some reading and thinking about ethical issues surrounding GMOs.

Beginning in 1944 in Mexico, “Borlaug developed simple techniques for cross-breeding, harvesting, and planting seeds in order to produce unusually disease-resistant strains of wheat. The result was a striking growth in wheat yields. By 1963, largely due to Borlaug's techniques, Mexico was producing six times as much wheat per year as in the year before Borlaug's arrival.” (The quote is from this website for biology teachers.)

Borlaug’s success in Mexico led to successes in other countries—and to the “Green Revolution,” for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. His successes also led to geneticists developing techniques for extending his work by altering crops at the genetic level, resulting in the proliferation of GMOs.

The controversy that has arisen about GMOs is not linked so much to what Borlaug and others did before 1970 but rather to the way GMOs have been developed and marketed by large companies. The major U.S. company to do that was Monsanto, a chemical company that was started in St. Louis in 1901 and acquired by Bayer in 2018.

Monsanto scientists were among the first to modify a plant cell genetically, publishing their results in 1983. Five years later the company conducted the first field tests of genetically modified crops. After introducing Roundup Ready soybeans and corn in 1994, Monsanto steadily became an agribusiness giant.

The strong opposition in some circles to GMOs is not so much opposition to genetic engineering (GE) as such but to the ways that GE has been used (or misused) by large corporations such as Monsanto.

Opposition to GMOs

In the last half of the 1990s, there was growing opposition toward GMOs because of the way many thought GMO produced food could be detrimental to human health.

In 2000, when Borlaug was 86, the African News Service published an article (see here) titled “Norman Borlaug Blasts GMO Doomsayers.” He stated, “There is no evidence to indicate that biotechnology is dangerous.”

Nevertheless, opposition continued to grow in the first two decades of the 21^st century. Although it is several years old now, the opposition to foods containing GMOs is strongly, and attractively, presented in a film with the clever title “GMO OMG” (2013). (June and I checked the DVD out from the local library and watched it earlier this week.)   

Affirmation of GMOs

In January last year, Charlie Arnot, a thought leader in food and agriculture whose office is in the Kansas City Northland, was the guest at the Vital Conversations study group June and I regularly attend. At that meeting we discussed his slim book, Size Matters: Why We Love to Hate Big Food (2018).

(It was that meeting and Charlie’s book that rekindled my interest in Norman Borlaug and led to last month’s blog article about him.)

During the discussion, I asked Arnot directly about whether he thought GMOs were dangerous to human health. He gave an unequivocally negative response.

Just this month I have read the “Saturday essay” written by Mark Lynas and published in the June 22, 2018, edition of the Wall Street Journal. The essay’s title is, “Confession of an Anti-GMO Activist”—and here is his main point:

Genetically modified crops have been vilified and banned, but the science is clear: They’re perfectly safe. And what’s more, the world desperately needs them.

Lynas (b. 1973) is also the author of Seeds of Science: Why we got it so wrong on GMOs” (2018). That is a work that merits careful consideration by anti-GMO people.

Attention also needs to be given to William Saletan’s Slate.com’s 2015 article titled “Unhealthy Fixation,” which contends, “The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud. Labeling them will not make you safer.” 

I have no complaint about people who wish to avoid GMOs in the food they choose to eat. But the most important ethical problem is seeking to curb all GMO-produced crops if, indeed, they are helping to feed the many people in the world who are chronically hungry.

The Man Who Fed the World

Most of you have heard of the Green Revolution. Perhaps fewer of you remember the man who was behind that revolutionary attempt to combat the world food crisis. That man was Norman Borlaug, who died ten years ago, in September 2009, at the age of 95. 

Norman, the Farm Boy

Norman Borlaug was born in 1914 and reared in rural Howard County in northeast Iowa. His first eight years of school were at a one-teacher, one-room school. He then went to high school in the county seat town of Cresco.

In addition to his schooling, from age seven to nineteen Norman worked on the 106-acre family farm and acquired the work ethic common to farm boys.

Partly because of his skills as a wrestler—and with the encouragement of his grandfather Nels Borlaug, who once told him, “you're wiser to fill your head now if you want to fill your belly later on"—Norman was able to attend the University of Minnesota, graduating in 1937 and then earning his Ph.D. degree there in 1942.    

Norman, the farm boy who became Dr. Borlaug, went on to do far more than fill his own belly. He became known as the man who fed the world.

Borlaug, the Life Saver

In 1944 Borlaug went to Mexico as a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement, working there for sixteen years. Beginning in the 1950s, he began to successfully innovate new, disease-resistant, high-yield crops using genetic modification.

Borlaug’s work transformed agriculture production, first in Mexico and later in Asia and Latin America. His successes produced the “Green Revolution,” which saved millions of people from hunger, starvation, and death.

In 1970 Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding work in averting world hunger and famine. His authorized biography, written by Leon Hesser, is titled The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger (2006).

According to David Grigg’s 1985 book The World Food Problem 1950~1980, the percentage of the world’s population suffering from acute hunger/malnutrition dropped from 34% in 1950 to 17% in 1980. That dramatic decrease was largely due to the meritorious work of Borlaug.

Some claim that Borlaug “saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.” The fifth chapter of the 2009 book Scientists Greater than Einstein: The Biggest Lifesavers of the Twentieth Century is about Borlaug. There he is credited with saving 245,000,000 lives.

Some estimate that he saved even far more lives than that.

The Ongoing Challenge

Despite the dramatic decrease in world hunger since 1950, it was estimated that in 2014 eleven percent of the world’s population were still suffering from undernourishment.

And last year a feature article in The Washington Post was titled “For decades, global hunger was on the decline. Now it’s getting worse again—and climate change is to blame.”

While the innovations of scientists such as Norman Borlaug are still badly needed to continue working on the problem, there is also need for people of goodwill to provide the financial means for saving lives right now.

I was impressed by a December 5 article about the Princeton University bioethicist and committed atheist Peter Singer. The 10th-anniversary edition of his book The Life You Can Save was just published on Dec. 1.

In his book Singer (b. 1946) pleads with people of means to give generously in order to save the lives of those suffering from starvation and disease and suggests many charities to which money can be sent with confidence.

In the article mentioned, even though an atheist, Singer declared, “The gospel accounts of Jesus portray him as giving more emphasis to helping the poor than to any other ethical concern, so this should be a top priority for all Christians.”

In this Christmas season, how much will you give to save a life, or several lives?