Genetic Maize

As you may already know, I’m a co-blogger at Biofortified, the group blog on plant genetics and genetic engineering. I’m committed to helping to make Biofortified the best possible resource on the web for these topics. One of the unique aspects of Biofortified is the potential for discussion among diverse people. Comments are turned off at Genetic Maize, but I hope you will visit Biofortified and get involved in the conversation. Any posts I write at Biofortified will also be posed here as a sort of online portfolio. If you have a specific question or comment for me, feel free to use the contact from.

As you may already know, the Environmental Working Group is a 501(c)(3) NGO with the goal of protecting “kids from toxic chemicals in our food, water, air and the products we use every day”. One of their major efforts is the yearly Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides™.

EWG gives many many reasons why they think you should use the guide, specifying that you (the consumer) should eat organic or at least choose the Clean 15™ over the  Dirty Dozen™:

The 12 most contaminated fruits and vegetables (the “Dirty Dozen”) are contaminated with an average of 10 different pesticides, with many tainting more than one type of produce. In contrast, the “Clean 15,” the 15 least contaminated fruits and vegetables, contain an average of less than 2. Eating organic food lowers pesticide body burdens as well. Research shows that concentrations of pesticides in children’s bodies peak during seasons that they eat the most produce, but fall to below detectable levels in just 5 days when they eat organic food.

The list of reasons has a lot of scary facts about how many pesticides detected on food, just how “polluted” our bodies are from the things we eat, and explains how our government barely regulates pesticides. Near the bottom, EWG lets us know that despite the scary facts that the need to eat fresh produce outweighs any risk from pesticide residues. They also remind consumers of the importance of eating fresh produce on their FAQ page. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if anyone gets to that part, considering that media coverage of the Shopper’s Guide rarely mentions it, instead focusing on the scary facts (as in ‘Dirty dozen’ produce carries more pesticide residue, group says on CNN Health, which dismisses the silly government for thinking that small amounts of pesticides won’t hurt us).

The truth is, pesticides are scary. As EWG’s Amy Rosenthal says, “Pesticides are designed to kill things.”

The devil, as always, is in the details.

We need the EWG

Before we get into those details, I’d like to say a few things about the Environmental Working Group in general, or really any group that does what EWG tries to do. EWG has the ability to provide a very important benefit to society. Government spending on science has decreased over the years, leaving most toxicity research to the companies that make the products being tested. Until we follow the wise leadership of India and develop a network of government certified independent testing labs, we’re all kind of left with less information than I’d prefer for many products we use every day. It’s not that I think every corporation is driven by people who choose profits over safety (on the contrary, they have to at least think their products are safe or suffer bad press or worse if people get sick) but results of corporate funded tests are often not made available to the public which leaves regulators with less info than they need to make good science-based decisions. Our system works fairly well (the grand majority of people get through life without health problems caused by things they can’t control other than their own genetics*) but it could always be better. EWG works to get information to regulators and presents a non-industry point of view, which is much needed. Unfortunately, despite their outwardly awesome intentions, some of the results are less than awesome.

Details, details

In the materials accompanying the Shopper’s Guide, there are two details that are never discussed.

The first elephant in the room is dose. For any compound, from water to arsenic to ricin to organophosphates, there are amounts that are safe and amounts that are hazardous. There are amounts that will cause acute (immediate) reactions and amounts that will cause chronic problems after long term exposure. Are the amounts of pesticides found on produce enough to cause acute or chronic health problems? The EWG list does consider amount, but does not compare the amounts to EPA guidelines. The accompanying materials focus on the number of pesticides, not the dose.

The second elephant is the type of pesticides that were found on produce. There isn’t any weighting in the Shopper’s Guide of individual pesticides based on relative toxicity. This could be a problem because not all pesticides are created equal. Organophosphates, for example, are extremely dangerous because they affect cholinesterase, an enzyme that is essential for the human nervous system. Glyphosate, on the other hand, affects EPSPS, an enzyme that is only found in plants so human toxicity is low (surfactants and other ingredients in glyphosate containing herbicides may be dangerous in their own right, but EWG to my knowledge isn’t talking about those types of ingredients).

Careful consideration of dose and toxicity of pesticides on produce may mean a reordering of the list is necessary in order to truly keep consumers safe. It may also mean that many of the scary facts need some sober facts alongside to help us keep things in perspective. Let’s look at the  methods that EWG used to make the list and at the original USDA data.

EWG’s Methods

I have to tip my hat to EWG for providing their methods on their website. I don’t know how many people look at it, but I certainly did! They provide justifications for not discussing dose or type of pesticide:

The goal is to include a range of different measures of pesticide contamination to account for uncertainties in the science. All categories were treated equally; for example, a pesticide linked to cancer is counted the same as a pesticide linked to brain and nervous system toxicity, and the likelihood of eating multiple pesticides on a single food is given the same weight as the amounts of the pesticide detected or the percent of the crop on which pesticides were found.

The problem is that, as strange as it may sound, there are safe amounts of pesticides. With the incredibly low detection limits that advanced methods provide us, we can expect many positive results that aren’t biologically significant. This is why the EPA bothers to determine tolerance limits for each pesticide (see below: The Data). The EWG continues:

The EWG’s Shopper’s Guide is not built on a complex assessment of pesticide risks but instead reflects the overall pesticide loads of common fruits and vegetables. This approach best captures the uncertainties of the risks of pesticide exposure and gives shoppers confidence that when they follow the guide they are buying foods with consistently lower overall levels of pesticide contamination.

In other words, science-based risk assessment is bad because it’s complex? A less complex and unscientific method gives consumers more confidence than a science-based method? Perhaps, but this explanation of the method is a little too close to fibbing for my taste. Maybe we need to look deeper.

EWG looked at contamination in 6 different ways:

• “Percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides.” Assuming that the data was used properly, this is a good metric. It tells us how many of all the samples within a category had pesticide residues.
• “Percent of samples with two or more pesticides.” This metric might be useful if we are concerned about potential effects of consuming more than one pesticide.
• “Average number of pesticides found on a single sample.” This isn’t as useful as a median number of pesticides could be. If most of the samples contain 0 pesticides, the average would be lower than the median. If only one of the samples contains a very large number of pesticides, the average would be artificially high.
• “Average amount (level in parts per million) of all pesticides found.” Here’s where the science gets thrown out. The type of pesticide isn’t considered even though we know that some pesticides are dangerous at low doses while other pesticides are safe at much higher doses. The ppm of different pesticides should not be averaged unless they have similar toxic doses. No where on the Shopper’s Guide site  is there a discussion of how the pesticide levels found in produce match up to EPA guidelines, or how those guidelines are created (in most cases the guidelines from the EPA are at least 10 times lower than the actual dangerous dose).
• “Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample.” This isn’t very useful either. Perhaps one sample was grown by a particularly zealous farmer who used more pesticides than she should. Perhaps the single sample was accidentally contaminated. Should the entire category of produce be condemned because of this single sample, out of hundreds of samples? Using the media number of pesticides for all of the samples make much more sense.
• “Total number of pesticides found on the commodity.” Again, this number could be based on one or a few samples which are not representative of all of the samples.

The Data

Since 1991, the Agricultural Marketing Service (part of the USDA) has collected data on pesticide residues in food as part of the Pesticide Data Program (PDP) using pretty rigorous methods (pdf). In addition to this testing, the FDA tests domestic and imported food to ensure that pesticide residues are below the tolerance levels (FDA probably doesn’t test enough samples due to funding cuts but that’s another post). The results are compared to tolerance levels (maximum pesticide residue limits) that are set by the EPA (you can find the tolerance for each crop/pesticide/country combo at Maximum Residue Levels database). According to the Latest PDP Findings of Interest to Consumers (pdf), ”the vast majority of samples tested are well below the tolerance levels”. Specifically:

The USDA provides some comparisons to help us understand what 1 part per million is: 1 ounce of salt in a mountain of 62,500 pounds of sugar or 1 ounce of dye in 7,350 gallons of water.

The most recent Annual Summary of the PDP (pdf) contains data that was collected in 2008 and was released in December 2009. The Executive Summary tells us that 11,960 samples were analyzed, including fresh and processed fruit and vegetables (9,028 and 1,354 samples respectively), almonds, honey, corn, and rice (municipal drinking water is also tested). The positive pesticide residue detections were combined by food type; on average 1.6% of samples had positive residue detections. For fresh produce, positive samples ranged from 0 to 3.3% with an average of 1.9%. They go on to say:

For samples containing residues, the vast majority of the detections were well below established tolerances and/or action levels. Before allowing the use of a pesticide on food crops, EPA sets a tolerance, or maximum residue limit, which is the amount of pesticide residue allowed to remain in or on each treated food commodity. Established tolerances are listed in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 40, Part 180. In setting the tolerance, EPA must make a safety nding that the pesticide can be used with “reasonable certainty of no harm” and that residues at (or below) the tolerance are safe. The reporting of residues present at levels below the established tolerance serves to ensure and verify the safety of the Nation’s food supply.

To restate, the methods used to detect pesticides are very sensitive, but a positive sample does not indicate a problem unless the detected level is above the established tolerance level. “A tolerance violation occurs when a residue is found that exceeds the tolerance level or when a residue is found for which there is no established tolerance.”

There were 60 samples that exceeded tolerance levels, making up 0.5% of all the samples (58 with 1 residue exceeding the tolerance and 2 with 2). There were 442 samples that had pesticide residues that don’t have established tolerance levels, making up 3.7% of all the samples (one reason why there isn’t an established tolerance level is that the pesticide in question isn’t labeled for use on the specific crop being tested). “In most cases, these residues were detected at very low levels and some residues may have resulted from spray drift or crop rotations.” Starting on page 51 of 202, the results are presented in a table the includes the number of samples tested, the number of positive samples by pesticide type, the amount of pesticide detected, and the EPA tolerance for that pesticide. I encourage you to see the report for all the details. The actual data can be downloaded from the Agriculture Marketing Service, although sadly it isn’t in any sort of convenient format (I’m wrestling with the data right now).

Peaches

There do seem to be some discrepancies between what EWG says the USDA data says and what the USDA data says.

The EWG says “more than 96 percent of peaches tested positive for pesticides”, and “peaches had been treated with more pesticides than any other produce, registering combinations of up to 67 different chemicals.” That sounds pretty bad.

Table 3 of the 2008 USDA report lists the “Number of Samples Analyzed and Summary of Results per Commodity” (page 34). According to this table, 616 peach samples were analyzed, with an average number of 130 different analyses conducted on each individual sample, resulting in a total of 80,184 tests done on the 616 peach samples. Of these tests, 2,155 were positive for pesticide residues, and 52 different pesticides were detected. While the number of positive detections out of all the tests isn’t the same as the number of positive samples out of all the samples, it is still interesting to know that only 2.7% of all the tests conducted on peaches were positive.

52 isn’t 67. 2.7% isn’t 96%. What’s happening here?

EWG didn’t use the most recent data. Instead, they seem to have combined data from 2000 to 2008. That seems very strange to me, considering that EPA regulations for allowed pesticide use and allowed pesticide tolerances have been changing over the years, becoming more strict. At least they didn’t include pre-2000 data, but still this isn’t the best way to find the information that consumers want. We need to know how many fruits and vegetables today are positive for pesticides, not all the fruits and vegetables in the past decade.

Even when we consider the fact that the EWG isn’t working with the best dataset, that still doesn’t answer how they decided that more than 96% of peaches were positive for pesticides. Hopefully the answer will be clear once I’ve looked at the USDA data myself.

If not scary “facts”, then what?

I am definitely an advocate of using science-based approaches to farming that reduce input use overall, and of careful Integrated Pest Management strategies that use the safest possible solutions to any pest problem, only using inputs if other options have been unsuccessful, and using the safest possible pesticide whether that pesticide is natural or synthetic.

How do we encourage government to introduce regulation that will make this happen and how do we encourage consumers to care about this enough to talk to their elected officials?

The best course of action would be to present the information in a less agenda driven way. Provide the data along with the EPA guidelines, which would show that the great majority of produce is well within guidelines. There are ways to advocate for reduced pesticide use without alarming people unnecessarily.

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* In the developed world, health problems caused by our own choices (bad nutrition, lack of exercise, smoking, and so on) dwarfs any problems that might be caused by normal use of household chemicals, plastics, foods, etc.

Note: A group called Alliance for Food and Farming, called an “industry front group” by EWG has challenged the Shopper’s Guide, saying that it unnecessarily alarms consumers. I have not read any materials from AFF on this subject prior to writing this post to be sure that my comments were not based even subconsciously on their comments. I heard about the AFF response through the Iowa State Sustainable Agriculture Listserv, which led me to write a few responses about the Shopper’s Guide to the original poster which then were turned into this post. This year’s Shopper’s Guide came out in June 2010.

Bt, short for Bacillus thuringiensis, is a bacteria that produces a protein that kills certain types of insects. Different types of the gene that produces thais protein have been engineered into crops to make them resistant to those insects. The approach has been quite successful but the details can be confusing.

If you’re looking for science-based information on Bt crops, check out the Bacillus thuringiensis info page that was developed by Karen Chien of the University of California, San Diego, with the assistance of Raffi Aroian. The material is a little dated, but it’s still a great resource. I especially enjoy the cartoons!  :)

The Aroian lab studies the ways that “target pests develop resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis crystal proteins in order to protect this valuable natural resource.” They’re also studying how Bt could be used to treat parasites in animals and people, as in their recent article in PLoS: Bacillus thuringiensis Cry5B protein is highly efficacious as a single-dose therapy against an intestinal roundworm infection in mice (full text).

Thanks to Mica Veihman (@Mica_MON on Twitter) for reminding me about this great resource.

In the interests of making science-based information about biotechnology easily available to everyone, we’re working on a few resource pages that you can find in the header under “Resources”. One such page is a list of traits that have been developed with biotechnology. It’s incomplete at the moment, but I’d like to ask your help with creating this resource. I hope you’ll visit the page and post in the Forum if you have links for any of the traits listed or for additional traits. Thanks in advance!

This image is an extreme closeup of a stomate (singular, the plural form is stomata). These two cells, called guard cells, control the plant’s respiration: how much carbon dioxide gets in and how much oxygen and water vapor gets out. The control isn’t very good, though. Most plants just have their stomata open all day every day so they can pull in lots of CO2 to use during photosynthesis to make sugar. And that means a lot of water, painstakingly pulled up from the soil, through the roots, gets lost. If stomata could be more selective, only opening when more CO2 was needed for photosynthesis, then water could be conserved.

An enzyme called carbonic anhydrase raises the levels of CO2 in chloroplasts so the plant can make plenty of sugar. It does this by converting CO2 from its storage form carbonic acid back to it’s useable form: CO2 + H2O ⇌ H2CO3.

Carbonic anhydrase also appears in the guard cells, where it controls the opening and closing of stomata.

Julian Schroeder, Professor of Biology at UC, San Diego hypothesized that more carbonic anhydrase in the guard cells would place tighter control over opening and closing. His group tried shutting off the carbonic anhydrase gene in the stomata of a little plant called Arabidopsis. Those plants were unable to respond to increased CO2 concentrations in the air, remaining open all day. They also tried expressing additional copies of the carbonic anhydrase gene in the stomata. Those plants closed their stomata when water was scarce. This makes sense – carbonic anhdrase needs water to function, so it can’t function when water’s not around.

Honghong Hu, a postdoctoral research working on the project, said in the press release Newly Identified Enzymes Help Plants Sense and Respond to Elevated Carbon Dioxide and Could Lead to Water-wise Crops: “The guard cells respond to CO2 more vigorously. For every molecule of CO2 they take in, they lose 44 percent less water.”

This research, Carbonic anhydrases are upstream regulators of CO2-controlled stomatal movements in guard cells, published in January 2010, indicates that increasing the number of carbonic anhydrase genes in the stomata could potentially decrease the water lost through stomata in crops. The implications for drought prone regions are obvious. Plants could need less water and could hold on to the water they have longer. It won’t be plug and play, though. As stated in the press release, water that evaporates from stomata cools the plants just like water evaporating from our pores cools us. Increased expression of carbonic anhydrase will have to be tested to determine its effects on plants in high temperature environments.

Hu H, Boisson-Dernier A, Israelsson-Nordström M, Böhmer M, Xue S, Ries A, Godoski J, Kuhn JM, & Schroeder JI (2010). Carbonic anhydrases are upstream regulators of CO2-controlled stomatal movements in guard cells. Nature cell biology, 12 (1) PMID: 20010812

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Thanks to @RivenCactus for bringing this research to my attention by Tweeting a link to the TreeHugger article Newly Discovered Enzyme Could Create Crops That Thrive in Dry, High CO2 Conditions.

If a gene like this was used to make crops more drought tolerant, could it spread to weeds and make weeds weedier?

Yes and no.

If there was a sexually compatible wild relative or weed species growing nearby the drought tolerant crop, it is possible that weed/crop hybrids could include the gene. Sexual compatibility means that the weed not only has to be a fairly close relative to the crop but also means that they have to be pollinated by the same method, have pollen shed at the same time, not have any incompatibility genes, etc. In the United States, there are few weed species that are sexually compatible with crop species, but there are some. In these cases, farmers can use the same sort of strategies to reduce gene flow that they would use to avoid spread of a conventionally bred trait.

If gene flow does happen, the gene will only be present in the weed population at low levels, unless the gene makes the weeds that have it able to outcompete weeds that don’t have it. See Escape! Crop-Specific Gene Flow to Wild Relatives and Those naughty plants! on Biofortified for more discussion of gene flow.

You may have heard about Monsanto’s donation of $4 million worth of seed to Haiti. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of confusion about exactly what’s happening. In this post, I hope to help clear up some of the biological questions up as well as addressing some of the intellectual property questions. If you have specific questions about Monsanto*, I hope you’ll bring them to Monsanto’s blog Beyond the Rows or ask some of the many Monsanto employees on Twitter such as @Mica_MON and @JPlovesCOTTON.

The donation

Monsanto’s May 13 Press Release Monsanto Company Donates Conventional Corn and Vegetable Seeds to Haitian Farmers to Help Address Food Security Needs is a good place to start to find out exactly what was donated and how it got there. Importantly, the donation was approved and by the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry was involved in selecting seeds that would be “appropriate for the growing conditions and farming practices in Haiti.” The exact way the seeds are being distributed ensures long term benefits from this one time donation:

The initial seed shipment will be distributed to Haitian farmers by the WINNER project, a five-year program to increase farmer productivity funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). WINNER will provide the in-country expertise, technical services and other inputs, such as fertilizer, needed by farmers to manage the crops.

“Our goal is to reach 10,000 farmers this growing season with these seeds,” said Jean Robert Estime, the director of the WINNER project. “The vegetables and grain these seeds will produce will help feed and provide economic opportunities for farmers, their families and the broader community. Agriculture is key to the long-term recovery.”

The seeds are being provided free of charge by Monsanto. The WINNER project will distribute the seeds through farmer association stores to be sold at a significantly reduced price. The farmer stores will use the revenue to reinvest in other inputs to support farmers in the future. The farmer associations alone will receive revenue from the sales.

I can’t think of a better way for this donation to be distributed. There are a lot of problems with the way international food and agriculture aid have been handled in the past, but the situation certainly seems to be improving as private and public donors as well as governments see the need for education and infrastructure, not handouts.

Food aid is the worst. It’s good enough in the very short term, but as soon as the food is consumed, there is no lasting benefit. Donations of seed are better, but again, once they are used there is no lasting benefit. Seed donations in combination with development of infrastructure that farmers need to distribute their products and to obtain inputs are much better, and I’d argue that such infrastructure development in combination with extension is the best possible way to help farmers, particularly when local people are involved in the process – which is exactly the case here. Ideally, part of the process would be to develop local seed production, but the information available on WINNER doesn’t say if that is included or not. The Earth Institute at Columbia University is also involved in improving agriculture in Haiti.

You may have noticed a distinct lack of terms like biotech, genetically modified, GMO, Roundup Ready, or Bt in the press release. Haiti has no system in place for regulation of biotechnology, according to FAO’s Biotechnology Country Profile for Haiti. Haiti is “party of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol” which, as I understand it, requires member countries to develop precautionary-principle based rules to protect biosafety if they want to even have biotech seeds cross their boundaries. In short, the regulatory framework needed to grow biotech crops in Haiti does not exist. Without that framework, they can’t accept biotech seed as a donation, and as far as I know, Monsanto did not even consider donating GMO seed to Haiti.

The hyperbole

It seems that the details in the press release and the lack of biotech regulation in Haiti was missed by many in the days following the news. Some examples are Timi Gerson’s appropriately civil Five Questions Monsanto Needs to Answer about its Seed Donation to Haiti at Civil Eats and  Jean-Yves Urfie’s  not so civil (and completely fabricated) A New Earthquake Hits Haiti: Monsanto’s deadly gift of 475 tons of genetically-modified seeds to Haitian farmers. These two articles seem to be the source of many of the erroneous posts and Tweets. Some of Timi’s questions are answered in the press release itself while some require a little background in crop science. Her questions are well thought out, if not well researched, so I think they are a good place to start, even though I’m obviously not the intended answerer. I don’t think Jean-Yves’s article is even worth addressing, it’s so completely made up – but I thought it should be included here since it has been cited in so many other blog posts and articles.

Five questions

1. What do Haitians think? Do Haitian farmers actually want these seeds?

Members of the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture and Haitians in the WINNER project were involved in approving the donation and making it happen, so that’s at least some Haitians who want the seeds. As for the farmers, they have the choice to buy the seed or to not in the stores run by farmer associations listed in the press release. No one is forcing them to take, buy, or grow the seeds. Even if individual farmers don’t want the seed, is that a good reason to prevent every farmer from having the seed? Is it fair to keep farmers from having a choice because organizations outside Haiti like the Organic Consumers Association (based in the US) don’t want them to? Anything other than letting the farmers for themselves choose is tantamount to paternalism.

2. Will Haitian farmers be able to save the seed?

Yes. Haiti doesn’t have any laws in place to protect plant intellectual property such as Plant Variety Protection (at least according to Haiti’s Biotechnology Country Profile), so even if Monsanto wanted to prevent the farmers from planting the seed from this year’s harvest, there would be no legal basis for the contract. On Beyond the Rows, Monsanto employees have clearly stated that these seeds can be replanted without any intellectually property interference. There will be no Haitian Percy Schmeiser, even if the seeds are brought into local breeding programs.

Some of the seeds are hybrid. Hybrid seed can be replanted, but many farmers choose to purchase hybrid seed each year due to the superior qualities that hybrids can have. (more on this in a minute)

3. Will Haitian farmers be able to use existing farming methods?

Per the press release: the seeds were selected by the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, to be “appropriate for the growing conditions and farming practices in Haiti.” To me, the big question is: how are Haitian farmers currently farming?  Are they using de facto organic (put the seeds in the ground and hope)? Certified organic? Sustainable agriculture ? Conventional agriculture?

There’s not much info out there on the web to answer the question, but Manuel Rivas (Monsanto’s Regulatory Affairs Lead in the Andean Region, Central America & Caribbean) has shared some pertinent info on one of the Beyond the Rows posts:

…the corn hybrids sent to Haiti have been tested in the region with no fertilizer use and the yield obtained with them has been higher than the average yield Haitian farmers currently obtain using their open pollinated varieties.

…although farmers there have very limited resources in general, the use of fertilizers and pesticides is quite normal among them. Many times Hatian farmers don’t have the resources to purchase those inputs, but they know how to use them and they do use them whenever they have access to them.

The assumption that almost everyone has when they see the state of poverty in Haiti is that agriculture in the country is in the pre-historic ages. However, keep in mind that Haiti has a long tradition in agriculture since colonial times and not so long ago (in the 70’s) the country was an important exporter of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and mangoes, just like other countries in the Caribbean. The use of agricultural inputs in those crops and in rice (the most important local crop) has been very common with most of them coming across the border from the Dominican Republic. Political problems in the last 25 years or so have practically destroyed the country’s agriculture sector and made the country dependent on foreign aid; but the farmers are still there trying to survive and willing to make their land productive again.

What’s exciting about this seed donation, in combination with the WIN

NER program, is that there is potential for a lasting improvement of farmer’s ability to purchase inputs if they wish to, along with the in-country expertise to help them choose the best farming methods for their situation. While the WINNER program won’t last forever, five years is a long time to get a strong, sustainable system started.

4. Will Monsanto donate GMO seeds to Haiti?

No, for the aforementioned reasons.

5. Will indigenous seeds be “contaminated” by Monsanto’s seeds?

Yes and no. Gene flow is simple and complex at the same time. For the most part, pollen stays near the source, but in a country as small as Haiti (10,714 mi²), wind and pollinators could conceivably carry pollen all over the country. If farmers who choose to plant traditional varieties, they will be able to maintain those varieties. Some percentage of the seed that they harvest at the end of this growing season will be a hybrid between the traditional variety and the new seed, depending on how close they are physically to a farmer who planted the new seed. Conversely, the farmer who planted the new seed will have a certain percentage of his harvest “contaminated” with the traditional variety. They can keep their two varieties separate (for the most part) generation after generation by keeping seeds from plants that are similar to the variety they want and avoiding keeping seeds from plants that look different. Importing heirloom or open-pollinated seeds would “contaminate” the local varieties as much as the seeds from Monsanto. For more details on gene flow, check out Those naughty plants!

There are actually potential benefits of crossing the donated seeds with the local varieties (remember, there are no intellectual property restrictions with this donation). After an initial cross, a farmer could simply select the plants that do best in his or her microclimate. They would be gaining alleles for disease resistance, high yield, and other traits, while maintaining local alleles that make the plants uniquely suited for their location. Done right, this could result in high yielding locally adapted varieties.

What are hybrids, anyway?

A hybrid is simply a cross between two different plant varieties. The two varieties can be inbred lines or populations like open pollinated varieties. The reason why hybrids are used is a phenomenon called heterosis, or hybrid vigor. While the exact mechanisms of this phenomenon aren’t completely understood, its effects are striking! In maize, hybrids have been used since the 1920s. A classic maize hybrid is B73 x Mo17. B73 and Mo17 are divergent inbred lines, meaning that they have different sets of alleles for each gene in the maize genome. When crossed, the resulting plants are much stronger and have much higher yields than the inbreds alone.

Some people argue against hybrid seed by saying it has to be purchased every year, but this isn’t quite true. First, the seed from hybrids can be planted – there is no biological reason why they wouldn’t produce seeds that grow perfectly well. However, if you cross hybrid plants together, the resulting plants won’t be quite as good as that first generation hybrid, though they will likely be better than the original inbred lines. Second, farmers and gardeners are perfectly capable of producing their own hybrid seed, and some do, if they like a challenge. Most, however, let seed companies big and small do the work of keeping the inbred lines separate and producing the hybrid seed for farmers to buy.

Some people argue against hybrid seed by saying that it that it requires more inputs, but this isn’t quite true either. Seeds are seeds. That is an over-simplification, but a given seed no matter its genetics can be grown with high inputs or with no inputs at all. The difference is that the seed grown with fertilizer and pesticides will, on average, yield more than the seed with no inputs. The ability of a plant to respond to fertilizer can be changed with breeding, but that doesn’t mean you can’t grow a seed with high fertilizer response without inputs. Breeding specifically for low inputs can be done simply by selecting the best preforming plants under low input conditions – the breeding process remains the same. The specific corn hybrids donated have been tested under low input condtions, as mentioned by Manuel Rivas.

Some people argue against hybrid seed by saying that it that it is less nutritious, but this isn’t quite true either. It is true that most of the commercially available seed was bred for high yield without consideration for characteristics like taste and nutritional composition that are important to consumers. The reason for this is obvious – consumers don’t buy seed, farmers do. And farmers (particularly grain farmers, but fruit and vegetable farmers too) are paid for quantity not quality. This is not a characteristic of hybrids but of the system in general. Heirloom varieties are typically selected for taste, not yield, and taste is affected by nutrition. Gains in yield from breeding do suffer if selection for too many other characteristics are added, but it isn’t impossible, especially with the advent of precision breeding.

Toxic chemicals on the seeds?

Besides the confusion over hybrids, there has been quite a bit of confusion over the fungicides that protect the seeds. First, the Hatian Ministry of Agriculture was made aware of the fungicide, to which they responded: “The products listed are used everyday in Haitian agriculture and should pose no problem,” according to Between the Rows. The specific details were provided by Monsanto employee Mica:

The corn seeds were treated with Maxim XL, which is a Syngenta product. According to Syngenta, approximately 90 percent of U.S. corn seeds are treated with Maxim XL… It’s also used in Western Europe and Latin America.

Thiram, a Bayer Crop Science product, was used to treat the vegetable seeds. Thiram has been registered for use in the U.S. for more than 60 years and is used to treat approximately 1.3 billion pounds of seed annually. (Source: U.S. EPA)

It might seem strange to treat seeds with these chemicals, but it helps protect the seeds from being destroyed by fungus before they germinate. They are used safely by farmers all over the world. The fungicides also help prevent the spread of fungus on seeds from place to place – such as from the US to Haiti.

Marcia McMullen and Arthur Lamey, Extension Plant Pathologists at North Dakota State, provide three reasons to use fungicidal seed treatments:

1. to control soil-borne fungal disease organisms (pathogens) that cause seed rots, damping-off, seedling blights and root rot
2. to control fungal pathogens that are surface-borne on the seed, such as those that cause covered smuts of barley and oats, bunt of wheat, black point of cereal grains, and seed-borne safflower rust; and
3. to control internally seed-borne fungal pathogens such as the loose smut fungi of cereals.

Let the Farmers Decide

There is nothing inherently dangerous with the seeds being donated or with the WINNER program. Farmers may choose to purchase the seeds or not. Burning the seeds or demanding that the seeds be turned away just takes away options for farmers. I hope that the people calling for burning the seeds will stop and think about the consequences of their actions for those farmers who might want to try planting the donated seed and instead think of ways to help farmers who don’t want seed from Monsanto for whatever reason.

* Disclaimer: I do not have any personal or financial connection to Monsanto, I’m only writing in hopes of dispelling some confusion about things like hybrid seed that could ultimately have a negative effect on farmers in Haiti and other places. I had been avoiding writing this post but the confusion about what hybrids are and what they do just became too much to ignore!