While claims about “micro-fungi” are too extraordinary to even consider until extraordinary proof is provided (and preferably replicated by another lab and peer reviewed), Don Huber’s claims that Roundup (specifically the active ingredient glyphosate) weakens crops by binding minerals in the soil seems to have at least some merit, at least enough to be taken seriously and examined further.

Over the years since Roundup Ready (RR) crops have been released, independent researchers have conducted many studies to determine whether there is a specific problem with some crop varieties with the RR gene, with all crops with the RR gene, or with glyphosate itself. Overall, the research shows that there may be some concern about glyphosate reducing availability of some minerals when the soil is deficient in those minerals. The research hasn’t found a problem with the RR gene itself.

It is important to note that the stack of peer reviewed papers indicating glyphosate to be a problem with disease or yield is much smaller than the stack indicating there is no problem. We must look at the entire body of evidence, not just cherry pick one or a few papers, in order to get a clear understanding of what’s really happening. Happily, extension experts from multiple universities have summarized the research for us, but if you want to look for yourself, PubMed is a great place to start.

Claims of interactions between glyphosate and minerals

In February of 2010, Dr. Huber appeared in an article by Martha Ostendorf titled Are We Shooting Ourselves In The Foot With A Silver Bullet? in No-Till Magazine along with Bob Streit, an agronomy consultant in Iowa. That article is no longer available from the No-Till Farmer website, but thankfully a Biofortified reader found another source (linked from the article title). Another article written by Huber at about the same time is Ag chemical and crop nutrient interactions. In these document, a lot of claims are made that aren’t consistent with the majority of peer reviewed research on the subject.

Since 2010, Dr. Huber has continued publicly claiming that glyphosate binds up minerals in the soil, making the minerals unavailable to crops and increasing susceptibility to disease (specifically fungal disease), thus decreasing yields. He spoke to the Innovative Farmers Association of Ontario in March 2010, one of many talks he’s given on this topic. In February 2011, he gave a talk in Des Moines at a seminar organized by the same Bob Streit and Amie Brandy. Dr. Huber has published some peer reviewed studies to back up his claims as well.

Dr. Huber is not the only scientist that has found interactions between glyphosate and minerals. Back in 2007, Barney Gordon published some research in an industry newsletter indicating that glyphosate treated soybeans may require manganese fertilizer for optimal yields: Manganese Nutrition of Glyphosate-Resistant and Conventional Soybeans. Of course, this research was used inappropriately as “evidence” that genetic engineering reduces yields, but that’s another story.

Dr. Gordon and Dr. Huber’s work has been used eagerly by fertilizer companies and organizations that promote fertilizers to encourage farmers to apply minerals to their crops. For example, see Glyphosate and Micronutrients by Jim Halbeisen of Growers Mineral Solutions and Missing Micro Nutrients by Larry Reichenberger of ProfitPro (who sells liquid fertilizer).

Dr. Huber has published directly in fertilizer promotion materials, such as the Fluid Journal (sponsored by the Fluid Fertilizer Foundation): What About Glyphosate-Induced Manganese Deficiency? Dr. Gordon’s Manganese Nutrition of Glyphosate-Resistant and Conventional Soybeans was published in Better Crops which is run by the International Plant Nutrition Institute which encourages use of a variety of fertilizers.

Response from extension

Understandably, farmers have been actively pursuing more information from extension agents as soon as they hear about a possible decrease in yields with glyphosate use. University extension has responded with multiple documents and presentations to help guide farmers using known research and by conducting additional research. Extension agents have a unique ability to bring research directly to farmers and other people near the university and can quickly conduct field tests to help farmers make science-based decisions.

In February of 2010, Iowa State University Extension produced a great overview of the research that includes analysis of some papers of which Dr. Huber was a co-author: Glyphosate-Manganese Interactions in Roundup Ready Soybean by Bob Hartzler, Extension Weed Specialist and Professor of Agronomy. He concludes that manganese uptake varies depending on which soybean variety is being used, not on whether or not the RR gene is present. He also concludes that while it is known that glyphosate will bind to soluble manganese, this is only a problem in manganese deficient soils.

In November of 2010, Bob Hartzler released Glyphosate Interactions with Micronutrients and Plant Disease, with the conclusion:

Due to the complexity of the processes that occur within the root zone, it is impossible to completely rule out negative effects of glyphosate on mineral nutrition or disease development in GR crops.  However, results from field research and our widespread experience with glyphosate on GR crops for over a decade do not indicate widespread negative impacts of glyphosate on these factors.

In April of 2010, University of Minnesota Extension put out a short commentary that also discussed Dr. Huber’s claims: Roundup and Manganese for Minnesota Soybeans. Extension agent George Rehm conducted experiments in Minnesota and found that additional manganese was not needed due to adequate manganese in Minnesota soils. The April commentary was actually a followup to a xpost about manganese from January of 2010, Magnesium In Minnesota, that attracted some critical commentary from none other than Bob Streit.

In January of 2011, Ohio State University Extension released a presentation (Flash needed) by Robert Mullen, extension specialist and associate professor, summarizing their work on this subject: Manganese / Glyphosate antagonism? Their research shows that applying manganese to soy does increase the concentration of manganese in plant tissues, but did not find that glyphosate caused decreases in yield or manganese. Adding manganese can cause yield increase or yield decrease depending on environment, specially soil type. They did find that soil type and pH causes significant differences in manganese uptake.

In February of 2011, Dr. Huber’s colleagues at Perdue University Extension put out a paper titled Glyphosate’s Impact on Field Crop Production and Disease Development that seems to be in direct response to the flurry of blog posts and “news” articles about Roundup that were spurred by Dr. Huber’s recent letter. While they don’t mention Dr. Huber directly, they do cite and express concern about articles that are credulous about Dr. Huber’s claims regarding glyphosate and plant and animal disease. They conclude:

Overall, the claims that glyphosate is haing a widespread effect on plant health are largely unsubstantiated. To date, there is limited scientific research data that suggest that plant diseases have increased in GM crops due to the use of glyphosate. Most importantly, the impact of these interactions on yield has not been demonstrated. Therefore, we maintain our recommendations of judicious glyphosate use for weed control. We encourage crop producers, agribusiness personnel, and the general public to speak with University Extension personnel before making changes in crop production practices that are based on sensationalist claims instead of facts.

This isn’t the first time that Dr. Huber’s colleages have attempted to do damage control in response to “greatly exaggerated” reports by Dr. Huber about minerals and glyphosate. In April of 2010 Dr. Huber’s colleagues at Perdue University Extension released Glyphosate – Manganese Interactions and Impacts on Crop Production: The Controversy, referring interested persons to Iowa State University Extension. They state that high pH, high organic matter soils cause manganese to be less available to the crop whether or not glyphosate is present.

Update: Extension agents are still working to correct what they see as misinformation spread by Dr. Huber. Anne Dorrance, expert in soybean pathology and extension agent at Ohio State has a 14 March 2011 article in Ag Professional: Glyphosate Effects on Soybean Diseases. She directly assesses the claims that glyphosate use has increased incidence of disease, backed up with literature and her personal experience.

Have you seen any other extension or other articles by professional agronomists on this topic? Let us know and I’ll include them here.

Consider the data, not the source

I have read some claims that university researchers can not be trusted because many universities accept some grants from agricultural companies. Specifically, some bloggers have claimed that the Purdue extension agents’ scientific integrity is compromised, which is something that I think needs to be addressed, especially when it is clear that fertilizer companies and foundations are so eager to use Dr. Huber’s research. Potential conflicts of interest go every which way.

Purdue, like Iowa State and every other university, has strict standards of scientific and professional ethics. In addition, the amount of research funding granted by companies is small compared to funding from other sources. For example, at Iowa State, publicly available detailed reports of funding show that the research being conducted with corporate funding are far from the majority of funding and that most grants are extremely specific in scope. While there are isolated examples of inappropriate conduct of public universities regarding private companies or company interests, that is no reason to denounce every employee at every public university.

Instead of smearing the names of extension employees and researchers, we should examine the veracity of their work. We need to consider the data available. The identity of the source needs to be known in order to determine if a person has relevant expertise. We can look at the source to get a feeling for how much skepticism we need to apply. Go too far beyond that, and we get dangerously close to ad homs.

The story has been picked up by many bloggers, including Jill Richardson, and even made an appearance on Reuters. I haven’t seen any posts dedicated to a critical analysis of the letter, instead there is a rush to assume that it is correct, despite the lack of citations or other evidence provided for the extraordinary claims in the letter. The story is often accompanied with horrific pictures of dead fetal calves and the words “Emergency!” and “Danger!” Are we really all in danger? The claims in the letter bring to mind Carl Sagan’s famous statement: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Let’s investigate the claims and determine whether enough evidence is provided.

“This organism appears NEW to science!”

In the letter, Dr. Huber claims that there is a never-before-seen pathogen that is caused by or exacerbated by either glyphosate containing Roundup herbicide or the widely used glyphosate resistance gene. The letter opens:

A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!

Right here in the first paragraph is Extraordinary Claim #1. Dr. Huber is claiming that a single pathogen can “significantly impact” the health of corn, soy, and animals. Not impossible, but extraordinary evidence is required to back up the claim because known pathogens are generally very host specific, whether they are bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite. A corn pathogen will not infect soy. A human pathogen will not infect cows. In cases where a single pathogen will affect multiple species, it affects groups of very similar species, not corn and cows.

What evidence does Dr. Huber provide for this extraordinary claim? None, actually. Just more extraordinary claims that seem to get more and more extraordinary with each paragraph.

Extraordinary Claim #2 is that the “organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified.” He leaves us with far more questions than answers. What characteristics, exactly, cause him to compare this claimed pathogen to a fungus? How could it be possible to have a fungus so small? Where are the pictures? How big is the claimed organism and what does it look like? What is the evidence that it is reproducing? What other tests have been done to confirm its existence?

Fungi and viruses – not at all similar

Fungi have some special characteristics that make them easily identifiable. First, fungi are eukaryotes, meaning that they have complex cells with structures enclosed in membranes called organelles, along with plants and animals, but unlike bacteria which lack organelles. Eukaryotic cells range between roughly 10 and 100 micrometers (μm) long. Second, fungi have some characteristics that make them unique compared to other eukaryotes. Like plants, they have cell walls but unlike plants, those cell walls contain chitin instead of cellulose. At minimum, if we want to call something a fungus, it needs to have organelles like other eukaryotes and needs to have those unique cell walls.

Eukaryotic cells are many times larger than viruses. "Scanning electron micrograph of the surface of a mouse cell infected with murine leukemia virus. A large number of virus particles are shown in the process of budding." By R. MacLeod via The Free Dictionary.

Viruses are completely unlike eukaryotes or bacteria. They have a wide range of shapes but all look quite different from eukaryotic or bacterial cells. Viruses are little more than some nucleic acid surrounded by a protein coat, allowing them to be much smaller than cells, at a range of roughly 0.01 to 0.1 micrometers (μm). Even the largest virus is much smaller than the smallest eukaryotic cell. In fact, viruses are smaller than the any of the organelles inside a eukaryotic cell.

Saying that something is a “micro-fungal-like organism” as small as a virus just doesn’t make any sense. Of course, there’s been other strange things discovered, things that defied existing biological knowledge. Maybe this thing is from space, transported on meteorites. Who knows!? If it is true, then Dr. Huber and colleagues would undoubtedly be lauded for their amazing discovery. But this extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence and Dr. Huber provides none.

Electron microscopy – it’s not easy

Series of images of a snowflake taken by USDA researchers. Click the pic for larger images.

When I worked for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in Beltsville, MD as an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to use an electron microscope to look for viruses in plant tissue samples. Our goal was to identify plant pathogens before plant material got shipped all over the country. The normal procedure was to wait a pre-determined period of time to see if a plant would show symptoms, but if we could ID viruses before symptoms showed we could save a lot of time. Unfortunately, the technique didn’t pan out, at least while I was working there, because the experts weren’t able to find a technique that allowed them to accurately ID viruses with electron microscopy.

Electron microscopy is very touchy, with many things that could go wrong. Strange artifacts or errors in the images can be introduced by the processing a sample must undergo before viewing, by less than perfect use of the instrument, and by the instrument itself. Consider this series of images of a single snowflake taken at increasing magnification with an electron microscope. As the magnification goes up, the likelihood that meaning could be ascribed to a random bump also goes up.

Paul Vincelli, Professor of Plant Pathology at
University of Kentucky and member of the American Phytopathological Society (APS), has expertise in plant pathogens including viruses and fungi. He has commented on the post Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup by Rady Arnada indicating that he has seen the claimed “micro fungus” research himself. He said he has spoken with another researcher that has seen the electron micrographs, who concluded that the supposed “micro fungus” is actually just artifacts and that “detailed molecular data were needed before concluding that the structures observed were actually organismal.” Hopefully Dr. Huber plans to relase the images soon so additional experts can examine them. You have to wonder why the images haven’t already been released.

Pathogen presence

Extraordinary Claim #3 is that the claimed pathogen “is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.” Why is this extraordinary? There is no control information provided.

We need to know what are the relative concentrations of the claimed pathogen in corn and soy plants grown in identical conditions, preferably in multiple environments of the following categories so we can isolate the effects of the Roundup Ready gene and of Roundup:

1. Roundup Ready plants that are treated with Roundup
2. Roundup Ready plants that are weeded by hand or other non-chemical method
3. non-Roundup Ready plants that are genetically similar to the Roundup Ready plants that are weeded by hand or other non-chemical method (negative control)

Without these comparisons, saying “high concentrations” is meaningless. We also need to know the relative concentration of the claimed pathogen in animals fed these different plant samples under strictly controlled conditions. We also need to know how the presence of the claimed pathogen was determined and whether it was confirmed with any additional tests, such as nucleic acid or protein analysis.

Similarly, the claim that the “organism is prolific in plants infected with … sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn” also requires comparison to uninfected plants with and without Roundup and the RR gene. Dr. Huber continues: “The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).” Found in? As in inside the cells? How do you know? Again, where are the pictures?

Cattle, swine, and horses (oh, my)

French dairy cows. Are these ladies luckier with their calves than American cows? Image by Meg Hourihan via Flickr.

Extraordinary Claim #4 is that there has been “escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.” For comparison, the expected rate of spontaneous abortion in dairy cattle is about 2-5%, according to Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Abortions in Dairy Cattle and West Virginia University Extension’s Abortion in Dairy Cows and Heifers, and the expected successful insemination rate is 50% or higher with proper technique.

Don’t you think that if the rate of spontaneous abortion in livestock was skyrocketing that we’d have heard about it earlier? We’d see a huge spike in the cost of meat and dairy if farmers had to artificially inseminate their sows and cows an increased number of times to succeed in a pregnancy and if a high rate of those pregnancies resulted in late spontaneous abortions. What about the relative rates of AI success and spontaneous abortions in countries that use glyphosate and RR crops vs those that don’t? Shouldn’t we see major differences?

Dr. Huber claims that the “micro-fungus” has been detected “in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.” How was the claimed pathogen detected? With “laboratory tests”, of course! Unfortunately, zero explanation is provided of what these tests are, how or where they were conducted, etc.

Anecdotes aren’t sufficient evidence to justify policy changes

We are provided with an anecdote: “450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.”

Likely? This single word causes me to seriously doubt that a scientist wrote this letter. This anecdote is clearly not a scientific study because there are no controls and there is no confirmation of whether the feed did or did not have Roundup residues or the mysterious claimed pathogen present. To make conclusions based on a single situation we don’t even have details on is irresponsible at best. It is even more irresponsible to call for changes in national policy based on an anecdote.

Let’s consider this anecdote more closely. Glyphosate has been used as a herbicide since the 1970s. The amount of glyphosate use has increased with glyphosate resistant crops, and the amount of other herbicides used has decreased, at least until glyphosate overuse caused weeds to develop resistance (but that’s another story). As the use of Roundup and other glyphosate products has been increasing steadily, and crops that have been grown in fields that were treated with glyphosate have been being fed to livestock more and more over the years. If there is a link between glyphosate use and the rate of spontaneous abortions in livestock, then we should see a linear correlation between the two. In other words, the spontaneous abortion rate should be steadily increasing as glyphosate use has steadily increased.

Now let’s look at the two types of feed. Dr. Huber claims that 0% of heifers fed hay had abortions while 45% of heifers fed wheatlage (not wheatlege) had abortions. The wheat may or may not have been “under weed management using glyphosate”. Since there are zero genetically engineered varieties of wheat (Roundup Ready or otherwise) we know that the wheat itself was not sprayed with glyphosate because without the resistance gene it would die. Instead, glyphosate may have been used before the wheat was planted or along the edges of the field. Is this enough glyphosate to cause spontaneous abortions? If it was, then there would be a lot more abortions in livestock.

Can we think of anything else that may have caused the claimed abortion rates? Yes. Going back to the extension documents Abortions in Dairy Cattle and Abortion in Dairy Cows and Heifers, we learn that there are multiple causes for increased number of spontaneous abortions in cattle, including undiagnosed genetic abnormalities, heat stress and infection by certain types of viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Feed contamination with a variety of types fungi that produce toxins can also cause abortions in cattle, especially when the cattle are otherwise immunocompromised by things like stress or disease.

This anecdote can be easily tested by having two groups of randomly selected cattle fed feeds that are identical and grown under identical conditions except one has been under weed management with glyphosate and the other was weeded by hand or other non-chemical means.

Who is Don Huber?

We need to examine Dr. Huber’s experience and positions so we can determine whether he has relevant expertise to be discussing both the extraordinary claims made in this letter and his more reasonable claims that glyphosate could have an effect on mineral uptake and disease resistance. Unfortunately, the letter doesn’t lend him much credibility, assuming that he did indeed write it.

The letter is signed “COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber, Emeritus Professor, Purdue University, APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)”. Dr. Huber retired in 2006 or 2007. He is listed as a faculty/staff member at Purdue but I wasn’t able to find a bio or CV page on the Purdue website (or indeed a bio or CV elsewhere, either, but that may be due to of all the blog posts re-posting the letter that may be pushing other results back more pages than I’m willing to sort through).

The NPDRS is a program called for in Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 9 in 2004 “to ensure that the tools, infrastructure, communication networks, and capacity required to mitigate the impact of high consequence plant disease outbreaks are such that a reasonable level of crop production is maintained in the US.” It was “a cooperative effort of university, industry, and government scientists sponsored by The American Phytopathological Society (APS) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).”

As far as I can tell, the last activity of NPDRS was in 2008, and their list of recommendations on the USDA page is a broken link (the correct link is here). Dr. Huber completed work on late wilt of corn for NPDRS and was the chair for that project, but is not listed as the coordinator of NPDRS and I could find no mention of him being the coordinator of the APS side of the partnership. Instead, Kent Smith, a USDA employe, is listed as the contact person for NPDRS. Don Huber is not listed as an employee of the USDA at this time.

Dr. Huber is a member of the Emerging Diseases and Pathogens Committee of the American Phytopathological Society (APS). He served as President of the APS North Central Division in 1988, and has served on other APS committees throughout the years, but does not currently hold any leadership positions with APS that I was able to find.

What work has Dr. Huber done?

Photo of Dr. Huber from a 2010 article in No-Till Magazine.

A search on PubMed for DM Huber results in 11 papers (one of which is not this DM Huber), including these two most recent listings:

1. Thompson IA, Huber DM, Schulze DG. Evidence of a Multicopper Oxidase in Mn Oxidation by Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici. Phytopathology. 2006 Feb;96(2):130-6. PMID: 18943915
2. Thompson IA, Huber DM, Guest CA, Schulze DG. Fungal manganese oxidation in a reduced soil. Environ Microbiol. 2005 Sep;7(9):1480-7. PMID: 16104870

I don’t know why PubMed has such paltry results. Web of Science provides 115 results for DM Huber in the Life Science category. None of the papers have any mention of a “micro fungus”. The two most recent are probably the most meaningful for this discussion. Each has been cited 9 times (mostly by the authors themselves).

1. Zobiole LHS, de Oliveira RS, Huber DM, et al. Glyphosate reduces shoot concentrations of mineral nutrients in glyphosate-resistant soybeans. Plant and Soil. 2010 Mar;328(1-2):57-69.
2. Johal GS, Huber DM. Glyphosate effects on diseases of plants. European Journal of Agronomy. 2009 Oct;31(3 SI):144-152.

Long story short, assuming that at least half of the 115 papers in Web of Science are actually this DM Huber (at least some belong to a DM Huber at the University of Cincinnati), we can say that he is a well published scientist that has published relevant subject matter in some fairly reputable journals for his field, including Phytopathology as recently as 2007 which has an impact factor of 2.2 (out of 5) according to Journal Citation Reports (not great, but not bad, either). Dr. Huber appears to have relevant and recent expertise on the subject of the effects of glyphosate on mineral uptake and disease resistance.

Next steps for “micro fungus”

The claimed “micro fungus” may indeed be a never before seen pathogen, perhaps a virus. At this time, however, there is not enough evidence to require action. More data needs to be collected in well designed experiments that needs to then be subjected to peer review.

Peer review is the “checks and balances” of science. A team of researchers writes up a report of their experimental design and results and submits it to a journal. Before it is published, it is reviewed by a team of scientists who evaluate whether the experimental design is sound, whether the conclusions are supported by the data, whether the statistics were done properly, and so on. Peer review isn’t perfect for multiple reasons, but as of now it is the best form of quality control for scientific research that we have. For a very good discussion of what peer review means to scientists, see Does peer review mean the same to the public as it does to scientists? This is just one part of an excellent discussion of peer review in Nature that should be required reading for every scientist as well as anyone even slightly interested in what scientists do and how to interpret science: Nature’s peer review debate.

Getting a paper through the peer review process is a necessary part of science validation, in part because of its rigid requirements that go above and beyond what one might put in a letter or a blog post. For one scientist’s first person experiences with peer review, see From blog to Science (thanks to Mary M. for the referral). Avoidance of the peer review system indicates that a researcher knows that their work won’t pass muster.

It is through the peer review process that extraordinary claims can begin to accumulate enough evidence to become accepted. There are plenty of examples of researchers who had extraordinary, some would say impossible, claims that have been proven to be true. Here are two of my favorite examples:

Susan Lolle claimed to find some examples of non-Mendelian inheritance in the plants she was studying. It looked like the seeds were “remembering” what type of environment their parents were in, which seems impossible! Other scientists tore her papers up, and pretty much openly laughed at her. She persevered, kept doing more very well designed experiments, and eventually convinced other scientists she had something. Now we understand that epigenetics is a way that DNA can “remember” environmental conditions. It’s a very exciting and still very strange new field of genetics.

Stanley Prusiner claimed to have isolated the cause of mad cow disease, claiming it was a protein that was misfolded that caused other proteins to also misfold. Like Lolle, Prusiner sounded crazy. How could this be possible? Through perseverance and hard scientific evidence, Prusiner proved that he was right and eventually won the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Any scientist who thinks they’ve find something extraordinary can either give up or persevere. If I found something that was unexpected in a preliminary experiment, I’d redo it first. If the same thing resulted, I’d talk to statisticians and experts in the field, make sure my experimental design was top notch. If I still got the strange result then I’d find a well respected scientist in the same field and ask their lab to redo the experiment or at least part of it to make sure it wasn’t just my lab coming up with the weird results. If it then was still happening, it’d be time to publish an impressive paper in Nature or Science with my well respected colleague as a co-author.

Not following this sort of path is a major shortcoming for a lot of scientists who have found unusual things. For whatever reason, there seem to be a lot of examples of scientists finding results about genetic engineering that go against established science that don’t bother going past that initial finding. The example that first comes to mind is Arpad Pusztai. Why didn’t he work on much better experimental designs before going to publish? Why didn’t he talk to some experts in plant studies so he could have had the proper controls? He took his preliminary results from some poorly designed studies and then ran with it and now people wonder why his work isn’t taken seriously. If Dr. Huber wants to be taken seriously with his “micro fungus” claims then he needs to emulate Lolle and Prusiner, not Pusztai.

Conclusions

This letter makes very little sense both in its sheer existence and in its details. Why would a reasonably well published scientist suddenly throw away everything we know about the scientific method to make claims about biologically impossible organisms with no evidence? Why is so little evidence presented and why is the evidence that is presented given as anecdotes instead of hard science? Most importantly, why would he make claims without going through the peer review process to ensure that his claims would be at least vetted by his peers?

Multiple sites have claimed to have spoken with Dr. Huber to confirm that he did indeed write this letter, but I remain skeptical that an experienced scientist would have released something so unscientific. Someone with as much experience as Dr. Huber should know that his fellow scientists (as well as government agencies) would require at least some proof before acting on extraordinary claims. Fred Gerendasy at Cooking Up a Story, wonders if the letter is a fraud. Perhaps the letter is real and he knew that no one with any knowledge of biology would accept the claims, but also knew that many non-scientists would latch on to claims that confirmed their own biases without question.

Dr. Huber’s colleagues at Purdue have responded to his claims about glyphosate use and crop mineral uptake (which I describe in Does glyphosate restrict crop mineral uptake?), but they are conspicuously silent on the “micro fungus”. The absence of analysis of the “micro fungus” claims tells me that his colleagues are politely ignoring this bizarre outburst. I would have done so as well, if it wasn’t for the prolific repetition of the claims on blogs and even news sites. It’s long past time for us to apply the Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science to Dr. Huber’s claims. Hopefully this post will give some balance to the discussion.

At this time, coexistence between organic and conventional farms is worked out individually by neighbors. On a national scale, organic groups have initiated multiple lawsuits against the USDA in what some say are blatant attempts to prevent biotech crops from being grown at all (sugar beets, alfalfa).

In an effort to solve the problem, a creative potential solution has been devised – partial deregulation of biotech alfalfa. This would “include isolation standards from other crops, set geographic restrictions on where the crop is grown, spell out harvest periods and regulate equipment use,” writes Charles Abbott on Check Biotech. One problem with this plan is that the USDA might be overstepping its regulatory authority. The USDA is charged with determining the potential pest status of any biotech crops submitted for deregulation, but doesn’t have requirements or authority to say what farmers can and can not do with a crop once it is deregulated.

Today, this issue is being debated in the House Agriculture Committee.

For more about the debate in real time, follow Philip Brasher, Chris Clayton, and Sara Wyant on Twitter, among others.

Edit: while researching for the post What the heck is alfalfa, anyway? I found the document where the specific conditions for conditional deregulation are laid out. The recommendations aren’t as bad as I thought they would be. They should be more than enough to satisfy anyone who knows even a little about alfalfa biology.

Combined Isolation Distances and Geographic Restrictions on the Production of GT Alfalfa

Alternative 3 (Isolation/Geographic Restrictions Alternative) describes a combination of isolation distances and geographic restrictions on hay and seed production to address and resolve coexistence issues and concerns about risks of cross pollination and other potential impacts to conventional, and organic alfalfa producers while allowing the commercialization of GT alfalfa. This third alternative would impose management practices for the planting, harvesting, use or sale of GT alfalfa seed and in some locations hay. This alternative could be implemented by an APHIS decision to deregulate in part, or through a Federal/industry partnership arrangement. Under this alternative, the developer (marketer) of GT alfalfa would ensure that end users are using the required management practices. They might choose to do this through contracts or licenses, or by other means. A training component would also be part of the program to educate producers about the required stewardship practices. Reporting requirements for the developer (marketer) subject to verification would be used to ensure compliance with the terms of the program. Under this alternative, failure to comply with the requirements may result in penalties to the developer (marketer). The required management practices would undergo periodic reviews to determine if modifications were warranted. Changes to the management practices would be approved based on available data on their effectiveness in supporting coexistence.

The following is a description of the very specific management practices that would be included in the requirements described above for GT alfalfa.

GT Alfalfa Production

• GT alfalfa forage fields may not be harvested for seed. The only GT alfalfa seed fields would be in the geographically restricted areas, described below, that are designated for GT alfalfa seed.
• GT alfalfa seed bag labeling and seed identification (e.g., a unique seed colorant) would be required. These product identity mechanisms would be designed to notify all GT alfalfa forage growers of the presence of the GT alfalfa trait and the geographic limitations for product use.
• An annual report would be submitted to the USDA summarizing activities in education and training, monitoring, and compliance with the conditions of this license agreement. The USDA or a designated third party could audit the petitioner’s records to determine compliance with the conditions of this license or otherwise investigate potential noncompliance with these conditions.
• Develop an education program and provide training to ensure that all growers, distributers and handlers of GT alfalfa are aware of the management practices, geographic restrictions and the isolation distance set forth in this licensing.

GT Alfalfa Forage

GT alfalfa seed production

The idea is not just cool from a what-if sci-fi standpoint. It’s the only way that humans can produce enough food in urban areas (where 60% of humans live, according to the VF website) without resorting to shipping food in from rural areas as we currently do. Vertical farming will make a varied diet available year round in cities with low input and little to no environmental degradation. It’s certainly far from the idyllic vision of farming that some people have, but it is not possible to feed the world that way (especially impossible without chemical heavy intensive farming) – unless everyone moves out of the cities and there is a massive population decrease.

“The Living Skyscraper: Farming the Urban Skyline” by Blake Kurasek, Graduate School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, image from the Vertical Farm Project.The VF website includes many concept drawings of exactly how vertical farms could be implemented. My favorite simply wraps tiers around skyscrapers. People can live and work inside this living insulation.

Vertical farming also has the potential to bring many people into agriculture. On the VF site, Dr. Despommier describes a visit to a 4th grade class in 2006. They sent him letters thanking him for his visit, and are just full of enthusiasm. How many of those children were inspired to pursue careers that don’t even yet exist? Hopefully many.

The idea of vertical farms is dear to my heart. Growing up in the heart of Tampa, Florida didn’t give me many opportunities to interact with agriculture. However, I did get to go to Epcot in Orlando pretty frequently. My favorite part of the park was and still is The Land, particularly the Living with the Land ride. The ride takes you through different ecosystems around the world before showing you what I think is the masterpiece of Epcot: a massive hydroponic greenhouse. One of the best parts of my honeymoon was a behind the scenes tour of the greenhouses, research labs, and aquaculture tanks. All this talk of Epcot reminds me that I really should try to apply for an internship as a research scientist there (believe it or not, they have a few), and attempt to fulfil a childhood dream.

h/t Drake Larsen via the ISU Sus Ag mailing list

Robot Farmer by rle13746 for the Time Machine 3 contest at Worth1000.com

A student in my Sustainable Agriculture program sent out an email a few weeks ago that really piqued my interest (I’m glad I finally have time to blog about it!). It included a link to the New Scientist article: Robot farmhands prepare to invade the countryside. The student said:

I wish this was a link to the onion, but it is frighteningly real. Do you think the cats at the “appropriate technology” center are talking about this? Doubt it. This is progress! I guess now I need a bumper sticker that says “Family farms not Robot farms”

While I respect this student’s viewpoint, I find it to be incredibly depressing. Yes, having robots added to the already long list of farm machinery would change some things, but can we so quickly assume that all of the changes would be negative? This knee jerk reaction against technology is too reminiscent of so many people’s reactions to genetic engineering. Yes, some technologies have been and will continue to be misused. Other technologies have undeniably changed human life for the better. If we allow ourselves to step back and think about the potential risks and benefits, where will robots fit into farming, if at all?

First, robots are unlikely to replace farmers, unlike this whimsical take on American Gothic. Farm labor is a huge problem, even on smaller farms. Migrant manual laborers is not the answer. The pay is never going to be high enough, even if we started to pay the “right” amount for food. Robots could at least in part replace literally backbreaking labor, and provide skilled jobs for people in building, repairing, and maintaining the robots. We’d need tons of computer programmers. We’d need lots of agronomists to evaluate current uses and think of new uses for the robots. Whole industries could spring up making accessories for the robots, and all those accessories would need to be built and maintained as well. These robots would even create jobs for philosophers and bioethicists, who would need to help the rest of us understand the role of robots and the implication this might have for humanity. Perhaps we could lobby for a requirement that government grants for agricultural robots include a stipend for a philosopher or ethicist?

With the added labor, the number of family farms might actually increase. The Des Moines Register Juice had an article last week that reminded readers:

This summer, while you drive past the miles and miles of rolling corn and soybean fields that give our state its reputation, chew on these numbers: In 2007, 55 percent of Iowa’s farmland was owned by farmers aged 65 and older, and 28 percent by farmers pushing 75, according to a survey conducted by Michael Duffy, director of the Beginning Farmer Center.

There simply aren’t enough young people willing to farm in the US. There aren’t enough people willing to farm in the big monoculture systems. There aren’t even enough farmers to fill the (currently) niche demand for local produce. Adding robot farmhands to the equation would make farming easier and yet more difficult. Farmers could rely on robots as much or as little as they want (or not at all). People who are interested in technology would now have agriculture open to them as a field. My husband, for example, isn’t the type of person you’d ever see gardening, but he would be very interested in programming a sensor that could identify leaf blight and in programming a robot to spray affected leaves or plants with a mild fungicide like potassium bicarbonate solution. A farmer that developed and improved programs for the robots could sell them or license them as a source of off-farm income. Side note: the fact that this is all being developed by a university is very encouraging. If this continues, perhaps the programs will be more open source than it might have been if the robots were developed by a corporation.

Having robots as farmhands solves a lot of problems in farming. For example, we have developed ways to cheaply grow crops we shouldn’t be growing but the methods for crops we should have more of haven’t advanced much at all. Robots could be the way to bring farming costs down for fruits and vegetables, making them more accessible to people with low incomes. Because the robots would be more versatile than current farming machinery, there is the potential to do away with monocultures. If a robot simply needs additional programming modules and/or accessories to properly “tend” another crop species, why not intermix grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables? This of course has many benefits as proponents of sustainable agriculture already know, including decreasing the incidence of disease and pests for each crop.

In addition to opening up new options in intercropping and permaculture, robots could greatly decrease the amount of fertilizers and pesticides needed to maintain high yields. If the robots were equipped with the proper sensors, even simple things like for leaf color, they could evaluate the health of individual plants in a field. Instead of spraying an entire field with fungicide, the robot could spot treat (or simply remove infected plants). Similarly, fertilizer could be applied far more sparingly, then spot applied for plants in areas that test low for a particular nutrient. There is also potential for decrease in herbicide application if we have a robot that could hand pull, flame, or spot treat high-competition weeds but leave weeds that don’t compete with crops, since visual recognition with comparison to a database shouldn’t be that difficult (especially when mistakes aren’t a big deal, unlike in more complex situations like facial recognition for security). Leaving the low competition weeds would create habitat and biodiversity while maintaining high crop yields. All of the sensor results and treatments could be maintained in a database along with the physical coordiates and the information used by the farmer for future planning.

These few benefits are just what I could think of in a few minutes. What could teams of roboticists, agronomists, and farmers on the ground accomplish?

Develop better seeds – Monsanto will double yield in its three core crops of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030, compared to a base year of 2000. The company will also establish a $10 million grant designed to accelerate breakthrough public sector research in wheat and rice yield.

Conserve resources – Monsanto will develop seeds that will reduce by one-third the amount of key resources required to grow crops by the year 2030. The company will also join with others to address habitat loss and water quality in agriculturally important areas.

Help improve farmers’ lives – The company will help improve the lives of farmers, including an additional five million people in resource-poor farm families by 2020.

The first two are good, but we expect improved seed from a seed company. I’m particularly interested in the third point. The press release tells us that “Monsanto also is committed to sharing its expertise in a way that gives [resource poor farmers] access to modern agricultural technology.” For example, “drought-tolerant maize for Africa that will be made available to farmers royalty-free.” Players include AATF, CIMMYT, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and government researchers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. “Monsanto will also work with public institutions to develop products for non-commercial crops that are important in some world areas, including cassava, cowpea and papaya.” Some comments on the press release can be found in the NY Times Monsanto Seeks Big Increase in Crop Yields.

Improving the world’s food supply and keeping things as sustainable as possible is going to be difficult, and will require everyone working together. The Financial Times has a two part article about the history of the last Green Revolution and explains why the next one will be so much more difficult (see image below). Monsanto is simply one of the few organizations with the tools and the funds to make things happen, and with the correct dialogues, the advances will be good for people and for the environment.

Of course, the company isn’t perfect, and setting high goals isn’t the same as meeting them – but it’s time that GM opponents let go of the whole “Monstersanto” schitk. We need to have adult conversations about the real issues surrounding genetic engineering, not just sling insults at one company.

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear in Vanity Fair is exactly the sort of nonconstructive criticism that I’m talking about. They start with tales of Monsanto’s goons going after defenseless farmers. I’ve seen these stories multiple times, but always in conjunction with an anti-GM agenda, so I’m hesitant to beleive them 100%. I’m sure there is at least some truth there, but I have to consider the famous Percy Schmeiser case, where the poor farmer was found by Canadian courts to be, ahem, less than perfect. I bring it up because GM opponents are always mentioning him, while not knowing or caring about the whole story.

The article states: “Some farmers don’t fully understand that they aren’t supposed to save Monsanto’s seeds for next year’s planting. Others do, but ignore the stipulation rather than throw away a perfectly usable product.” So, VF thinks that farmers are either stupid or criminal. “The seeds look identical; only a laboratory analysis can show the difference.” Actually, it’s pretty easy to tell if a seed is herbicide resistant or not. Let it germinate and spray it down. If the plant is getting eaten by pests, it’s not BT. True, you have to plant the seed, but I guarantee that the majority of farmers understand all of this. They might not know exactly how biotech traits are created, but they know how the traits work once they are in the plants.

Then there’s the whole issue of “life shouldn’t be patented”. Perhaps not, but patents are the way innovators are rewarded in a capitalistic system, as I explain in Gene flow, IP, and the terminator. China has refused to accept US style patent law, and chooses to have public funds develop new crop lines and research genetic engineering instead of leaving it to corporations. Why doesn’t the US move to this type of system? I think it’s because people are too distracted by fighting the wrong things instead of working to elect a government that won’t let lobbyists tell them what to do.

VF laments that Monsanto is buying competitors, reducing the number of varieties available to farmers. Be that as it may, this practice isn’t exactly limited to Monsanto, and the competitors did not have to sell. Almost all companies today are parts of huge conglomerates, and I don’t think we can legitimately blame part of a company for something another part did decades ago. I think we have to look at them separately – I’m not going to reject Kashi now that it is owned by Kellogg’s, or reject Naked Juice because it is owned by Pepsi. Instead, I’ll choose the healthiest brands (for the few pre-made foods I do buy), sending the message with my $ to the company that this is what I want.

I’m not saying that Monsanto (along with just about all corporations) doesn’t have unethical business practices, but we need to be realistic. Does it make sense to condemn one company for working within the established system (including that of patenting) or would it be more appropriate to work to change that system? In the system we have, corporations are legally obligated to make money for their stockholders. They are not obligated to be good global citizens – but many are trying.

For most of its history Monsanto was a chemical giant, producing some of the most toxic substances ever created, residues from which have left us with some of the most polluted sites on earth. Yet in a little more than a decade, the company has sought to shed its polluted past and morph into something much different and more far-reaching—an “agricultural company” dedicated to making the world “a better place for future generations.”

Monsanto’s crop group is functionally separate from its rBGH and chemical groups. Yes, there is overlap in that Roundup Ready depends on Roundup but I’m sure Kellogg’s uses much of the same company infrastructure to make, move, and market both Smorz and Organic Promise cereals. To me, Nestle has given consumers as much or more reason for boycott than Monsanto. Nestle’s history includes pushing infant formula in places where contaminated water has condemned thousands of infants to death. If we are to blame all of Nestle’s subsidiaries for this evil doing, we shouldn’t buy anything from Munch Bunch, Perrier, Lean Cuisine, and Mighty Dog, just to name a few. Some people avoid packaged food – but plenty of people who call Monsanto evil aren’t so choosy.

Parts of this post were originally a comment at Ethicurean to a post that tipped me off to the VF article.

Last year, the rice crop in Arkansas yielded a record 160 bushels an acre. This year, experts there say, 150 bushels will be an achievement.

“There’s no doubt about it, we’re not going to have the rice to export,” said Carl Frein of Farmers Marketing Service in Brinkley, Ark. “Poor countries like Haiti, I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

Randy Kron (photo from NY Times) is an Indiana corn and soy farmer who won’t be able to plant this year. The article follows his story of fields that are too wet to plant. He concludes “I don’t know if this is the worst year we’ve ever had, but it’s moving up the list pretty quick.”
A lot of the comments on the post are typical: too many people don’t research or think before typing. One, though, had a different perspective. I really like reading what real farmers think, especially because they tend to be more optimistic and solution oriented than the doom and gloom Malthusians. One commenter who farms less than 80 miles from the farm in the article writes:

First, the use of corn for ethanol has had almost NO impact on rising food costs. Studies by USDA, by Informa Economics, and by others have proven this. Ethanol has impacted overall food cost increases by less than 3%. Secondly, corn-based ethanol is by no means THE answer to energy problems, bit is AN answer. It’s the most (really, only) biofuels alternative that’s practical right now. Cellulosic ethanol is still unproven, and sugarcane ethanol generates huge amounts of essentailly toxic waste. In contrast, 1/3 of the corn used for ethanol actually remains after processing; this is a protein-rich, very palatable livestock feed especially well-suited for poultry and cattle (and which can be used in small amounts for hogs). Secondly, corn ethanol is energy positive. New processes, as well as dramatically increased corn yields, are responsible for this. ON our farm, we last year produced enough corn to make 301,000 gallons of ethanol AND 35,000 bushels of distillers grains while only using 1,500 gallons of petroleum inputs. (Granted, this does not include energy used to distill the ethanol – but the point remains, it’s still a net-positive process. And keep in mind, this is fuel grown and made in the United STates, where 100% of the money stays here, and does not go to support corrupt regimes in Saudi or Nigeria or wherever…)

If you want to find the true sources of rising food prices, look to China, first, where a huge population now has the means and the desire to not starve. Or at least starve less. China’s use of corn, soybeans and other grain crops is by far the largest contributor to rising prices. 1A is India, where the same phenomenon is taking place. Second, energy costs. Third, widespread drought (esp in Australia), which hammered the world wheat supplies over the last few years. The last place to be putting blame is on bioenergy policies or US farm policy; to the contrary, we American farmers are consistently increasing our productivity and exporting more than every before to feed the world.

Thanks to Sue Jarnagin, Prof of Sociology at ISU, for finding the NY Times article.

As you know, at 5pm on Sunday, 25 June, an EF-5 tornado struck Parkersburg, Iowa, killing eight and injuring 50. The storm destroyed homes, businesses, City Hall, municipal sewer and water lines and even the local high school in this little town of only 1,800 people.

In addition to this carnage, surrounding farms have been littered with debris. Besides the regular flotsam and jetsam of modern American life, farmers have found entire vehicles and utility poles strewn across corn and soybean fields. This super-natural littering comes at an especially inopportune time in agriculture. Within weeks, corn plants are expected to poke high enough through the dirt to cover this debris in a canopy of green. This hidden wreckage will make fields inaccessible for later field work and harvesting, thus prolonging the Parkersburg tragedy into fall, when anxious growers may have to watch their crop whither for fear of entering their own mine-strewn acres.

I can’t beleive how oblivious I was to farming. Prior to moving to Iowa in 2006, I had only driven past farms – orange groves in Florida, Asian pear groves in Korea, some grains in Maryland and Pennsylvania. I had this idyllic vision of the gentle life of a farmer. What a fool I was.

An elegant example was prepared by Jason Haegle, an undergraduate at Iowa State under distinguished professor Peter Peterson. As described in The Flow of Maize Pollen in a Designed Field Plot, Jason planted purple corn surrounded by yellow corn. He planted the rows 0.76 meters apart (much wider than normal) to eliminate any effect of plant density. He simply counted the purple kernels on the ears in the yellow corn fields to determine how much and how far the pollen spread. Yellow corn plants that were closest to the purple corn of course had the most purple kernels. Three rows into the yellow corn, numbers of purple kernels (thus amounts of pollen from those plants) dropped dramatically. Other studies on maize pollen flow agree that the majority of pollen stays near the plot. As Jason says in his paper, this is likely because maize pollen is large and heavy compared to pollen from other grasses.

If the goal is to avoid pollen spread and thus gene flow from cultivated to wild varieties or from one cultivated variety to another, there are several precautions that a farmer can take. First, planting of barrier rows around the variety one wishes to contain will “soak up” most of the pollen. Second, the farmer can choose plants that are early or late flowering, so that pollen shed will not coincide with the fertile period of nearby plants. Third, plants with a low level of outcrossing (natural selfer) could be chosen. Fourth, mechanical means such as removing the pollen producing parts of the plant can be used. These options apply to all crops, not just maize. Feel free to let me know if there are more options that I’ve haven’t mentioned here! Now, even with these precautions, it is possible for a few pollen grains to stray.

If you are very concerned with pollen spread, the pollen could be made sterile through natural or technological methods. The natural method would be to use a male sterile line. Despite the rather obvious evolutionary disadvantage, plant breeders have been able to maintain this trait. The technological method is of course terminator genes. There are a few very different reasons why plants like this would be beneficial: making hybrid seed, protection of intellectual property, containment of transgenic traits, and protecting the environment from pollen spread.

Phillip McClean of ND State has a clear explanation of how the male sterile trait is used in seed production. In order to make hybrid seed in maize, the tassel (pollen producing part) must be removed from the female parent or “she” will just fertilize herself (each corn plant has both male and female parts). Some people realized that they could just use male sterile lines to make the hybrids, eliminating the need for de-tasseling. Hybrids are far superior to their parents due to heterosis (hybrid vigor). Seed for maize, rice, soy, and more are often sold as hybrids because they produce better yields and have other advantageous characteristics.

The seed provides a benefit to the farmer, but does not breed true. If the farmer saves and replants the seed, the resulting plants will be completely different from the parents. In other words, farmers who plant hybrid seed either have to buy it every year or invest in the large amounts of time, space, and money that it takes to do it on their own. Alternatively, the farmer can plant non-hybrid or open pollinated varieties. I’ll follow up with a post on the pros and cons of hybrid and specialized seed so this post can stay on topic.

Seed companies can afford to develop new lines and new hybrids because they sell seed year after year (note that the seed industry is starting to provide poor farmers with superior seed at little or no cost such that licensing doesn’t affect those who most need the seed). With genetically engineered seed, the trait of interest can be passed to other plants, so the farmer could save seed and retain the trait (either purposefully or accidentally), without paying for it. Saving seed that is protected under intellectual property law is a crime without the proper licensing agreements (similar to how music is protected). For an in depth discussion on why transgenic traits (and some non-biotech crops as well) are considered IP, please see ISU Bioethics Professor Clark Wolf’s discussion of the origins of plant IP. The idea that any unit of life, even a gene, could be patented is strange and seems inherently unethical. However, the way capitalism works is that it rewards innovators. Without monetary reward, there is no impetus to innovate (consider the problem of not enough research into malaria medicine while there are multiple drugs for erectile dysfunction). If we don’t want to depend on corporations for development, much more public and private money must be spent (such as with the Gates Foundation funding malaria research and the Chinese government funding research into improved rice varieties). The investment of seed development (transgenic or traditional) is high, and has a unique problem not faced by any other industry – the product can reproduce itself!

Ideally, patents would be on certain applications, not on the genes or plants themselves, but this is a legislation problem that has nothing to do with science. Terminator seed is one example of a proposed way to solve the intellectual property problem that incidentally has a few other benefits. Terminator seed is widely misunderstood. The name makes it sound far scarier than it is. Seriously, there are no seeds shooting guns at bystander seeds, killing all in their path. The technology is actually called “Genetic Use Restriction Technology” or GURT. The particular system in question is just one of many that can result in sterile seeds. The benefits include protecting a seed company’s’ intellectual property rights and preventing biotech crops from growing where they are unwanted (read: so as to eliminate outcrossing with native plants or organic crops).

There is one op-ed in particular that I’ve seen tossed around the web. It appeared in The Guardian on 22 May, written by Sol Oyuela of Progressio (a Catholic charity that claims to focus on poverty but has been less than progressive, despite the name). Sol states in his Blogger profile that he has a Master’s degree, but doesn’t feel the need to tell us what the degree is in. Of course, I have quite a few problems with his statements.

As the world grapples with the impact of global food shortages (Six million Ethiopian children at risk of malnutrition, May 21), the livelihoods of 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest farmers who rely on harvesting seeds from one crop for sowing the next season is under threat from biotech companies which are pushing to commercialise “terminator” technology – genetic engineering that results in plants producing sterile seeds. The advent of these so-called suicide seeds represent an insidious attempt to privatise plant life – and force poor families in developing countries to buy new seeds each year from the large companies that control the $19bn global seed market.

A global ban on terminator technology struck eight years ago is now under threat from a powerful alliance of biotech companies and countries with vested interests. They argue terminator technology should be considered on a case-by-case basis, thereby undermining the blanket moratorium. We fear the ban will once again come under pressure at this week’s UN summit on the convention on biological diversity in Bonn.

Biotech companies’ claims that terminator technology will prevent contamination between GM and non-GM crops are hotly contested, yet the EU and, by implication, British taxpayers are contributing to the development of the technology through a £3.4m EU research project investigating ways that seeds can be brought back to life with chemicals. In the developing world, small-scale farming is how millions of families survive. It is vital that at the Bonn summit this month the UK government strongly supports the continuing global ban on terminator technology.

First, terminator seed does not change the ability of farmers to sow seed they grew themselves. It is important to remember that hybrid seed already must be purchased every year. Farmers are still welcome to save seed that isn’t protected or to develop new varieties on their own. Poor farmers may be able to receive improved seed at reduced cost, as I stated before. In other words, the terminator trait doesn’t actually change anything. On the Progression site, Sol expands on the ideas in his letter, telling us that:

If commercialised, Terminator would put an end to the practice of seed-saving, which is essential to 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest farmers who save and re-plant seeds from one year to the next to feed their families and earn a living. What makes Terminator different from other genetically modified seeds is the fact that it would:

• Force farmers to buy new seed from large companies that control a global seed market worth US$19.6 billion.
• Further jeopardise the food security of the world’s poorest communities that are already struggling to cope with rising food prices.
• Reduce biodiversity by forcing farmers to abandon local seed varieties in favour of commercial seeds.
• Make farmers more vulnerable to climate change by forcing them to use commercial seed rather than locally adapted varieties, which are far more resilient to unpredictable weather patterns.

There could very well be factors that I’m not aware of, but as of this moment, I think these statements are a complete lie. We can’t have a healthy debate about lies, and are reduced to a nuh-uh battle that helps no one, least of all the 1.4 billion poor farmers or the 6 million starving Ethiopian children Sol speaks of. Seriously, guy, please step into reality and then we can talk about it. If terminator seeds are available on the market tomorrow, how does that change what farmer does with the seeds in his hand today? The addition of terminator seeds to the market won’t change the choices farmers have of what seeds to buy or not buy, has nothing to do with food prices, and doesn’t force the farmers to abandon seeds they already have.

Plant life is already privatized to some degree in that patents on either genes, plants, use of plants are considered valid by many countries. As I stated before, this is necessary to a point, or we would have no improved crops at all due to the huge cost of development (biotech or not) unless we were willing to spend a lot more tax money on agriculture. Some people beleive that we would be better off without improved crops – but the increases in yield alone that can be achieved through hybrids can not be denied (even without the addition of fertilizer). If the ban on GURTs was lifted to allow a case-by-case approval (as if anything is getting approved in Europe anyway), the genes would not suddenly appear in every seed on the planet. It would be used judiciously by the seed companies for certain specialty crops. It wouldn’t be used in all new seed for the simple reason that it’s more expensive, as it takes time and money to breed the genes into a given line and it takes chemicals to “awaken” the seed.

Even though Sol and other opponents of GURTs seeds might not come out and say it, the real reason (in my opinion) that they oppose the technology is that it might open the door to production of industrial compounds and other products in crops. These types of genetically engineered crops can not be used with out some very strong safety devices, and some version of GURT might provide that safety (in conjunction with other methods of containment). The actual report given to the Convention on Biological Diversity (why not just call it Convention on Biodiversity?) by EcoNexus and the Federation of German Scientists is a bit more lucid than that of Progressio. It’s long but interesting, although I don’t think it’s right for the CBD to only consider a report written by an openly anti-biotech and anti-corporate organization. I mean, a little peer review and unbiased science would be nice. So would a few less uses of “e.g.” in the text.

Anyway, regardless of its faults, the report has a point: the big problem with terminator technology (as created by Delta and Land) is that the pollen is still fertile. So, even if other pollen containment strategies are used, some pollen will get out, making unwanted fertilizations. The resulting seed would be sterile, so it doesn’t matter, but theoretically a large amount of the pollen could fertilize a nearby field, possibly ruining a farmer’s chances to save seed (and possibly contaminating the crop with a non-edible protein). It could also theoretically fertilize wild relatives of the crop, possibly decreasing biodiversity by shrinking the gene pool. I wholeheartedly agree with the authors on this point. However, the problem wouldn’t continue beyond this point because the genes will effectively delete themselves from the population – unless there was a mutation in one or more of the involved genes.

The other problems with this particular GURT, as described in the report, have to do with mutations, silencing, and segregation. It is true that mutation or silencing could disable one or more of the genes, but we do have to remember that this would happen at a very low frequency, and would likely be noticed before the new version of the gene was passed to many other plants. I imagine that the crops containing the GURT would be rotated with a different crop so that it would be easy to see and remove volunteers. It is possible that the transgene and the three genes in this GURT version could segregate away from each other if a diverse population of plants were open pollinated. However, I doubt that the plants would be a diverse population – instead I’d imagine that the company selling the GURT protected seed would be selling inbred or hybrid plants that are homozygous for the necessary genes.

Surely, if they were to go to the trouble of using the technology, they’d ensure that it was as stable as possible. There is also at least one way to avoid the problem of segregation and to increase the stability of all involved genes: the mini-chromosome. Just in case anyone from Monsanto or Syngenta is listening, I think the best course would be to scrap this version of terminator, and look for something much closer to male sterility. It just makes more sense. Occam’s Razor, don’t cha know. Oh, and if this type of GURT is to be pursued, please try to find some more creative activators and repressors besides antibiotics and steroids.