I feel like the millennium is at hand: The Nation is taking on the anti-GMO activists, with an article by Madeline Ostrander that asks the question Can GMOs Help Feed a Hot and Hungry World?, with the answer provided in the subtitle: "Not if activists succeed in making the genetic modification of food politically unsustainable". This is a blow for rationality I would not at all have expected from The Nation (their idea of balanced coverage of the nuclear issue, for example, is a debate between an anti-nuclear person and a fanatically anti-nuclear one). Maybe the left really is on it's way to being "the reality based community"...
Here Ostrander writes the piece that I've been meaning to get to sometime (but it's just as well she got their first, she's done a better job): the central message here is yes, Monsanto is evil, no their GMO products aren't perfect, but even so we may really need those products, or something like them. Ostrander quotes Kent Bradford, of the Seed Biotechnology Center at UC Davis:
When I spoke with Bradford, he blamed anti-GMO activists, in part, for making R&D difficult: "Those groups have driven all of the biotechnology work into the companies they hate," he said. "They've made it impossible for anybody else by raising a stink. Even if regulator bars don't seem so high, [activist groups] will sue." Only big companies like Monsanto can afford the legal and regulatory costs to test GM varieties and bring them to market, Bradford argues.
Ostrander continues:
Neither biotech researchers nor GMO opponents think the current regulatory process is working well. Anti-GMO groups insist that the Food and Drug Administration's approval process is too opaque and leaves GMO testing in the hands of food companies. Biotech researchers counter that, in practice, the FDA insists on exhaustive and expensive testing far beyond what has been required for any other kind of food crop, even though years of research suggest that the technology of genetic engineering is safe.
Ostrander also includes some opposing opinions, e.g from Renata Brillinger of the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN), who talks up the utility of organic soil-management techniques for drought resistance, and suggests that GMO solutions are expensive, slow, and uncertain in comparison.
Myself I would guess that the right thing to do is "do everything", and Ostrander chooses to close on that sentiment, quoting the opinions of
Pamela Ronald, a UC Davis plant pathology professor, and her husband Raoul Adamchak, a farmer and former board president of the group California Certified Organic Farmers, insist that it’s not only possible but necessary to combine techniques like soil conservation with genetic engineering. They’ve also written a book on the subject called Tomorrow’s Table.
Ronald argues that those who object to GMOs are focused on the wrong questions: “It would make a lot more sense to evaluate all crops and all farming practices based on whether they are sustainable, not on the process of developing the seed. We know that the process itself is no more risky than any other kind of genetic process.”
I was already familiar with Ronald and Adamchak's argument from their Long Now presentation back in 2009 (summary by Stewart Brand).
And speaking of Stewart Brand, in his book Whole Earth Discipline made a point that perhaps should be obvious: Europe banned GMOs, and the United States didn't, which provides a huge "natural experiment", allowing the comparison of both populations to look for deleterious effects, but as Brand remarks: “To date, no verifiable untoward toxic or nutritionally deleterious effects resulting from the consumption of foods derived from genetically modified foods have been discovered anywhere in the world.” (as quoted here).