GMOs either are villainized or glorified, but in reality they may fulfill a more modest role in agriculture.
Within Athens’ local food system, a strong opposition to genetically modified organisms prevails. Snowville makes sure that its dairy farms use non-GMO feed. Shagbark sells only non-GMO and USDA certified grains and beans. On the website for its bakeshop, Jackie O’s makes sure to point out that its supplier does not use GM wheat because it does not yet exist on the market.
That same sentiment exists on a national scale. A survey, done last year by the Pew Research Center, found that 57 percent of Americans believe GM foods to be unsafe to eat. Since 2001, Trader Joe’s has worked to source solely from non-GM ingredients because of its customers' preferences. Just last year Chipotle swore off the source, while Whole Foods did the same in 2013.
That opposition often stems from a concern about the dangers GMOs may pose to public health or to the environment. But after reviewing the evidence, many major scientific and regulatory organizations have concluded that GMOs, per se, do not present any significant hazard to humans or to the environment.
Of course, those findings do not give GMOs a clean bill of health. The patents on GM technology and the complexity of the patent system allow large corporations to establish a monopoly that encourages stagnation, hampers innovation and does not respond to the consumer.
GMOs could become a source of tremendous innovation that provides important tools for overcoming complex problems. Despite that potential, only two traits account for most GMOs: pest resistance and herbicide resistance. They constitute 99 percent of all GM crops. The imaginative GMOs such as drought resistant corn and crops that require less nitrogen remain pipe dreams. On the other hand, GMOs like golden rice and the virus-resistant papayas in Hawaii are celebrated, exemplary either for the promise of biotechnology or for the benefits it already provides. They constitute 1 percent of all GM crops.
GMOs, then, mostly are engineered for profit, while some GMOs that might have social benefits are used to accrue good PR but are not widespread. In that way, GMOs remain more a tool of the agrochemical industry and less a tool against poverty, malnutrition and famine, as the industry would have you believe.
But GMOs do have the potential to help, so long as they do not encourage small farmers to feed into a system that obliges them to go into debt in order to compete. For instance, a study conducted in India found that adoption of insect-resistant GM cotton reduced food insecurity among cotton-producing households, suggesting that it may prove to be one of many important tools in addressing food security issues.
Again, however, GMOs are only one of many tools. Potential new crops such as virus-resistant plums and beans, high-iron rice, high-calcium carrots and antioxidant tomatoes may be useful in tackling problems such as malnutrition and food security. They are in no way a panacea for those issues as many advocates for GMOs portray them. In fact, GMOs are nowhere near as important as either side of the debate seems to presume they are.
To promote GMOs as the key to solving a particular issue suggests that complex social issues are better solved by the private sector and industry science rather than policy and social action. Similarly, to completely oppose GMOs suggests that they have no place in sustainable agriculture. Neither view is necessarily true, however. GMOs are probably not a solution for some things, but they may have their function in creating a sustainable future.
Austin Miles is a senior studying biology. What do you know about GMOs? Email him at am343011@ohio.edu.
