There is a new bug-a-boo on the horizon. That is named GMO's or "genetically-modified-organisms".
There
is all manner of promises by the corporate food giants how this will change our lives
for the better.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is all manner of hysteria
about mutant caterpillers eating the planet.
The truth, as usual, is somewhere
in between.
The first efforts at GMO's are well-known in the form of Round-Up
Resistance seed varieties.
This has worked tolerably well for a first effort and
this is given as an endorsement for all such efforts.
That is too early. First,
Round-Up Resistance is fading due to adaptation and mutating resistance.
As a
panacea, Agro-industry is seeking to re-introduce a potent cocktail containing a
sixty-year-old herbicide.
Variously known as 2-4-D, Atrazine, Crossbow and most
famously as "Agent Orange".
Really? They want to spray this on America
after it worked so WELL in Vietnam!!
I remember my father and grandfather discussing
2-4-D in the 1950's when it was first introduced.
It was miracle chemical in that
it would attack broadleaf weeds and leave grasses intact- namely corn and wheat-
which are grasses.
There was a tiny problem with it. It didn't affix well and
washed into water supplies and bodies of water.
It was heavier than water and
intensified in the bottom layers.
Autopsies of catfish livers were horrendous.
As
such, it fell out of favor. Not, of course, with Agribusiness which would still love
to sell it,
but with regulatory people, scientists and the common-sensical general
public.
Now, coupled with the decreasing effectivity of RoundUp and the fact that
there are few blockbuster replacements in the
Agribusiness pipeline, they are
promoting catchy combos like "Duo" which is part RoundUp and part Agent
Orange.
Permission for these has been denied, but given the current ear big business
has with government, they should be coming soon to a field near you.
It is the
responsibilty of the farmer to resist these simplistic solutions and lobby for sensible
solutions from Agribusiness.
It is your land. Why would you spray Agent Orange
on something you intend to leave to your heirs.
Unless you are a farmer who is
one of those Citizens United persons.
Then you have no care for the land because
you are a corporation.
Waste
it. Move on. Kind of like strip-mining without moving anything.
Another GMO product worthy of concern is seedstock with BT interwoven into
the DNA.
This is a really BAD idea. BT stands for Bacillus Thuringensis. (And,
no, it's not the sausage, so put away the horseradish.)
It is a toxic bacillus
component which becomes part of the plant and when pests munch on the plant they
are poisoned.
Does this make it into the corn kernels? Feel like gambling? Do
you believe Agribusiness would tell you if it did?
The risks are two-fold on this.
First,
it kills innocent bystanders such as harmless insects which further impacts the foodchain
for larger creatures like songbirds.
Most visible and iconic of these victims
are Monarch Butterflies and their larvae which are in a precipitous decline.
Will
you be the one to explain to you grandchildren "why there are no more butterflies?"
Second
there is the risk of "gene-hopping" whereby characteristics in one plant
(BT) get transferred to another plant by interbreeding
and are released into the
wild with devastating implications.
Along
these same lines, consider what goes by various names "Calfer-Corn", "Canola",
"Silage", "Milo".
(The Europeans call it "Rape Seed",
but we Americans know rape is voluntary, so we use a different name.)
It is a
grass. It looks like stunted corn. You can find Canola oil in the supermarket.
Its
closest genetic relative is Johnson Grass which is the scourge of farmers everywhere
with a capital "S".
Billions
of dollars per year in problems.
Suppose genes altruistically woven into Canola
for poison leaves jumped to cousin Johnson Grass
and the whole world became covered
in poisonous plants.
I've got a better idea. Let's cross-breed it with Poison
Ivy also so everyone can enjoy it.
Are
we stupid or what?
I suspect the "or what" is indifference, greed and/or
evil on the part of Agribusiness.
Okay. Enough nay-saying. What is good about GMO's?
Here is a sterling example,
long popularized by this author.
Soybeans and other legumes have nodules on their
roots that have colonies of bacteria which fix Nitrogen in the soil in an available
form.
Nitrogen is a cornerstone of plant life. It exists as N2 as a gas in air.
Nitrogen
is the most common pure element in the earth, making up 78.1% of the entire volume
of the atmosphere
The extremely strong triple bond in elemental nitrogen (N=N),
the
second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule, dominates nitrogen chemistry.
This
causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting N2 into useful compounds.
Synthetically
produced ammonia and nitrates are key industrial fertilisers,
and fertiliser nitrates
are key pollutants in the eutrophication of water systems.
Ammonium Nitrate (NH4NO3)
is produced using copious quantities of natural gas.
It requires 17,200 cubic
feet of natural gas to make a ton of Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer.
Approximately
three percent of our natural gas goes into fertilizer production.
A ton of Ammonium
Nitrate will cover about ten acres.
An average US home uses 61,000 cubic feet
of natural gas per year.
Fifty percent of Ammonium Nitrate is imported even though
we have copious quantities of natural gas.
Now imagine if all of the above numbers
became meaningless.
Imagine when Science is able to create corn and wheat plants
with nitrogen nodules on their roots.
This will be difficult because legumes are
Dicotylodons and grasses are Monocotylodons.
This author has a standing bet with
the Emeritus head of the Biology Department at Kansas University when this will happen.
The
bet dates from 1985. Still waiting. He says it is impossible for the above reason.
Flying
also used to be impossible. It will happen. I will collect that bet.
When it happens,
it will transform agriculture in a second "Green Revolution".
It will
end the pollution from fertilizer run-off. It will end the expense of fertilizing
period.
This is why we need to have intense research in specifically this field
and Congress needs to push it.
This author has another brilliant idea and this one will save the planet and
you heard it here first. It is copyrighted by me BTW.
(When this idea does save
the planet I insist on being installed as Emperor in place of the Orange One.)
Your
gratitude should know no bounds. Send lots of chocolate!!
There is currently afoot research to produce ethylene precursors in the stalks
of corn.
This means stalks of corn would be harvested to make plastics.
This
a good idea in and of itself except for one minor problem.
It removes organic
content from the soil thereby depleting it.
This is why farmers disc under stubble
or leave it in place for no-till.
Organic content feeds earthworms, creates casts,
holds moisture, allows the soil to breathe.
Without organic content the soil becomes
a dead matrix of hard putty like that modeling clay from childhood.
It requires
greater and greater inputs for less and less return.
Or you can recycle the organic
content. Removing the organic content is the opposite of that.
This author and his father laid above-ground polyethylene waterlines with embedded
carbon black for anti-UV-deterioration properties.
That was in 1985. It has gone
through thirty-two hot, bright summers and thirty-two cold, miserable winters.
It
is not embrittled or otherwise compromised.
What if we genetically engineered
corn to produce polyethylene (with a dab of carbon) instead of just ethylene as mentioned
above?
What if we plowed that stalk back into the soil every year after the corn
was harvested.
Polyethylene is 86% carbon by weight and weighs about one gram
per cubic entimeter.
The chemical equation for polyethyene is C2H4. Pure organic.
Thus,
you would be fixing and burying copious quantities of fixed carbon (which wouldn't
decay or escape) by the simple act of farming.
There are approximately two tons
of corn stalks per acre.
At one-third efficiency, that would be the carbon dioxide
equivalent of two tons per acre (carbon dioxide is 27% carbon).
An American releases
2.3 tons of carbon dioxide (or a half ton of carbon) into the atmosphere each year.
One
acre of plowed-under polyethylene cornstalks negates the carbon footprint of four
Americans.
Corn is America's largest crop. We grow almost 14 million acres of
corn per year.
That's 28,000,000 tons of fixed carbon per year
With no addition
expense other that the initial research, we can knock off almost ten percent of our
carbon footprint.
This amount is equal to our growth of carbon contribution not
eliminated by the seas.
It might make us carbon dioxide neutral.
You heard
it here first. Address to mail chocolate to forthcoming.
These are the kind of
things Congress needs to fund for Science to explore.
You often hear "Oh
the corporations can do that for us." BS!
(BS is what some cattle farmers
make a lot of as well. They put it on their fields. They don't feed it to their constituents.)