The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food Read Online Free PDF Page B

including the use of mutagens (agents) to cause mutations in plants. Mutagens include chemicals and radiation (X-, gamma, electromagnetic, ultraviolet). Essentially, seeds are treated with a mutagen and then planted. The offspring are combed for mutations deemed beneficial. These methods roam far from the spontaneous mutations on which ancestral breeding relied.
Genetically Modified Organisms
    In the late 1990s came another swing in agriculture, the second speeding bullet striking the very heart of a secure food supply.
    Based on the recombinant DNA research of the 1970s, genetically modified (GM) seeds were first planted experimentally in the late 1980s and introduced to American markets in 1996. GM organisms are engineered through their DNA to take on new characteristics. Scientists may turn off active genes, turn on inactive genes, replace one gene with another, or splice in snippets of DNA from entirely different kingdoms of life. Organisms can be genetically engineered for pretty much anything. Whatever the scientist can imagine, she can more or less produce. Bt cotton, for example, contains a bacterium that is shuffled into the chromosome of cotton (there are also Bt corn and potato varieties). Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis , is a natural insecticide—a bacteria that produces a spore that proves toxic when ingested by insects. Once Bt is genetically encoded in the cotton, the cotton manufactures its own toxin to kill insect pests. Now we have a plant that not only produces cotton for our T-shirts and jeans, but a bacterium to defy bollworms and perhaps other cotton pests.
    Other popular early GM organisms featured a resistance to the herbicide Roundup, the major trade name of glyphosate. They were developed by Monsanto, the company that initially patented and sold Roundup. Farmers would spray their fields with Roundup before planting to kill weeds, because Roundup eventually annihilates every broad-leafed plant it touches. Once the crop had germinated, Roundup was off limits. Now, with the introduction of Roundup-Ready crops—corn, soybean, canola, and alfalfa—farmers can spray anytime, whether the crop is in the field or not. Roundup-Ready plants are in effect wearing raincoats that protect them from the deluge of this chemical. As Kansas corn and soybean farmer Luke Ulrich told National Public Radio reporter Frank Morris in 2010, “There’s nothing like Roundup. A monkey could farm with it.”
    In 2009, a GM corn called SmartStax entered the marketplace. Developed by Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences, this seed reputedly offers eight GM traits stacked in one seed. SmartStax corn produces six insecticidal toxins (to corn borer and corn rootworm) and tolerates two herbicides, glyphosate and glufosinate. These independent traits were not created by repeated genetic blasting, which requires the insertion of DNA sequences, but by crossing existing transgenic corn lines.
    Again, farmers embraced GM corn in the same fashion they had taken to hybrid corn. In just over a decade, over half of all corn grown in the United States was GM. You may be wondering what’s so wrong with this. If science can work to our advantage, let it. If wonderseeds can feed the world, let them. But there’s plenty wrong.
    First, the genetic insertions are “cheater” genes—a farmer can’t see them, can’t prepare for them, and can’t protect a farm from them. Second, why would it be important for a chemical company to develop a product such as Roundup-Ready soybeans? To minister to the hungry? To protect our environment? To serve human civilization? Or to sell more chemicals?
    Second, for the first time in the long and marvelous history of humankind, genomes can be owned. Companies now patent varieties of plants, especially the new scientifically produced, advanced cultivars. The genomes of wild rice, the only grain indigenous to North America and a vital staple for the Ojibwe people, were patented by a California company in the late 1990s.