The Bad Seed

I recently attended a seed swap in my neighborhood. It was the epitome of a community gathering: neighbors excitedly poured over the seed packets up for grabs, explaining to each other the virtues of this variety of radish or that variety of tomato. With winter just starting to give way to spring, the exchange was a welcome source of warmth—a harbinger of the changing seasons just a few months away.

Still, a chilling thought sprang to my mind: what if seed swaps like this were one day illegal?

Perhaps that sounds a bit too Orwellian. But that kind of “Big Brother” scenario isn’t so far-fetched these days. In fact, for some farmers it’s a nightmare that’s become all too real. The reason why boils down to two words: genetic engineering (also called GE, or GMO).

As any farmer can tell you, seeds are the soul of agriculture. The integrity of a seed as it settles into the earth is as critically important to the health of the final product as are the whims of Mother Nature, the presence of blight and pests, or the competence of the farmer managing the fields. A walk down a typical produce aisle or a farmers’ market will speak to the marvels that a strong and diverse seed stock can bring. Those heirloom tomatoes? That rainbow chard? Those Vidalia onions? All of that grand diversity lies within the seeds that carry the genetics making up the specific varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains that sustain us and delight our palettes. A farmer’s freedom to source, collect, and save those seeds is an essential ingredient to a thriving and diverse food system.

But the nature of seeds has changed rapidly over the past few decades. With the advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s, crop scientists have created varieties of seeds never before imagined. As opposed to traditional plant breeding that mates plants within a species or between closely related species, genetic engineering selects desirable traits from the DNA of one species and inserts them into the genome of another. For example, a gene from a sunflower or a flounder can be introduced into a variety of corn, defying the limits that nature would generally place between, oh say, a fish mating with a plant. Why would they do this? To develop traits like frost-resistance or produce crops with high contents of beneficial nutrients.

In some cases, scientists can introduce altogether novel genes. This has allowed for crop varieties like Roundup Ready soybeans, for example, designed to survive applications of Roundup herbicide in the field. In the loftiest of dreams, proponents of GE crops have cited them as panaceas to major world problems—promising to solve world hunger or withstand extreme droughts and floods brought on by climate change.

But in reality, genetic engineering has offered more dilemmas than solutions. Potential merits aside, it presents real threats to the farmers who grow our food, and ultimately, the integrity of our food system as a whole.

The problems start when GE crops contaminate neighboring fields, generally because pollinators or the wind spread their pollen around. This presents particularly worrisome threats to organic agriculture. Since genetic engineering is prohibited under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s organic program, an organic farmer’s certification is at risk if his fields are contaminated. That translates to major financial losses, since he can no longer receive the premium prices that cover the higher costs of growing organically. In this way, GE crops have threatened entire sectors of the organic industry. Canada’s organic canola industry is now extinct due to contamination from GE canola. GE contamination threatens conventional farmers as well—foreign markets have repeatedly rejected contaminated crops, ultimately costing farmers millions upon millions of dollars.

GE crops are also patented, presenting a whole other set of issues. For starters, GE corporations have repeatedly restricted independent research of their GE seeds. While that’s perfectly legal under patent law, it severely limits objective examination of the safety and efficacy of GE crops. Even worse, patents have given companies the power to sue farmers for illegally “possessing” patented genetics without a license.

Monsanto has famously sued thousands of individual farmers for patent infringement when their fields were contaminated with GE genes. And, as documented in films like Food, Inc., farmers who do pay for licenses aren’t allowed to save seeds after a year’s harvest for the very same reason—patent infringement.

With the power to own and patent genetics, some seed companies have exerted incredible control over the market. At least 200 independent seed companies exited the business over the last fifteen years as the industry dramatically consolidated. Four companies now control over 50 percent of the seed market worldwide, leaving a veritable breeding ground for corruption and monopoly. As the number of seed companies dwindles, so has the variety of seeds available for farmers to plant. Meanwhile, farmers have watched the price of seeds skyrocket at the same time GE crops came to prominence.

What about GE crops that can solve world hunger or combat weather-related disasters? Such miracle crops have been strangely elusive. Nearly all the GE crops hitting the market are designed by multinational companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, and Dow Chemical to increase their revenues and push their related pesticides. To date, none of the varieties they’ve released (or the billions of research dollars they’ve invested) has appreciably tackled the larger challenges facing our world. Reflecting on the seed swap, I suppose the long and short of it is this: does anyone have the right to own or control the genetic material that sustains us as a human community? My vote is a definitive no. But perhaps my larger concern is this: we’re speeding down one path too quickly, before we’ve had a worthy debate over the ethics, risks, and benefits of tampering with something as sacred as our seeds.

Learn more and get involved:

• Center for Food Safety: Learn more about the legal issues and lawsuits involving GE technology. www.centerforfoodsafety.org
• Genetic Engineering Action Network: Join the national network of family farm, environmental, organic, and consumer organizations working to find a better way for agriculture. www.geaction.org
• The Non-GMO Project: Find out how you can avoid GE foods when you shop. www.nongmoproject.org
• Union of Concerned Scientists: Understand the science behind genetic engineering and biotechnology. www.ucsusa.org