Seeds of Controversy
Will biotech giants solve world hunger…or inherit the earth?
Shannon Wianecki
What’s bigger than computers, but fits into a breadbox? Biotechnology. This controversial industry is transforming agriculture around the globe. And for better or worse, the seeds of change grow right here on Maui.
On a Kïhei farm just off Pi‘ilani Highway, biotech industry giant Monsanto is raking in the money, so to speak. Invited guests tour the farm in plush, air-conditioned buses. Alongside groomed fields, the seed-processing equipment looks nearly spit-shined. Inside the farm’s conference room, images of smiling, well-fed children pop off the flat-screen TV. According to Harvey Glick, Monsanto’s director of scientific affairs, business is booming. Biotech is growing faster than the computer industry during its peak—15 percent per year for the last 10 years.
Just what is biotechnology? The term encompasses centuries of breeding practices and biological manipulation, but today “biotech” most often refers to the newest process of transferring genetic traits from one organism to another. Until the 1980s, farmers wanting crops with certain traits had to selectively crossbreed parental organisms in order to transfer traits to the offspring. Now scientists can insert desired traits—including those from other species—directly into an organism’s DNA with a “gene gun” or by packaging traits within a common bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The result is a “genetically modified organism” or GMO.
Chances are you’ve eaten some biotechnology today. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), approximately 70 percent of the food Americans ingest now contains genetically modified ingredients. To date, very few GMOs have been approved as commercial crops, but they include foods Americans eat a lot of: soy, cotton (think cottonseed oil), canola, and corn.
Monsanto’s fancy trademark sums up the controversy in a single word: imagine™. It’s exactly how the opposing sides imagine the future of food that’s causing the furor. Biotech advocates talk of curing world hunger and reducing pesticide use. Voices of opposition warn of a biotech doomsday, predicting a world gone mad with “Frankenfoods,” environmental damage, and corporate control of the food supply.
Hawai‘i: The Corn
Belt of the Pacific
People don’t expect to see waving fields of corn in Hawai‘i. In the last 10 years, however, the value of seed corn grown in Hawai‘i has skyrocketed from $9 million to $49 million. According to Monsanto’s website (www.monsanto.com/hawaii), “Hawai‘i has proven to be an ideal location. The year-round growing environment…dynamic regulatory and legal environment and diverse and capable workforce all contribute to the success of Monsanto's global operations.”
Forty-nine million dollars is a drop in the bucket for a multinational company that has pledged to spend $1.5 million a day developing new seed technologies.
Monsanto calls the 120 acres it leases from Haleakala Ranch an “agricultural research station,” rather than a farm. The corn grown here isn’t for consumption. Hundreds of corn
varieties, biotech and conventional, are tested here. Individual plants are numbered and monitored for marketable traits. Of 10,000 plants, the seeds of maybe 1,000 will be saved.
Selected seeds are sent as far as Thailand, Argentina, and Canada for further development. Eventually, if approved by the USDA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the seeds will enter the commercial market as trademarked products, like their predecessors Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) corn and Roundup Ready™ (glyphosate-tolerant) corn.
Getting the Drift
In contrast to the Kïhei station’s sophisticated underpinnings, the field techniques are remarkably simple. Paper bags are stapled around the flossy tassels of genetically modified corn and are later used to pollinate unmodified corn. Wili wili trees are planted as a buffer to keep pollen from escaping the farm. Some pollen will drift, but it’s impossible for corn—biotech or otherwise—to pollinate, say, a tomato plant in a neighboring yard. And does Monsanto’s corn pollen mingle with outside corn? Glick is quick to answer: “In the U.S., there have been no problems with cross-pollination.”
That hasn’t been the case with Hawai‘i’s homegrown biotech creation, the Sun-Up papaya. Commercially approved in 1998, Sun-Up was engineered for resistance against the papaya ringspot virus and distributed to Big Island farmers seeking to avoid the virus’s devastating effects. In many ways, it was a success. Developed by Cornell professor and Puna resident, Dennis Gonsalves, Sun-Up was the first noncorporate, genetically modified organism to receive regulatory exemptions. A collaboration between local industry and university researchers, it suggested that biotechnology doesn’t have to be the monopoly of corporate giants.
Years later, however, organic papaya farmers are furious, saying their trees have been contaminated by biotech pollen. Unless farmers bag their plants’ reproductive parts, cross-pollination is always possible. This shifts the onus from those who planted the biotech crops to those who didn’t and who don’t want the consequences. When organic farmer Toi Lahti discovered his trees had been cross-pollinated, he destroyed his entire orchard rather than jeopardize his organic status, which takes three years to achieve. All Big Isle papaya growers risk losing business with the Japanese market, which once accounted for more than 40 percent of Hawaiian papaya sales. For now, Japan doesn’t accept biotech and buys elsewhere.
