End of the World's Food Supply?
Those who consume the
fruits of the farmer's labor often do not pause to think about how
things were in the beginning. It is suspected that early farmers
made use of approximately 200,000 species of plants, a startling number
when compared to today's farming use of only about 100 plant species (Africa
News Service, 2003). The farmers of the past, like the farmers
of today, had to cultivate the species of plants that were easiest to
tame, that produced the largest quantities of food, and that consumers
were easily able to eat. This is observable if one were to examine
the situation regarding the world's banana crop. One would see
that the only species of banana widely used and consumed is the
Cavendish (Africa News Service, 2003). The ancient banana
was a horrid thing possessing inedible seeds and several pit-like
breeding structures but thousands of years of farming has reduced it to
the soft yellow fruit we all know (Africa News Service, 2003).
Agriculture has had to operate this way for the financial well being of
the farmer as well as to feed the growing hungry population and thus the
has never stopped (Africa News Service, 2003). In
order to make a living, the farmers of today must maintain vast expanses
of the most prime strain of crop. There is a problem with this
type of farming, a problem commonly known as monoculturing (Africa
News Service, 2003).
Cavendish Bananas. *Permission Pending* (Bell,
Why the fuss?
How can GM help?
Having a soft and plushy
banana is indeed a delightful thing for a consumer, if not the only
acceptable kind of banana. The problem comes when one looks at
what was forcefully sacrificed by the plants in order to attain this
form. The ancient inedible seeds and pit-structures were part of
what made the banana a viable plant against the stresses of the
environment (Africa News Service, 2003). Today, the
Cavendish banana is sterile and requires the careful attention of
their farmers to breed at all (Africa News Service, 2003). Those are the
visible consequences of the conventional selection for the most
economically favorable species of plant but what about at the genetic
Just about half of the
worlds total yield of bananas is destroyed by disease and insect pests
and many never stop to wonder why the numbers are so high (Africa
News Service, 2003). The Cavendish is the only species of banana
that is grown and they are only allowed to breed, requiring the help of
farmers, with other Cavendish (Africa News Service, 2003). The bananas are thus deprived of their
genetic dynamism whereas these constraints are not imposed on insects
and bacteria. Insects, bacteria, and other pathogens continue to make use of their natural
reorganization of genetic material with subsequent generations.
When a bacteria, virus, or insect targets the Cavendish as a host, the
results are explosive because normal genetic variation is not there.
The Cavendish is monocultured, that is, it is all only one type of
species with homogenous genetic makeup, a genetic makeup that is
necessary for farmers to continue making money and for consumers to
continue eating (Africa News Service, 2003). If the crop does not have genetic variation, then
all of the plants will be affected in the same disastrous way (Africa
News Service, 2003). If there were heterogeneity, some of the banana
plants would survive and pass
on their traits to create a stronger insurgence against the pathogens
(Africa News Service, 2003).
Many scientists believe
that the continued monoculturing of all of our crops is going to end in
disaster with the world's defenseless food supply being destroyed by a
super pathogen (Africa News Service, 2003). Though there
conventional ways of engineering resistance to disease and insect
pests, they are entirely too inefficient for farmers to continue growing
food with respect for both their own financial welfare and to feed the
world's burgeoning population (Africa News Service, 2003).
The only viable and available tool for possibly improving the
detrimental situation generated by monoculture is
genetic modification through biotechnological techniques (Africa
News Service, 2003).
Genetic modification would enable farmers to grow the same crops with
inserted genetic traits to fight back against the pathogens that
threaten the food supply while not changing the crop itself (Africa
News Service, 2003). For
instance, a Cavendish that is transgenically modified with something
such as an insect antimicrobial peptide producing gene would be the same
type of banana that destroys any bacteria that comes in contact with it
An example of a monocultured crop field. (Sustainability
Now, 2004) *Permission Pending*
While genetic modification
seems like the panacea for this situation, one must remember that there
would be several other technical consideration with monoculturing.
Among them is the fact that scientists and farmers alike would need to
be careful that in engineering crops for a specific purpose not to
create another form of a monoculture. If scientists were to
release a genetically modified crop for commercial use carrying a
certain gene to produce a type of viral resistance, this would only be a
temporary fix. The virus would be stunted for a while but the crop
again becomes a monoculture as the viral invader adapts to bypass the crop's new
defenses. Researchers in the Zhao group have done experiments
investigating possible solutions to the problem of creating another
monoculture of genetically modified crops with promising results (Zhao
et al., 2003). They found that if more than one variant
of a pesticide producing gene were transgenically inserted into a crop,
invading pathogens were much slower to become resistant to the
internally generated pesticide (Zhao et al., 2003).
Even genetic modification is not the cure-all for this problem as many
perceive it, then. Though certainly as exemplified by the Zhao
research, if care is taken and all technical issues considered, genetic
modification can be nothing but a help in combating the effects of
monoculture (Zhao et al., 2003).