The Food Police (14 page)

After all, nobody’s saying biotechnology shouldn’t be regulated. And regulated it is. New biotech crops have to go through three regulatory agencies: the USDA, the EPA,
and
the FDA. There have been reams of reviews by groups such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.S. National Research Council, and the World Health Organization. Farmers who want to plant insect-resistant biotech corn must
also plant “refuges” without the technology (refuges are small patches of nonbiotech corn planted around the larger fields of biotech corn), to mitigate against development of insect resistance. Insect resistance, by the way, is a problem with
all
types of insecticides, whether “natural,” synthetic, or biotech. Companies introducing new food biotech products have to submit safety evaluations to the FDA for approval and must establish “substantial equivalence” between the new product and the unmodified variety (which basically means they must show that the new, modified variety is exactly the same as the old variety in every way except for the new modification).

I’ve never quite understood the argument that biotech crops are underregulated. Rather, it seems that there are those who’d stop at nothing to prevent biotech crops from being planted and who wish they’d rigged the process to yield a different outcome. A common refrain is that companies are not required to prove there are no “long-term” risks, but it is never specified exactly what such critics mean by “long-term”—a target in constant motion. There’s also the common complaint that biotech companies don’t have to prove the new products won’t cause illness. Logic dictates that you can’t prove a negative. Alas, logic has never been a strong suit of the food police.

Rather, the food police are constantly calling for a ratcheting up of regulatory standards for approval of biotech products. All the while, they fail to realize their efforts serve only to strengthen their most hated adversary: Monsanto. Do an Internet search for Monsanto—the maker of the herbicide Roundup and the producer of most of the genetically modified seeds used in the United States—and the first adjective Google will suggest is the word
evil
. Such has been the influence of
the food police that the most commonly coupled search term with Monsanto is the descriptor normally reserved for Satan himself. But who benefits from stricter regulations that make it harder for new biotech seeds to enter the market? It certainly isn’t the small start-up firms trying to break down entry barriers to get their new invention on the market. Rather, it’s the established behemoths who have teams of lawyers and lobbyists who can absorb the regulatory costs that keep out their smaller competitors. Adding regulatory hurdles hasn’t dampened Monsanto’s market power; it has enhanced it—another unintended consequence brought to you by the food police.

If you don’t believe me, ask Ingo Potrykus, who created something called golden rice back in 1999. This modified rice produces beta carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A. Potrykus engineered the crop to help the millions of poor people around the world who risk becoming blind due to vitamin A deficiency. But despite all evidence that his product is safe, Potrykus has been unable to get golden rice approved internationally because of regulatory hurdles. How many other products that could help millions are collecting dust on the shelves of universities and start-up biotech companies because the regulatory costs are prohibitive? The expense of regulation keeps out small players such as Potrykus and helps convey market power to the established agrochemical firms.

If you didn’t catch it, you read me right. Monsanto probably does have market power that conveys some control over the prices it sets for seeds and chemicals. So, yes, I know it’s shocking: Monsanto makes money from selling seeds and chemicals. Documentaries such as
Food, Inc
. show us fearful farmers who claim to have been wrongfully sued by Monsanto
for saving and accidentally planting genetically modified seeds rather than buying new seeds from the company. I have no idea about the accuracy of these claims, and I’m certainly not going to defend all of Monsanto’s actions. It is true that Monsanto has sued some farmers (and in some cases won) for illegally planting the company’s patented technologies.

But why the producers of
Food, Inc
. find the protection of property rights so abhorrent defies explanation. I suppose they won’t press charges if I start selling bootlegged DVDs of their film out of the back of my truck at the farmers’ market. Apparently Michael Pollan wouldn’t have any problem with my photocopying
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
, replacing his name with mine, and selling it for $.99 online. No, I suspect these folks would be rightfully indignant if their hard work and copyrights were so blatantly trampled. Why the double standard when it comes to Monsanto? Why are they to be faulted for protecting patents that took millions of dollars and decades of research to secure?

Just look at millions of acres in the United States planted with GMOs, and the reality is that the vast majority of farmers
willingly
decide to buy these seeds and plant them. The food police with no stake in the game presume to know more than each farmer looking at his bottom line and deciding what to buy. Does Monsanto charge more for its seeds than would be the case if there were more competition? Probably. But don’t forget that Monsanto faces competition from rivals such as DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, and Bayer. If I could wave a magic wand, I would create more competition in the seed sector, but that doesn’t overturn the obvious fact that despite
the higher prices, farmers still find it in their interest to plant biotech seeds. I haven’t yet read of Monsanto holding farmers at gunpoint, forcing them to adopt biotechnology—although it is amazing what conspiracy theories people will believe and circulate about Monsanto.

I’ve been in enough debates on this topic to know exactly what the anti-GMO foodie will say next: “Well, farmers don’t really have a choice, because if they don’t adopt biotech products, they can’t stay in business.” Bingo! That’s how capitalism is supposed to work. The market doesn’t reward us for producing what
we
want. It rewards us for supplying what
consumers
want. What’s the alternative?

I’m sure there were a bunch of blacksmiths and wagon makers in 1908 who cast suspicious eyes on the new Model Ts being driven around town. Are we really to believe that the world would be a better place if only the wagon wheel makers got their way and avoided the supposedly corrupting influences of sleazy market forces? Wagon wheel makers had a choice, as farmers do now. They can provide what consumers want or they can find another line of work. And despite whatever we read in opinion polls, when we watch what most consumers actually do with their wallets when shopping, we see that what they want is lower prices.

Let’s take a step back and ask how seriously can we take the claim that Monsanto is a drain on the system, sucking money away from farmers and consumers alike? The economic research shows all this to be nonsense. Farmers adopt biotech products because it makes them money and saves them time. Indeed, one would have to wonder if farmers were so stupid as
not to understand their own interests, as virtually all major farm commodity organizations have lobbied on behalf of biotech. Consumers have benefited, too.

One study of the U.S. cotton industry found the biggest beneficiary of the advent of biotechnology was not Monsanto or the seed supplier, but U.S. farmers, who captured 59 percent of the benefits.
⁹
Another study, by the USDA, found that the development of herbicide-resistant soybeans benefited U.S. farmers (who captured 20 percent of the benefits) and U.S. consumers (who captured about 6.4 percent of the benefits).
¹⁰
Worldwide, the
annual
benefits from the creation and adoption of biotechnology are estimated at about $1.4 billion for cotton and $7 to $10 billion for soybeans and corn, and are projected to be more than $2 billion for rice. (No biotech rice is currently planted commercially.)
¹¹
None of these estimates takes into account the potential benefits of the risk reduction that is provided by insect-resistant biotech seeds. Not only are yields and farm returns generally higher with biotech varieties, but they also save labor and serve as a form of insurance against some farm risks.
¹²

Perhaps in our world of billion-dollar bailouts, some skeptic can claim these gains are too small to justify the potential risks. The truth is that it is really hard to know what we give up if we halt the advance of science. I’ve already mentioned genetically modified rice that can produce vitamin A, but scientists are also developing varieties of soybeans and corn that can make their own fertilizer and produce healthier cooking oil for humans; grasses that cause cows to produce less methane, a major greenhouse gas; drought-tolerant
plant varieties suited for arid regions; tomatoes that can last longer without spoiling; bananas that make vaccines; strains of cassava with added micronutrients that could help millions of impoverished Africans who rely on the crop as a staple; and innumerable other products that have more tangible benefits for the consumer than perhaps the falling food bills we’ve already enjoyed. So, don’t be fooled. Some biotech crops may be too risky and require prohibitions, but
not
seeing what benefits biotechnology has to offer may be the biggest risk of all. Just imagine all we would have missed had the first generation of Luddites decided that the world was “good enough” and halted all technological progress back in 1815.

Alas, we don’t have to ask many of the poor farmers in Africa hypothetical questions about what they would give up. The food police have fought tooth and nail to keep the current technologies out of their hands. Content with their own food supply, many developed European countries are imposing their rich-country preferences on their poorer southern neighbors, and have thrown up roadblock after roadblock to biotechnology in Africa. As the political scientist Robert Paarlberg clearly shows in his book
Starved for Science
, published by Harvard University Press, organizations such as Greenpeace, Food First, and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements have fought hard to keep biotechnology out of Africa.
¹³
While rich farmers and consumers in the United States are enjoying the benefits of insect-resistant corn, these groups somehow find it morally justifiable to hinder Africans from developing and using drought-tolerant maize.
Biotechnology is not a cure-all for Africa’s woes, agricultural or otherwise, but for the food police to deny Africans a poverty-fighting tool that we already have is absurd. It’s like telling a heart-attack victim he can’t have an aspirin because he might get a tummy ache.

For those food police brave enough to travel to St. Louis and into the territory of the Evil Empire, they might want to take a look at what sits across the street from Monsanto: the nonprofit Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. There you’ll find biotech research supported by the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation improving the nutritional content and drought resistance of African staple crops such as cassava and sweet potatoes. The center is also developing algae and other plants that can produce biofuels, and working on a host of further developments one would expect to excite even the least compassionate among us. But, no, the food police won’t have any of it.

In fact, this is all eerily reminiscent of the food progressives’ reaction to the green revolution. Nobel Peace Prize–winning scientist Norman Borlaug used research and technology to increase rice and cereal yields in developing countries such as India, Mexico, and Pakistan during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. The effects were astounding. Wheat yields, for example, jumped more than 250 percent in developing countries from 1950 to 2000. And yet various environmental and international aid groups could not bring themselves to celebrate the fact that millions of people had been freed from starvation—all because the process involved monoculture agriculture, synthetic fertilizers, and technologies that also benefited agribusinesses. Borlaug’s response to the criticism is classic:

Perhaps we Americans can afford to give up a few comforts and pay more for more “naturally” grown food. But this return to nature is pure fantasy. Human interactions with nature have altered animals and vegetation in a way that our ancient ancestors could scarcely have imagined. The food elite’s vision of the world would return production agriculture to its state a hundred years ago, to a time when food was far less plentiful and those who did the backbreaking work of farming lived a meager existence. We might like to visit the Amish, but few are clamoring to convert.

THE FOLLIES OF FARM POLICY