How did the intellectual curiosity that led to hybrid seed production end up confining plant breeding to a straightjacket? In a 2002 Seeds of Change interview, Dr. John Navazio illuminates the historical, political, and practical dimensions of hybrid seed production versus breeding open pollinated (OP) varieties. In doing so, Navazio reveals how the economic concerns of the seed industry, rather than scientific rigor or the public interest, have determined the trajectory of academic plant breeding for decades, with its narrow focus on breeding for industrial agriculture and its reliance on hybrids and, more recently, genetic engineering. He discusses the radical philosophical implications and the on-the-ground practicalities of breeding specifically for organic farming, working directly with farmers, and of selecting for complex traits, rather than focusing on specific genes. As relevant now as it was when he gave it, Navazio’s interview can be accessed on the Bioscience Resource Project’s Agriculture resource page as: “Plant Breeding for the Future: A Breeder’s View of Hybrid Seed and Open Pollenated Varieties.” A more recent article: Debunking the Hybrid Myth, discusses the pros and cons of hybrids and OPs, and why seed companies favor hybrids. It is valuable to read both articles. Navazio is Senior Scientist at the non-profit Organic Seed Alliance (OSA). OSA uses a combination of public education, advocacy, and farmer assisted breeding in its work to preserve and promote agricultural genetic diversity as a public good.

How Millions of Farmers are Advancing Agriculture For Themselves is published by Independent Science News. Its author, Jonathan Latham, describes an unheralded and unprecedented farmer-led revolution currently underway in agriculture. Small farmers around the world are dramatically boosting their productivity and yields by adopting a crop growing system called SCI (System of Crop Intensification). SCI is based on the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) which is characterized by simple modifications to agricultural practices that synergize to promote healthy plant growth. These modifications include improving soil conditions and greatly lowering plant density (crowding).

Since SRI and SCI methods give higher yields while requiring fewer seeds, less water, and no fertilizers, pesticides, or special seed varieties, they radically boost the income of farmers while also reducing their costs. Unsurprisingly, SRI and SCI are being rapidly adopted, so far in over 50 countries. An important aspect of this story is that SRI and SCI are advancing almost entirely outside the purview of the scientific agricultural research community. Since modern agricultural research mostly ignores farming as a system, and focuses instead on manipulating external inputs and crop genetics, this lack of interest should be no surprise; but the two and three-fold yield improvements typical of SRI and SCI suggest that this narrow scientific focus may prove to have been an error of historic proportions.

The following table is reprinted from the article “How Millions of Farmers are Advancing Agriculture For Themselves.”

For more on SRI and its role in the future of agriculture see:

Agricultural Futures: What Lies Beyond ‘Modern Agriculture’ (2007)

Professor Norman Uphoff, TAA Sept 2007 Newsletter pp.13-19.

What general principles should guide scientists, farmers and policy makers through the challenges expected during the next century? Norman Uphoff clearly outlines the defining characteristics of ‘modern’ agriculture and discusses the 21st Century forces and trends (e.g. land, water and energy availability) that will play a large role in shaping ‘post-modern’ agriculture. He uses SRI (the System of Rice Intensification) as one example of the type of agro-ecological approach to agricultural production that he predicts will of necessity underpin ‘post-modern’ food and fiber production systems.

Independent Science News has published a new article entitled Risk and Responsibility: Farming, Food, and Unconventional Gas Drilling by researchers Michelle Bamberger and Robert E. Oswald. With a predicted worldwide “boom” in unconventional gas drilling, many individuals and communities may soon be facing the health and environmental risks associated with hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). During hydraulic fracturing, radioactive, hydrocarbon, and other harmful chemical pollutants can reach humans and farmland via many routes. These include leaks from damaged or defective well casings, leaks from waste water impoundment ponds, the illegal dumping of waste water, and the spraying of used fracking fluid on roads for dust control.

Their article points out many current impediments to accurate risk assessment, including “inadequate or nonexistent predrilling testing of air and water in many cases and by nondisclosure agreements tied to victim compensation that remove the details of specific cases from further study.” They challenge the current regulatory situation where the burden of proof is on the public to prove, after the fact, that environmental harm has occurred, rather than industry being required to provide scientifically acceptable proof of the safety of the process before drilling. Michelle Bamberger and Robert E. Oswald call for hydraulic fracturing to be “severely limited or banned” until the many scientific and transparency issues can be resolved.

The authors are a former Veterinary Researcher and a Professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

NOTE: For a library of scientific papers analyzing health and environmental effects of conventional and unconventional energy production visit the PSE website.

Wendell Berry pointed out a crucial practical reason why the basic structure of modern industrial agriculture (arable land monocultures and factory farming of animals) is such a universal disaster — “once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm — which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer.” As Berry put it, “The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems*.”

An antidote to this misguided genius is the elegant and important paper by Billen et al. (2011) Localising the Nitrogen Imprint of the Paris Food Supply: the Potential of Organic Farming and Changes in Human Diet. Using the region that traditionally supplied Paris with food as a test case, Billen et al. examine the effects of reuniting animal and arable farming in the Seine watershed. The effects that decreased local meat consumption would have in such a system were also examined. Their demonstration that the Seine watershed could feed modern day Paris and itself on a local organic diet, while improving water quality and continuing to export grain, provides a robust challenge to those who insist that globalized industrial agriculture, and thus its many negative health and environmental consequences, are necessary in order to “feed the world.”

* The Unsettling of America : Culture & Agriculture (1996) p. 62 by Wendell Berry. Note: The Unsettling of America is reviewed on Independent Science News and is highly recommended by The Bioscience Resource Project.

Update November 2013: Billen et al. have now widened their analysis to show that local organic agriculture can feed populations a healthy diet on a global scale with attendant environmental benefits:

The nitrogen cascade from agricultural soils to the sea: modelling nitrogen transfers at regional watershed and global scales

A new paper by the French group of Gilles-Eric Seralini describes harmful effects on rats fed diets containing genetically modified maize (variety NK603), with and without the herbicide Roundup, as well as effects on rats fed Roundup alone. Criticism of this peer-reviewed study (Seralini et al., 2012) by some scientists was rapid and was widely reported in the popular press (Carmen, 2012; Mestel, 2012; Revkin, 2012; Worstall, 2012)*. Only a few commentators and bloggers made clear the industry ties of the critics and the unscientific nature or double standards of many of the criticisms (Vidal, 2012).

Of course unscientific criticism of unwelcome scientific findings is nothing new (Martin, 1992) and neither are the industry ties of many universities and university scientists (Food and Water Watch, 2012; Boyd and Bero, 2000). Is there anything that can be done to keep debates about science and risk-assessment focused on the science?

A group of scientists**, including Drs. Latham and Wilson from the Bioscience Resource Project, have responded to the Seralini debate with “Seralini and Science: an Open Letter“, which was published today on Independent Science News. They address 5 key factors that can stifle or skew scientific debate on important risk issues: (1) The history of attacks on risk-finding studies, (2) The role of the science media, (3) Misleading media reporting, (4) Regulator culpability, and (5) Science and politics. Only by addressing these factors, can debates around risk and risk-assessment remain grounded in science.

Scientists and academics are invited to read the letter and to add their names as signatories in the call for science-based debate on GMO risk.

*Links to these news items are found in the letter below.

**Authors of “Seralini and Science: an Open Letter” are: Susan Bardocz (Budapest, 1121 Hungary); Ann Clark (University of Guelph, retired.); Stanley Ewen (Consultant Histopathologist, Grampian University Hospital); Michael Hansen (Consumers Union); Jack Heinemann (University of Canterbury); Jonathan Latham (The Bioscience Resource Project); Arpad Pusztai (Budapest, 1121 Hungary); David Schubert (The Salk Institute); Allison Wilson (The Bioscience Resource Project)

Just published on Independent Science News, Ted Greiner’s Vitamin A Wars: The Downsides of Donor-Driven Aid is a forthright update on the politics of Vitamin A deficiency and the failed Vitamin A Capsule (VAC) Program that continues to block support for holistic health, food, and farming-based prevention strategies. First described in detail in The Great Vitamin A Fiasco, written by the late Professor Michael Latham in 2010, the politics of Vitamin A deficiency and the prospects for prevention programs that support a healthful and varied diet only get worse. This is explained in Golden Lies: The Seed Industry’s Questionable Golden Rice Project (2012), a foodwatch Report by Christoph Then from testbiotech. Together these important reports provide an insider’s view of the interactions between academics, aid organizations, and corporations, three powerful players whose interests often conflict with those of aid recipients. The Great Vitamin A fiasco and responses to it can be found on the Food resources page and Golden Lies is found on the Biotechnology resources page of The Bioscience Resource Project.