Hidden Connections: Crops, Cows, Cola and the Demise of Diversity
by Dave Tilford
We know that consumer behavior affects the environment. We just don't always know how. Some choices are obvious (choose a cleaner mode of transportation over a gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle and you have a direct, positive impact on global warming). Other impacts are less easily demonstrated. Consumer goods come to us via a convoluted global resource network, and the envi-ronmental histories of the things we buy are not always apparent. The right choice is sometimes hidden from view.
We must constantly remind our-selves that everything connects back to the planet. Tracing this connection to its point of origin can sometimes lead to surprising discoveries. It can also clarify the seemingly muddled choices we must make as we strive to remain part of an integrated ecologi-cal system-rather than attempt to live outside of it.
Take food for instance. How would a person know that a can of cola is tied to the fate of monarch butterflies? Or that a fast-food burger could be instrumental in reducing the genetic diversity of the crops we depend upon?
Plight of the Butterflies
Monarch butterflies make their annual migration from Mexico to Minnesota through the heart of the Midwestern Corn Belt. Last May, the scientific jour-nal Nature reported that over 20 percent of American corn fields-including much of the Corn Belt-are planted in varieties toxic to the butterflies. This toxicity results from the fact that the corn has been bioengineered to contain a gene from the bac- terium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Applied externally in small quantities, Bt is used by organic farmers as a relatively benign, natural pesticide. When the Bt gene is spliced into the corn plant, however, the toxin dis-perses with the corn pollen onto neighboring plants, including milkweed eaten by monarch caterpillars. The corn was not bioengi-neered to kill butterflies. It was an unforeseen side effect discovered after the corn was released into the environment.
Another foreseeable side effect
Heavy use of the Bt corn-as well as other genetically-altered Bt crops on the market, such as cotton and potatoes-will make organic application of Bt virtually useless. Over-dosing on Bt accelerates an evolutionary process by which only those genetic strains of pests resistant to the toxin will survive and breed. Corn is a major American crop and U.S.-produced grain helps feed the world, so the decimation of the monarch popula-tion may seem a small price to pay. Perhaps the extinction of a butterfly species is nothing compared to famine and hunger, but the butterflies may be an alarm bell-a signal that we are tinkering with a process we know little about and may not be quali-fied to govern: the creation and release into the envi-ronment of dramatically new life forms.
Europeans, in fact, have begun to rebel against such genetic tinkering. Public opposition to geneti-cally- altered foods led the European Union to require labels on all genetically-altered products imported from the U.S. American corn, in particular, has been 2 FALL 1999 singled out by Europeans. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "There have been virtually no corn exports from the United States because the genetically-modified corn cannot be separated from the rest of the crop, costing American farmers about $200 million a year." Some of the largest U.S. exporters have told pro-ducers they will no longer accept genetically-altered corn for export.
Within the U.S., the biotech industry vigorously opposes labeling to identify genetic modifications. American consumers feel otherwise. A survey of consumers conducted by a Swiss drug company found that 90 percent of Americans favored such labels. Half a million people signed a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanding mandatory labeling. Meanwhile, the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit against the FDA to reclassify genetic modifi-cation as an additive that would require labeling.
Twentieth Century Agriculture: Production Versus Diversity Transgenics-species altered in the laboratory to con-tain the genes of unrelated species-are only the latest in a series of 20th century "miracle" crops developed and mar-keted partly in response to a burgeoning human popula-tion. It is indeed critical that food production remain ahead of population growth, and thanks to some of these crops, it has. But these modern crops-from early corn hybrids to Green Revolution wheat and rice varieties to transgenics-are also responsible for tremendous amounts of environmental damage.
Most of these "high-yields" are actually "high-responding"-to enormous influxes of pesti-cides, herbicides, and fertilizers that disrupt ecosystems, pollute waterways, and cause unsuspecting humans to ingest chemicals with harmful side effects. These miracle crops have also undermined their own genetic base by displacing traditional, genetically-diverse varieties developed over thousands of years that were used as the foundations for the high-yield varieties.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 75 percent of our agricultural diversity has been lost in the past century. Farmers' fields that once harbored genetical-ly- diverse crops now brim with patented varieties, precisely tailored and genetically specific. While pests evolve to fig-ure out these chemically-supported monocultures, breeders have fewer and fewer places to go for fresh genes. As demonstrated with Bt corn, looking outside the species for genetic materials can be risky business.
Losing Contact with Our Life Force
At a recent environmental conference in West Virginia, the leader of a discussion group on food issues held up an unopened cola can. He asked if anyone in the group knew where it came from. He wasn't asking for the location of the nearest mini-mart. He wondered if anyone knew the organic content of this sealed aluminum cylinder. Opening the can, pouring the dark brown liquid into a glass, you still couldn't discern the cola's organic make-up. If you read the label, however, you might discover that a primary ingredient (besides carbonated water) is corn, in the form of corn syrup. Most likely, the corn came from the same Midwestern Corn Belt planted in Bt corn.
The average American, according to the authors of Stuff, con-sumes about 48 pounds of corn syrup a year. We drink more sodas than we do water from the tap. Corn syrup, in fact, is the second-largest use of American corn. The primary consumer of corn in this country? Livestock. Livestock, mostly cows, eats 60 percent of the U.S. corn harvest, and 70 percent of the total American grain harvest (40 percent of the harvest worldwide). Converting grain to meat is an inefficient use of croplands. According to Lester Brown in Tough Choices, a 10 percent reduction in grain-fed livestock consumption by the world's affluent would free 64 million tons of grain for direct human consumption, enough to cover 27 months of population growth.
Regaining our Hold
So what does this have to do with butterflies? Simply this: the compromises made to maintain global food secu-rity might be viewed as a necessary Faustian bargain (sacri-ficing our genes rather than our souls), but for the fact that much of current food production represents misdirected effort-designed not to improve supplies but to cater to manufactured wants, like sodas and fast-food burgers.
Some argue that if we lived in closer contact to and with greater awareness of the food we eat-its origins, its life cycles, its hidden costs-we would scale back on some of the more damaging and less logical aspects of modern agriculture. And we might be less eager to populate the world's agricultural fields with life forms ingeniously man-ufactured, but not fully understood.
We can make better choices
The Consumers Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is a comprehensive "how to" guide for consumers looking to reduce their environ-mental impact. "The production of food for household consumption is a very significant cause of environmental problems," note the authors.
Two pieces of advice are offered: 1) eat less meat; 2) buy certified-organic produce. According to UCS, "[C]utting the average house-hold's meat consumption (both poultry and red meat) in half and replacing it with the nutritional equivalent of grains would cut food-related land use and common water pollution-two of the three most serious environmental consequences of food production-by 30 percent and 24 percent, respectively."
On organic farming, UCS explains the difference in impact and philosophy to modern industrial agriculture: "Unlike industrial agriculture, which looks at the farm as an outdoor factory, with inputs entering one end and out-puts exiting the other, sustainable agriculture views a farm as an integrated system made up of elements like soil, plants, insects, and animals. Farmers who take a sustainable approach reduce or eliminate traditional inputs, such as pesticides and fertilizers. Rather than concentrate on a sin-gle crop, they use crop rotations and other adjustments of the agricultural system to manage problems such as pests, diseases, and poor soil quality." To take advantage of this "integrated system" of organic agriculture, we must employ the same system in our own lives.
The factory model of farming may boost production, but it does not examine inputs and outputs, and does not question the reasons behind the effort. Boosting production to feed the world is one thing. Boosting production to feed our appetite for unhealthy food is quite another. Not only does it lead us away from a sustainable system of agriculture, it leads us away from a sustainable relationship with the Earth. ·
Dave Tilford is Special Projects Director for the Center for a New American Dream
Organic Tips
To learn more about genetic engineering, contact the Center for Food Safety (a project of the International Center for Technology Assessment) at www.icta.org, or call 202-547-9359. .Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects local farmers with local consumers, helping to develop a regional food supply and stronger local economy. To find a source for locally-grown produce in your area, check out the Community Supported Agriculture of North America website at www.umass.edu/umext/csa, or call 717-264-4141 (ext. 3247). .In the Winter 1998 edition of Enough!, we encouraged you to sign a petition for mandatory labeling of genetically-engineered foods. It's not too late. Call 877-REAL-FOOD, or visit the Mothers for Natural Law website at www.safe-food.org to sign the petition online.