GM Crops: A Path to be Treaded Cautiously

  Remember Rajnikanth’s science fiction film Robot, where an intelligent andro-humanoid machine-man, Chitti, went rogue to create ruckus and almost snatched heroine Sana (Aishwarya) from lover Dr Vaseegaran after falling love with her?
  Or Mary Shelley’s popular novel Frankenstein, where an unorthodox scientific experiment ended up creating a monster?

  Recently, something like has happened in the United States, but on really an unexpected note.
  A Genetically Modified (GM) variety of wheat, produced by multi-national agricultural bio-technology company Monsanato, has gone rogue and resisted an Oregon farmer’s effort to tame the strain - an incident that has already started disrupting American wheat export market as two major importing nations Japan and South Korea have partially scraped their wheat orders from the US. Even the weedicide formula by Monsanato has failed to kill the GM crop and now the unique case is being probed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

  Apart from impacting the US wheat export, the incident of rogue crop is throwing out a question that goes well beyond territorial limit of any single country.
  “GM Crop: A path to be or not to be taken?”

  The US, where most of the corn, soya and alfalfa crops are genetically modified but are used for feeding the livestock, is the pioneer in this field, but the transgenic crop technology provides with a lucrative option to the developing and lower-developing countries, including India, where ensuring food security for every member of a 1.27 million-and-growing population is a gigantic proposition. That situation worsens, and GM crops seem to be more promising an option, when an erratic monsoon makes the farmers (and, the governments also) dance to its tunes in every other year.
  However, India has judiciously adopted a cautious approach despite the great promise the GM crop technology flaunts - higher productivity, better weed and weather resistance power, and after all, a much smaller gestation period before harvesting.
  True, feeding the Indian population is a major challenge for the policymakers and there is dire need of some innovative pro-activism on their part to negotiate the evolving impacts of climate change on agricultural output, but any hasty decision to adopt GM crops for food production without delving deep into the pros and cons of its aftereffects can spoil the party altogether.
  We committed such a mistake years back, when Green Revolution was introduced in the country. The Green Revolution, which was aimed majorly at wheat and was confined to the northern India (mostly Punjab) by and large, helped the farmers harvest bumper crops and turned the country into a net exporter from a major importer, and thus had good impact on Indian economy. However, overuse of fertilizers and sometimes injudicious consumption of water led to degradation of soil quality and chemical run off contaminating ground water.
  GM crops may not have any directly visible impact on environment, but altering the natural genetic composition of the food crop species may affect human health - all those aspects should be looked into before allowing Indian farmers harvest GM crops, be it for livestock feeding or human consumption.

  In this regard, Professor Eric Seralini’s research report that was published in Chemical and Food Toxicology journal has shaken the world. During the research, the Caen University (France) professor fed a particular pedigree of rats with a particular variety of GM corn for two years in laboratory and the tiny animals developed ghastly cancerous tumours.

  One major factor that failed (yes failed, as claimed by many scientists as well as the pro-environment lobby) the Green Revolution that majorly took place during the 1960s and 1970s is still present very much in India - low literacy level of the farmers. Green Revolution helped a section of the farmers financially as they could enjoy record harvest, but the positive impacts in many cases eluded the poor farmers, including the illiterate and landless workers on the field, because it was difficult for them to adopt the high-yielding varieties (HYV) seeds with calculated use of fertilizers and water. That resulted in overuse, sometimes indiscriminate use, of chemical fertilizers leading to future degradation of agricultural base at many pockets in northern India.
  The fear is aplenty that regular consumption may lead to some serious health hazards, maybe some kind of genetic deformities or some new types of incurable diseases.

  But roses have never been hated for their thorns.
  Though dogged by problems and concerns, the GM crop technology presents us with the most promising answer to the global food security including in the developing and lower-developing nations where the goal of population stabilization is still a couple of decades away and acute hunger claims lives every now and then. From 1.6 billion in 1900, today the world population is more than 7 billion and the counting is projected to touch 8-billion-mark by the year 2025. GM crops, with its manifold advantages, are holding the promise of a hunger-free world.
  Genetic modification is a technology of future that can create a world just out of the science fiction books. Today we may have a reliable buffer stock of crops, but who knows that we don’t have to count upon the GM crop technology in near future when the impacts of climate change would be more prominent changing the heat and monsoon patterns, and thus affecting the agricultural output globally? Who can bet that on such an occasion the GM crop technology will not turn up as the saviour of mankind?
  Just like any other innovation, more research is required to ameliorate the even slightest tinge of doubt about the impacts of GM crops, be it on human health or the environment. And all the data must be made accessible to public making the information trickling down to the grass-root level.
  Probably, there is time yet before we see the dawn when the flash of promise will turn into a reality and GM crops would help the policymakers worldwide to get rid of at least one dangling question – Food Security for All.

  In India, though the final report by the Technical Expert Committee (TEC) appointed by the Supreme Court is still awaited, the committee in its interim report has advocated a 10-year moratorium on open field trials of genetically modified food crops until enough regulatory mechanisms and safety standards are put in place. Importantly, that recommendation has found support from 51 independent international scientists with expertise in genetic engineering and biosafety protocols.