The recent apostasy of Mark Lynas, until now the high priest of the anti-genetic modification (GM) campaign, has caused, as expected, a firestorm of protests from “GM crop trashers” as he termed those committed to the cause of opposing GM. For the record, Mr Lynas is not a scientist; he has degrees in history and political science. But he has been a very influential figure. He has also had similar second thoughts on nuclear power plants which he now prefers because of their lower carbon emissions. He has confessed that his earlier conviction was based on “junk science,” while his new critics termed his current profession as pseudo-science at best and saw the deathly shadows of multinationals such as Monsanto and Syngenta looming large on this stunning recantation. Much of this recent exchange sheds little new light, at least for those who have been following the developments over time.
The debate has great relevance to India, as this paper editorially noted (“Reason, not fear”, BS January 14, 2013). Lynas specifically regrets the moratorium Jairam Ramesh, the former minister for environment, put on further testing of Bt brinjal. He called Dr Vandana Shiva a backward-looking ideologue who idealised pre-industrial village agriculture. Neither Mr Ramesh nor Dr Shiva lost any time in hitting back at Mr Lynas.
The India aspect of the debate is much more fundamental than Bt cotton or brinjal, as I recently had occasion to explain to my old classmates from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (incidentally, also the alma mater of Mr Ramesh). This is a group of technocrats who have earned their respect with nearly 50 years of distinguished careers. About half of them are now settled abroad. Most of these well-read and informed people have had serious questions on GM technology. I believe at least a few of them are now persuaded that GM is not evil incarnate, as the critics made it out to be. Here is a summary of what I had to say. Lynas covers most of this ground in his interesting, nearly 5,000-word lecture (www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013).
We have to go back nearly 70 years. A young American plant pathologist called Norman Borlaug went to Mexico in 1944 to help fight the hunger prevalent there. He discovered that the local wheat suffered from a plant fungus called rust; the soils were severely depleted of nutrients; and the taller, slender plants of then current varieties of wheat were able to bear only smaller ears of relatively low weight (heavier ears made the plant lodge under its own weight), thereby reducing the yield. His experiments with selective breeding from various available varieties led to new ones that resisted rust, were greatly responsive to chemical fertilisers which replenished soil nutrients, and had a new plant gene that made them shorter with sturdier stalks which were able to withstand the weight of more abundantly grained wheat ears. This process took well over 15 years and, by the early 1960s, the Mexican wheat yield had increased six-fold! In effect what Dr Borlaug did was to make the wheat plants divert their bio-energy from simple vegetative growth (tall plants with long leaves) to reproductive growth (more seeds, wheat-germ, with attached nutrients for the seed, the carbohydrate, gluten, etc, which together form the wheat kernel or the grain).
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Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University wrote a book called The Population Bomb in 1968. He started with a slam-bang statement that feeding the burgeoning population of the world was a lost cause and millions, if not hundreds of millions would die of starvation in Asia and Africa in the coming decades. In part, he (dishonestly) used highly exaggerated and unverified accounts of the Indian drought of the preceding three years to support his argument. It became a best-seller.
I was appalled even then not so much by the grim scenario Ehrlich painted as by the sheer stupidity of his arguments. Forty-five years later, events, time, and efforts such as those by Dr Borlaug and our own M S Swaminathan and millions of farmers have proven him wrong. India’s Green Revolution has inspired many African and Asian countries (Pakistan included). One cannot imagine the world deprived of the benefit of the “miracle” dwarf varieties.
Wheat was cultivated in India from the Harappan period onward. In the 4,000 years since then, its production grew to 6 million tonnes in 1947. It increased by a similar amount in just four years between 1967 and 1971 — which is why it was termed a revolution. In the 40 years since then, it has grown to 90 million tonnes. And all this has happened without increasing the area under crops. Lynas provides some stunning calculations: but for the new varieties of various crops grown in the world today, we would have had to cover additional areas equal to two South Americas for producing the same quantities!
Dr Borlaug had a very convincing case for GM crops. He said that for millions of years, nature evolved through crossing, mutations and other such phenomena. A few centuries ago, men started to experiment with simple crossings, such as grafts. They were hit-and-miss affairs, because they were shots in the dark. For every success — such as the Alphonso mango or the seedless grapes we so enjoy — there are thousands and thousands of failures. In the last century, these experiments became more disciplined and based on better knowledge. What GM attempts to do is to replace guesswork by tested hypotheses targetted for specific results. He said before his death in 2009, “I now say that the world has the technology — either available or well advanced in the research pipeline — to feed on a sustainable basis a population of 10 billion people. The more pertinent question today, is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use this new technology.” A major reason for Lynas’ mea culpa is the pressing need to feed the world of 10 billion souls by the mid-century, which will need near-doubling of food output.
To be concluded next Monday.
The writer taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand