The Gray Lady and Biotech Crops

The editors at the New York Times evidently believe that genetically enhanced crops will help poor farmers in developing countries. Hooray! Perhaps some of their readers who buy only organic at Zabar's will take note.

However, the Times' editors need to get down on the farm a bit more. The editors condemn biotech companies for creating genetically modified seeds that can't be replanted. In actual fact, most of them can be replanted; it's just that modern farmers in industrial countries sign contracts agreeing not to replant them. Why? Because modern farmers (dismissed as "agribusiness") generally want to get the latest improved varieties each year so they don't save seed anyway.

But where the Times' editors go most wrong is that corn (maize) farmers in rich countries have not been saving seed since hybrid varieties were developed in the 1930s. Before hybrid corn, US farmers produced around 30 bushels per acre; today they produce over 150 bushels per acre. Of course better fertilizers, pesticides and land cultivation techniques contributed to this increase, but hybridization was critical. Farmers don't save hybrid seed because they don't breed true.

The Times' editors are right that subsistence corn farmers probably do need to save seed for the time being, but they seem to believe that poor farmers will "subsist" forever. The boost in productivity that biotech crops will give poor farmers will also boost their incomes which leads to a path away from subsistence toward ever more modern methods of high yield farming. To achieve even higher jumps in their crop productivity, once poor farmers will eventually choose to buy hybrid seeds each year just the way that their rich country competitors do today.

One final observation: why is "profit" apparently OK for newspapers, but not for biotech companies? And just where do the editors think the Rockefeller and Syngenta Foundations got the money to fund research in the first place?

Comments

[fyodor]

One final observation: why is "profit" apparently OK for newspapers, but not for biotech companies?

Profit is always good for hard-working me's and bad for greedy you's.

[Zathras]

Just a reminder that when subsistence farming becomes prosperous enough to provide more than subsistence it eventually means fewer farmers. That's a good thing -- most subsistence farmers do what they do because it's the only way for them to eat -- but there is no end state in prospect here, in which farmers now just getting by are still farming but doing much better. Some farmers will, but many others will have to find some other way to earn a living.

[sam]

and that's ok. if it's economically unfeasable to grow tomatoes in oregon, you have no business growing tomatoes in oregon. you hurt yourself (because instead of farming you could be out getting yourself a better job), you're hurting consumers (because you're driving up tomato prices through gov't subsidies, tarriffs, etc.), and you're hurting america (because you + everyone else = america).

there's nothing inherently noble or good about farming. you didn't hear african americans up in arms about hi-tech cotton-picking machines abolishing the noble institution of cotton-picking.

(i think this was a little off-topic, but the whole farming thing really bothers me.)

-sam

[TallDave]

You silly people, research money comes from the gov't, so therefore it's free.

Also, poor subsistence farmers are poor because that's their cultural values. Shame on you for trying to force prosperity on them! That's racism.

[Drew Barrymore]

But when Nepalese farmers start clearing forests to plant their new genetically enhanced seeds, where are they going to poop? And where am *I* going to poop?

[Patrick D]

The nonsense about the evil of biotech profitability aside, I'm not sure just how great GM crops will be for poor farmers in the developing world. For that matter, how great are they for farmers in rich countries if they still need government subsidies and trade barriers to survive?

The economics of agriculture is so distorted by incompetent government and bad policy I really wonder how lucrative GM crops would be if governments simply stopped interfering with the market.

[tarran]

Anything that increases productivity is good.

GM crops are modified to help farmers be more productive either by increasing per acre yields or by reducing the losses between farmer and consumer.

The end result is that the M in GM crops should improve the productivity of farmers. Of course, increased productivity leads to lower prices which in turn leads to lower profits, which in turn leads to consolidation as the less profitable farms go out of business.

So the end result of GM crop use should be fewer farmers growing more food, and the out of work farmers doing other things like making steel.

And that's a good thing.

[Number 6]

Nothing like lazy reporting. I've helped out on my stepfather's corn and soybean farms, and can attest that Ronald Bailey's explanation of why farmers don't replant is dead on. Also, farmers grow crops to sell them, not to keep the seed. The Times reporter could have found this out had he...oh, I don't know... talked to a farmer.

[Number 6]

Perhaps he figured that there was no point, since all farmers are either evil agribusiness types or gap-toothed, illiterate yokels. Real people, those worthy of being interviewed, all live in Manhattan, after all.

[Number 6]

And now I must accuse myself of lazy reading. Change everything in the above to reflect that it was the editors who wrote the piece, and not a reporter.

[Serafina]

>Anything that increases productivity is good.

Not if it comes at the expense of flavor. Happily, there are specialty farmers nearby willing to cater to my greedy consumerist demands.

[jc]

Subsistence farming exists not just because yields are low, but because there's no other way to eat.

If you're poor, you farm because you have no money to buy food. And if you have extra food, you can give it away or maybe trade it for labor to help out on the farm, but there isn't anyone rich enough to sell it to. OK, maybe you could sell it to people in other countries, but first you have to avoid the surplus getting stolen by your corrupt government, and then you have to get around all your customers' corrupt government theft and protection schemes.

GE crops won't do a damn bit of good if the other barriers are there. Unless one thinks there would be so much supply that enough would manage to get through the existing barriers. (A la heroin, cocaine, etc.)

[Douglas Fletcher]

Yeah but they can only survive because the distribution system is more productive in getting those kinds of specialty crops out to people. So there.

[Patrick D]

Productivity is only "good" if that is what the market demands. If the market truly demanded more corn, the U.S. government would not have to subsidize producers.

A decent transportation infrastructure and an absence of government interference will do a lot more for a farmer in the developing world than a GM crop. When I worked in India, it was a challenge getting an auto part from one state to another reliably and in saleable condition due to bad roads and government regulation. A tomato doesn't have a chance. The only genetically modified solution there would be a tomato that feels, and likely tastes, like a baseball.

[Kevin Carson]

Patrick,

While we're at it, how about market interventions like government R&D subsidies, enforcement of patent monopolies, and labelling restrictions against identifying GM-free foods?

[grylliade]

For that matter, how great are they for farmers in rich countries if they still need government subsidies and trade barriers to survive?

I don't think that farmers in rich countries need government subsidies and trade barriers to survive; they need them to survive on their terms. I rather suspect that, in the absence of farm subsidies, most farmers would be employees of corporations that owned the land and equipment. My guess is that we wouldn't have to worry about rural electrification, phones, internet, etc., because the corporations would have to find ways to run utilities and services out to housing to get workers to live there. Farming might be more mechanized than it is now, or not; I don't know. We wouldn't have to worry about subsidies, because corporations could spread the risk of bad years, crop failures, disease, etc., out over a number of people, and mitigate risk through insurance.

But, of course, that would mean the end of the family farm, and a way of life for many people. So they get representatives into Congress who get them subsidies out the ass, and get federal money to run electricity and phone service out to their isolated houses, and they can continue their way of life. It's not all a bad thing, but it's kind of frustrating to subsidize other peoples' lifestyle choices. Not that being a corporate wage-slave is really desirable, mind you, but . . . such is life.

[Lowdog]

Um, Patrick, if you're poor, and are a subsitance farmer, than you are the market for more corn. So if you can grow more corn with the same effort, you're still getting ahead. I don't know how close it is between being a subsistance farmer and selling your surplus for profit, but it can't be an "either it's one or the other" kind of situation.

[Patrick D]

Lowdog,

If you are truly poor and truly a subsistance farmer, how you going to buy GM seeds? Unless someone is handing them out for free, you're entering the cash economy and probably going to have to borrow the money (probably at a high rate with your land as collateral although microcredit may play a role). To repay your debt you can:
- give up your land (now you can't even subsist),
- pay with cash you acquire from selling a surplus (now you're a commercial farmer subject to market forces),
- or pay with surplus crop valued at below market prices (your lender will have to sell at the market to make money or the product is worthless to them and, again, you're subject to market forces).

[Lowdog]

Patrick - ok.

But I'm sure there would be some humanitarian effort to get them the GM seeds if there wasn't so much knee-jerk reactions against "frankenfoods".

Bleh.

[Rich Ard]

Lowdog:

Is there a current humanitarian effort to spread non-GM seeds that leads you to believe that GM seeds would be handed out in such a manner?

[Patrick D]

Lowdog and Rich,

Regarding the more general question of how to get appropriate technology to those who cannot afford it (and, therefore, don't constitute an attractive market) The Economist profiled OneWorld Health which seems to have a promising approach for medicine. Maybe applicable to agriculture someday.

Sorry. Premium contect.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=S%27%29%28L%2APQ%2B%21%20P%22%24

[Ron Bailey]

Patrick D & Rich Ard:
Sorry to be late to the conversation, but as Times' editorial noted, the seeds that are being developed with Syngenta and Rockefeller support will be grown and distributed by the hugely successful CGIAR system (http://www.cgiar.org/) of which CIMMYT (www.cimmyt.org)is a vital part. Essentially they will be offered at very low prices and farmers can save them for replanting later if they wish. These international agricultural centers are the ones that gave us the Green Revolution and saved billions of lives. (If you're interested see my article "Billions Served," at URL: http://www.reason.com/0004/fe.rb.billions.shtml.

[Patrick D]

Ron,

Thanks. I must return to the discipline of reading the specific before jumping to the general. 🙂

Sounds cool but farmers still have to participate in the economy at some level to pay anything. Removing government barriers to their full participation would be far more effective than fiddling with genes.

The more I think about the benefits of GM crops in the developing world, the more I see them as overcoming obstacles imposed by governments rather than nature.

[Rich Ard]

Ron: Well, that'll certainly teach me to RTFA...but I have to agree with Patrick that it seems like using a sledgehammer on a ten-penny nail.