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Beyond the Rows is a Monsanto Company blog focused on agriculture. Monsanto employees write about Monsanto’s business, agriculture, biotechnology, and the farmer.
Mar 04, 2009 | Read | 55 Comments » Tags: GM Food, Soil Compaction, Why we do need GM food
Author: Monsantoco 
A couple months ago, waiting for my plane to take off, I found a lost National Geographic Magazine in the front seat pocket. With a lot of time ahead and not much to do, I decided to enjoy the eye-catching pictures you usually find inside. But, there was an article that caught my attention for most of the flight.
Traveling around the world, NatGeo journalist Charles C. Mann studied the way people take care of their soil to survive, and how human behavior can impact present and future generations. There are several ways of wasting our resources and human beings have been doing all of them. Regarding the soil, hundreds of thousands of America’s finest cropland acres are being destroyed by compaction–a process that takes place when livestock and heavy machinery compress the soil, causing it to lose pore space, reducing harvest and making Midwestern U.S. farmers lose $ 100 million in revenue every year.
When the soil has been compacted, roots can’t penetrate it and water can’t drain and runs off–causing erosion that can take years or decades to be reversed.
This process is a consequence of tillage. U.S. farmers have been tilling their fields to prepare soil by plowing, ripping or turning it for hundreds of years, but the introduction of tractors in the 1900s made modern and large-scale agriculture possible. Since then, our soil has been plowed over and over every year, converting this profitable activity into an environmental issue.
The use of tilling machinery in conventional agriculture inverts soil layers–mixing air into the soil and increasing microbial activity dramatically over baseline levels. When that happens, soil organic matter is broken down quickly and carbon is lost into the atmosphere, which–combined to the emissions from farm equipment itself–intensify the greenhouse effect, or global warming.
The introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops in the last decade made no-till farming possible. Biotech developed crops are resistant to the use of readily biodegradable herbicides, like glyphosate. Herbicides–when used in combination with crops that were genetically modified to resist their action–kill the weeds that compete with crops for the limited soil nutrients available. This increases the crop’s yield dramatically and in a safe way, since these herbicides are degraded by microbes and fungi in the soil or in surface water.
Thanks to the implementation of herbicide programs, the use of mechanical machinery is diminished, leaving the soil intact while all crop residues are left on the field–conserving soil structure in its natural way, slowing and sometimes stopping field carbon loss.
In addition, no-till farming increases soil quality, protecting it from water erosion and structural breakdown. Crop residues limit evaporation–conserving water for plant growth by helping water infiltrate the soil where it can be used.
Finally, less tillage of the soil reduces labor, and related fuel and machinery costs. This means important economic benefits for farmers, in addition to the monetary grants and awards that are becoming available to those who reduce their tillage activity.
In 1991, the International Soil Reference and Information Centre estimated humankind has degraded more than 7.5 million square miles of land, “trashing an area the size of the United States and Canada combined.” By 2030, Earth’s population will reach 8.3 billion people and to feed them “farmers will have to grow 30 percent more grain than they do now.”
Only 11 percent of the world’s land is used to produce food for the world population. It is time to understand the only way to survive as a species is taking care of our resources and spreading positive activities like no-tillage around the world.
10 Reasons We Do Need GM Foods
Santiago is a Manager of Public Affairs at Monsanto. He was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, post-graduate studies in Social Communication & Media and an MBA in Marketing Management. Prior to working at Monsanto, Santiago taught PR for almost seven years while working as a Communications Advisor for several organizations and industries. He also worked for a multi-national IT company and an Oil & Gas company as PR Manager.
Category: At Monsanto
The non-ethical nature of the study is the fact that controlled long-term studies on humans are by their nature unethical (aswell as essentially logistically impossible with regards to GM foods) – at least as far as I remember any discussion around the ethicality (yes I made that word up) of experimenting on people.
Not all the studies linked were livestock production studies – there was also rat gavage studies involved, aswell as non-health related environmental impact studies. I’ll admit that livestock production studies are not designed to assess human health risks, although I would argue that the neutral performance of GM products in these studies does add weight to the arguement that GM foods have no human health implications (equally should a livestock production study show that GM food harmed livestock in production it would be a pretty fair assumption that this could be applied to human health also)
In my opinion, all the animal safety studies can be taken as evidence towards the safety of GM foods to humans – I wouldnt go so far as to say any individual study offers definitive proof – but the evidence available shows no differences (and hence no followup with longer term safety studies – which possibly would be worthwhile undertaking for Monsanto as a purely PR exercise) – I think (John?) summed up the reasoning behind broiler hen studies etc rather well, so I’ll just refer you back to his posting (wherever it is) for the logic there.
It would be good to discuss the studies case by case on a separate forum to get more specific feedback, in my opinion. Assumptions must always be questioned and hopefully backed up with evidence. Any instructor would require validation of assumptions, as do peer-reviewed journals if done well. Animal production studies usually look for things like weight of deboned breast meat, fat pads, etc. When we look at human health, we often want to measure different indicators of health. A hen has a very different digestive tract from a human, as does a cow. A trout is really pushing it in my opinion. But I am sure there are lessons to learn. It depends on the design of the experiment.
As for the studies I have asked for to be released, I’m not certain that all of Monsanto’s safety studies have been released to date, along with the data. I know the Freedom of Information Act was used to release some of the studies. I believe the people deserve to know what facts the assumed safety of their food is based on.
I still would like to know if Monsanto is denying scientists access to gm lines and non-gm near isolines for study? We have lots of accounts of this. If so, why? Any study can be reproduced by Monsanto or reviewed for design etc. Why not support research,or at least give access to seed samples? I find that odd and suspicious. Is Monsanto discouraging information and the scientific method?
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/corporateMonopolyOfScience.php
What is less well known is that the agreements also prohibit you from using the seeds for research. That may not matter to most farmers, but it is important because it means that research into GM crops can be done only by the biotech companies or with their approval. If they don’t want a particular piece of research carried out, they can refuse permission to use their seeds. Even when they have given permission, if they don’t like the way the research is turning out they can stop it, or prevent the results from being published. Consequently, important decisions on GM crops and all GM organisms (GMOs) are increasingly based on evidence selected by the companies to put them and their products in the best possible light.
That’s why when the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) invited comments from the public in advance of two meetings on GM crops it was holding earlier this year, twenty six scientists submitted a statement protesting the “technology/stewardship agreements” they have to sign, which inhibit them from doing research for the public good. [2] As a result, “no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology”. The full statement is reproduced in the Box.
[see article link for statement]
The three companies Pollack contacted, Monsanto, Syngenta and Pioneer, told him that the restrictions were necessary to protect their relationship with government agencies. But when Pollack asked an EPA spokesman about this, he was told that the government only requires management of the crops’ insect resistance. Any other conditions were down to the companies; they have nothing to do with the government.