I think compared to my essays before this I’m going to be a bit brief oddly enough because far too much happened to explain it all so I’m going to focus on just the one thing that stood out most to me between DuPont Pioneer seed company and the Corn Growers Association meeting. Of course my science leads me away from the more political and frustrating/confusing information we got from the Iowa Corn Growers Association and toward the hard sciences from seed engineering. I’ve heard about GMOs for a while, and didn’t really know much about the varieties that can be made and how inaccurate it is to lump all of them together as one entity. First of all, we learned that these companies still use old hybridization methods too; in fact, they’re usually quicker from research to market since theirs a whole lot less regulation. This method would be growing plants with different genetics and breeding the two together to get the best of both worlds (theoretically), but with the added science of looking at the DNA level to make sure that you understand your plant. We know enough about genetics to know some key genes that affect properties and can see what those are in the plants that are hybridized so even non-visible traits like water efficiency can be achieved (Duponts new AQUAmax fits this bill).

GMOs are a short cut in a sense that takes a normal plant embryo and forces the desired gene in there. Surprisingly they can literally force it in with a pressure based gun… But they more frequently use bacteria that ordinarily break DNA to cause diseases for the job. It just involves modifying the bacteria to insert the desired genes instead of inserting their disease genes (sounds scary but it’s more common than you’d think, we do the same to get a lot of pharmaceutical materials. Why make it when you can trick nature to do it safely for a fraction the cost). Then you have a plant with the desired gene, but where that gene came from can be widely different. What it’s for also causes complications because one gene is to allow the plant to incorporate a small amount of pesticide within it so we don’t have to spray as much (not hypothetical scenarios here) and another one makes the plant produce more vitamins to combat malnourishment in the third world (golden rice) and yet another one lets the plant tolerate even more herbicide so we can spray harsher chemicals for weeds. Those are all very different scenarios and different ethical battles that you can decide whether you believe justify GMOs. Additionally some GMOs don’t actually insert anything, they just change what the natural DNA does; soy for example has been made to not express 1 or 2 genes so that they no longer produce trans fats. They didn’t add anything, they just “turned off” a gene. Some genes that are added are from the same plant (corn to corn), and some come from another source in nature (bacteria to corn). These take much longer to hit the market since they require extensive testing for safety and allergens, but are a bit more genetically precise. Clearly after all that you can’t really say all GMOs are one bad or good entity and you certainly can’t say seed companies making them are purely bad for doing so since they’re also making hybrid varieties. It’s all based on what the market demands. My personal views on GMOs was that they’re understood and created in a controlled environment, produce good results, but may have some long term issues for health or the environment that just haven’t yet been tested for by my knowledge. It’s a shortcut and a direct change to a natural product, both of which usually come with some cost. More importantly to me is that you and I likely eat GMOs often and just don’t know because they still don’t need labeling at all in the US. I don’t know and didn’t hear much about why not, but I find that something I personally find concerning. Far more so the fact that these seeds are usually patented and sterile, and I have heard of court cases against farmers for GMOs they didn’t buy, ending up in their field. Being sterile just means farmers have to buy the seed each year, which creates an issue if they become the norm in the developing world (as it would legitimately increase crop yields dramatically) where most farmers couldn’t afford to buy them. This is referred to as the 2nd green revolution, the first being our move to high input, high yield, large scale farming to the developing world. These issues are far more important ethical concerns to me at least than the actual act of modifying an organism’s genes directly and something I wish I heard more about, but certainly feel would have either been a big argument or would have been an inappropriate thing to bring up in their company.