Dear Mr Annan
Congratulations on your appointment as Chair of the Board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. In your inaugural lecture in Capetown you said categorically that the Alliance would “work with farmers using traditional seeds known to them”. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “traditional seeds,” especially in view of Agra’s strong focus on breeding: “we will develop improved varieties for the full range of Africa’s important staple food crops,” it says on the Agra web site.
Maybe you just mean “not genetically engineered”. That might make sense, because the sentence before the one on “traditional seeds” reads: “We in the Alliance will not incorporate GMOs in our programmes.”
That blanket rejection of one kind of technology may win you a few fair-weather friends, though I fear they’ll find other things to complain about in AGRA’s efforts. Myself, I’m more concerned that you are rejecting out of hand one potential solution to a pressing problem of food security in Africa.
I’m talking bananas.
You surely know that in the East African Highlands the banana is the most important staple crop, supporting millions of farmers and nourishing millions more people. Maybe you also know that in Uganda the word for banana is the same as the word for food. And I’m sure you’re aware that there are several new diseases that threaten the crop in the region, and that for many of them there’s either no solution at all, or no solution the local farmers can afford.
Biotechnology holds out enormous promise for improving bananas, and Uganda has the home-grown expertise to explore this option. Not only is biotechnology a promising option for the banana, it is also one of the few technologies that might offer answers with any kind of speed. That’s because the cultivated bananas we eat very seldom — I want to say never, but I don’t want to be accused of being incautious — very seldom have seeds. So conventional breeding, and traditional seeds, are more or less out of the picture.
But that’s also the great thing about bananas. It makes them perfect subjects for genetic engineering. Consider:
Opponents fear genetic engineering because engineered genes will escape and harm wild relatives, creating superweeds and what have you. But cultivated bananas produce no pollen. So, no danger of escape. One up to bananas.
Opponents fear genetic engineering because engineered genes will escape and pollute farmers’ traditional varieties. Again, because bananas don’t make pollen this is not just unlikely, it is impossible. Two to bananas.
Opponents fear genetic engineering because big bad companies will monopolize the seeds, forcing farmers to buy afresh every season. Agra could afford to ignore plant protection laws, but better yet, bananas are multiplied from little plants that grow off the mother plant. Give a farmer one plant, and he will have it for as long as he likes. She can also supply friends and neighbours. This also addresses the problem of genetic pollution, because farmers simply don’t use banana seeds. Three up to bananas; they’re really hard to monopolize.
A fourth fear concerns human health. This is harder to be absolute about, but if the engineers restricted themselves to the banana’s own genepool they could minimize the risks to the point where it really makes no practical difference.
In other words, bananas are a perfect subject for genetic engineering. They need it. Africans are capable of doing it. And they meet the legitimate concerns of opponents. So why not seize the initiative and commit Agra to using the best tools available?
Of course, you would still have to ensure that the huge diversity of East African Highland bananas remains intact, because the people there have all sorts of varieties that they use for all sorts of purposes, and diversity itself offers a measure of protection against pests and diseases. But that would be easy.
Instead, I fear that political expediency has resulted in you throwing the baby out with the bathwater and the banana out with the ban on GMOs.
There is, however, hope. Maybe, just maybe, you really did mean “seeds” in the strict sense, which could conceivably give Agra license to engineer banana. There’s also, to be sure, loads of weaseling at Agra’s web site that I am sure offers ample scope for a change of mind on bananas — and everything else — at some point in the future.
Besides, keeping high-minded promises has become so passé.
With best wishes
Your pal
Jeremy
How about the Amflora potato? To quote: “You would think that this approval would have been easy since this potato has no seeds, no wild relatives to cross with in Europe, and only industrial use,†said Ralf-Michael Schmidt, vice president of BASF. “But it didn’t turn out that way.†Unquote.
And talking about potatoes: I was dearly missing a comment about the Peruvians who just (well, in fact some days ago already) decided to ban GM potatoes from the potatoes’ homeland. And this although potato is – after bananas – probably the second best subject for genetic engineering because a) most cultivated varietes and landraces are practically completely sterile, and b) farmers only very rarely use potato seeds, but usually grow them from sprouts or ‘eyes’. So using a sterile potato variety would be a good option for genetic transformation without risking that any transgenes could “escape” to landraces or wild relatives via pollen exchange. Not that I am in favor of GMOs per se, but as Jeremy noted above: there are certain constraints that might be impossible or very difficult to be controlled with traditional breeding methods, but where genetic engineering – if used with caution – might offer a possible solution.
Thanks Luigi and Meike for your comments. You raise interesting points but personally I think there’s a world of difference between the banana and the potato.
First off, Luigi, I looked into the Amflora potato a little further, and I cannot see that the BASF boffins have done anything specific to prevent flowering or pollen production. A press release says only “Since potatoes do not have wild relatives in Europe and are propagated by tubers, not by seeds, it is extremely unlikely that out-crossing will take place”. That’s hardly the same as producing no flowers or pollen. As long as people can point to the fear of escape they will do so.
Meike, you say that “most cultivated varietes and landraces are practically completely sterile”. that is certainly not my experience, at least not with the cultivars available in England. I’d be extremely surprised if landraces were more sterile than cultivars. So if you have a citation to support that statement, I’d be delighted to learn about it.
More to the point, I don’t think potatoes, in Peru or anywhere else need genetic engineering in the same way that bananas in Africa do. Late blight can certainly be tackled without engineering, by conventional breeding and by the use of diversity in the fields. Other diseases, such as brown rot, are a problem for industrialized production but not, as far as I am aware, for small scale and subsistence farmers. So, why genetically engineer potatoes? Or, to put it another way, who would benefit from engineered potatoes?
BASF, obviously. And if they really want to reap the profits (you can forget about all the environmental rhetoric) they will do whatever is necessary to satisfy the authorities. Or they’ll grow their starch somewhere else where the people are essentially unconcerned (maybe rightly so).
The people who eat potatoes, however, have nothing to gain. Create a potato that prevents the common cold, and those people will beat a path to your door.
I sincerely believe that in ruling out one technology Kofi Annan and his chums at AGRA are doing a disservice to the poor farmers of east Africa, at least those who depend on banana. There may also be other crops that are generally propagated vegetatively that could also benefit from genetic engineering. I’m thinking of things like yam and cassava. I don’t know whether it would be possible completely to suppress flowering or pollen production in those crops. I do know that flowering and wild relatives are a vital component of the yam systems in parts of west Africa.
In conclusion, then, I believe that potatoes are a red herring in the discussion of GMOs and bananas.
Jeremy, I agree with you about the point whether or not there is a NEED to genetically modify potatoes, and deliberately did not comment on that issue in my last message. With respect to the sterility or fertility of modern potato cultivars and landraces: in general, diploid and tetraploid varieties (modern cultivars and many landraces) are fertile vs. the triploid and pentaploid cultivar groups which are highly sterile. The latter include for example the ‘Chaucha’ and ‘Curtilobum’ cultivar groups and another one with the unpronounceable name ‘Juzepczukii’. I have not seen any publications or other material detailing the distribution and production areas of different landraces and cultivars in the Andes, but I am sure it exists (CIP should have this information).
From personal discussions (Marc Gishlain, CIP) I know that some landraces belonging to these sterile cultivar groups are very popular and widely cultivated in the Andes. There is also a report by Robert Hymans from 2002 to the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture (“Assessing the risk of natural geneflow between wild and genetically modified cultivated potatoes: taxonomic and geographic considerations”) where he recommends that – IF genetic transformation was considered necessary – the most reasonable option would be to transform triploid, sterile landraces. He names a concrete example (‘Huayro’), a variety which belongs to the Chaucha group, has good culinary qualities and is grown mainly by smallholder farmers in the central Andes. That would also take BASF and others out of the equation since they are obviously more interested in the transformation of modern cultivars commercially grown in industrialized countries (which are mostly tetraploid, usually fertile Solanum tuberosum cultivars). And as you say, the need for modifying those is even more questionable.
The Director General of IFPRI, Joachim von Braun, has warned in an interview with the German newspaper, die Welt, that the current focus on climate change might divert attention from the pressing issue of global food security. In his interview he supports the idea of using GMOs to fight food insecurity and calls upon rich nations to stop their blockade of GM technology.
For those of you who are able to understand some German, you can find the whole interview here.