GMOs & My Ultimate Climate Test: Pests Or Pesos?

MANILA: You decide: GMO or MOG?

GMO means genetically modified organism, plant or animal or whatever. The eggplant you're eating now at home or in a restaurant is probably GMO; your sweet corn too. Bt talong, Bt corn. Bt for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that produces a substance that is toxic to the fruit & stem borers in eggplant and corn, the specific Bt gene inserted into the crop by scientists to defeat the pests without spraying any pesticide – the Bt produces the toxin that kills the larvae of the borers.

With a GMO food you are eating bacteria of the known poisonous type. I don't like the idea of eating bacteria when I know I'm eating bacteria.

Actually, we are eating bacteria all the time, so what else is new?

So I'm playing now with GMO. So, I juxtapose a letter and GMO comes out as MOG. Is there such a word? There is.

MOG means (Merriam-Webster, merriam-webster.com):

dialectal: to move away; depart. chiefly dialectal: to walk slowly and steadily; jog. dialectal, England: to move or cause to move from one place to another.

Perfect for my writing!? Yes. And No.

Many years ago I thought it wicked that our neighbor E who was an agriculturist and worked in Mindanao had been giving us sweet corn as pasalubong, a Filipino kind of a gift when someone arrives from travel. It meant that he remembered us because we were friends of the family. But years later, when his family had moved out of the compound, I realized that those ears of sweet corn were GMOs, because he was working as a sales somebody for Syngenta. And I didn't relish the memory. GMOs were bad, as far as that was concerned.

In the last 3 years in fact, I have been a consultant for an extension project of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). DAR calls it ARCCESS, for Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity & Extension Support Services. We have been mentoring agrarian farmer beneficiaries in Pangasinan and La Union on technologies and systems. In carrying out our part of the ARCCESS, we came up with the concept of Farmer's Choice, that is, we taught the farmers that they had options in dealing with steps along the whole farming process, up to and including marketing of produce. We did not touch on GMOs in our lectures, discussions and workshops.

Inevitably, the private conversations of our team during the many-hours-long private car rides in between field visits would turn to GMOs. Our team leader Professor Butchoy Espino of the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA), would tell us consultants, with conviction, "GMO na kaysa pesticide." I'll take GMO rather than pesticide. He meant, eating a GMO food is preferable to ingesting pesticide residues through your innocent-looking vegetable like eggplant and corn. I wasn't convinced to like GMO, but I wasn't arguing.

That was then and this is now.

Just this month, just last week, I realized that, based on my own personal experience, GMOs are only half the devil they are portrayed to be. I am an original aboriginal; I have a very independent mind; I had come to that conclusion on my own: GMOs are safe (see my essay, "Terminator Mentality: Science, Pests, Pesticides & GMOs," 21 July 2016, Primate Change, blogspot.co.id).

So, today I say, "Move away MOG!" GMO is my cup of tea now, no pesticides in the drink.

If you're still unconvinced about the wisdom of eating GMO foods, consider the climate change challenge. About that and biotechnology, bio (life) plus technology ("systematic treatment of an art of craft" – American Heritage Dictionary), according to Andrew Iloh & Rose Gidado (23 May 2016, Cornell Alliance For Science, cornell.edu):

Biotechnology can contribute positively by mitigating the impact of climate change in agriculture through greenhouse gas reduction, crops adaptation and increase in yield using less land.

Yes, but that's mixing the grains and chaff; I'd like to separate them.

Generally, I agree with the statement that "Biotechnology can contribute positively" to combating climate change. Specifically, I must correct the statement that greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and using less land belong to mitigation. It's a matter of definition and distinction, and this is mine: To adapt is to prevent damage or adverse impact; to mitigate is to reduce damage to the one that is not adapted or adaptable.

Thus, GHG reduction belongs to adaptation – ultimately, you are preventing climate change from occurring; you are reducing the cause of the damage, not the damage itself. Thus, using less land is also adaptation, not mitigation – you are reducing the GHG emission. Thus, planting a flood-resistant rice that will stop La Niña from destroying your crop is adaptation; you are preventing damage, not reducing the cause of or the damage itself.

James Conca reports on American rice and GHG ("New Variety Of Rice Fights Global Warming And Global Hunger," 30 November 2015, Forbes, forbes.com):

A slight change in a single gene of rice can avoid the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions each year as all the wind turbines in the world, the same as 15 nuclear power plants. Work led by Dr Christer Jansson at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that transferring one gene from barley to rice lowered the methane (CH4 or natural gas) emissions from rice paddies to almost zero.

That is adaptation. CH4 has the 2nd highest global warming potential (GWP) of the 3 most-often mentioned GHGs: #1 nitrous oxide (N2O) with 300 units of GWP, #2 CH4 with 24 units, and #3 carbon dioxide (CO2) with 1 unit, since it is the basis for the computations.

So, if you ask me, GMOs pass the discernment test for climate change as far as science is concerned.

But in this case, science is not enough. What about as far as economics is concerned, as far as the poor farmers remain failures despite the success of their GMO crops?

GMOs combating climate change? Check!
GMOs combating pests? Check!
GMOs combating poverty? Chuck!

Pests, Yes.
Pesos, No.

Neither crop pests nor plant diseases are the ultimate challenge of the poor farmers. Their ultimate constraint is the failure of the production and marketing systems to give them their due anywhere along the value chain from seed to spoon. In production, they are given access to inputs (seeds and such) but at such usurious rates. In marketing, they are taken advantage of by the merchants themselves, not to mention middlemen moving produce for the merchants. It's always a buyer's market.

Now then, I have this ultimate GMO challenge, and it is this:

To the GMO people, corporate or scientific: If you can come up with a technological breakthrough to defeat for the small farmers the human borers called opportunists, then I will endorse GMO 100%! Otherwise, I will continue to sell you as just one of the farmers' options.

GMO or MOG?