I begin my journey close to home: on my family’s farm near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My dad is passionate about environmental conservation, so he plants most of his fields with either native grasses or crops for animals to eat. From left to right, this field contains strips of non-GM native grasses, genetically modified (GM) alfalfa, GM corn, and non-GM sunflowers.
So what does genetically modified even mean? A genetically modified organism (“GMO”) is any organism that has been engineered to contain a gene from another species. If you remember back to high school biology, genes provide the code that tells cells how to make proteins. There are many different types of GM crops and traits, which I will write about as I travel the world. In this picture, thanks to a bacterial gene, the GM alfalfa can produce a protein that allows it to survive the application of glyphosate, a common herbicide. Therefore, when my dad sprayed this field with glyphosate last week, the weeds (the tan bushes in the foreground) died, while the alfalfa survived. The corn hasn’t been sprayed yet, so there are a lot of weeds growing between the rows.
What’s up with the sunflowers? You can’t see it in this picture, but there are a bunch of really nasty weeds called thistle in the sunflower field. For the past 15 years, most farmers in my area (including my dad) have planted their fields with GM crops every season. Over the years, the thistle has evolved to resist glyphosate because of repeated sprayings. Now even if there were glyphosate-resistant sunflower seeds available, they wouldn’t be useful because the thistles would also be able to survive low levels of glyphosate application. Before planting this year, my dad sprayed both the entire field and individual thistles with extra herbicide to try to kill the weeds. He isn’t sure how this extra glyphosate application will affect the sunflowers, or even if he completely eradicated the thistle.
This is one farmer’s story. Over the next 3 months, I will tell the stories of farmers and agricultural scientists from around the world. I challenge you, dear reader, to view each of these stories in their own individual context. My dad uses GM crops to control the non-native invasive species that would crowd out the row-crops. Other farmers in Iowa use GM crops to maximize profit margins. The existence of herbicide-resistant weeds in Iowa is no reason to say that GM papayas are bad for farmers in Malaysia; at the same time, higher yields from GM maize in Illinois is no reason to say GM cowpea can solve food insecurity in Ghana. As the stories unfold, I encourage you to comment with your own opinions. Tune in after I leave on June 11th for more updates!