It isn’t always clear whether the key concern is food safety or economic advantage, but there’s no doubt that many governments and non-governmental organizations see genetic engineering in agriculture as a controversy that will live on for years to come.

Since 2002, the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives at its November annual meeting has hosted a debate on some important question of public policy, and the 2008 edition featured two advocates who ably argued the pros and cons of agricultural biotechnology.

Wayne Weiland of Waunakee, Wisconsin, is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and private consultant to dairy farmers on animal nutrition. Formerly associated with Monsanto Co., he worked in and eventually led its nationwide technological service organization.

Bill Wenzel of Stoughton, Wisconsin, served a heavily agricultural state legislative district as chief of staff for Senator Alice Clausing. He now heads the Farmer-to-Farmer Project on Genetic Engineering for the Washington, D.C.-based National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC).

Each debater was allotted 10 minutes for an opening statement, and a further five minutes for rebuttal, before the discussion was opened to questions from the roughly 300 co-op leaders in attendance.

It’s the Economy…

Bill Wenzel takes the skeptical position and the first turn at the microphone. He recalls “significant victories” on behalf of agriculture working with cooperatives at the state Capitol, and then turns to NFFC members disillusioned by results obtained with genetically engineered crops.

 “When the first genetically engineered crops were introduced farmers had planted some GMOs [genetically modified organisms] side-by-side with their conventional varieties to see how they would do both from a yield perspective and from a cost perspective,” Wenzel says. “And one of the things they found was that the promise didn’t really represent the reality—that the yields weren’t as good as they had been promised and the costs were considerably higher and as they began to talk fencerow to fencerow, they began to realize this was a situation that was common with many of their neighbors throughout the Midwest.”

Wenzel says the NFFC is neutral about the technology but leery of the economics. “We don’t take any position pro or con but we look at specifically how it impacts family farmers. What I call pocketbook issues. We’re talking about profitability, we’re talking about markets and we’re talking about liability, most frequently.”

 “There’s no real black and white in terms of this discussion,” he adds. “I have rice producers that I work with that are adamantly opposed to the commercialization of genetically engineered rice because of its impact on foreign markets and what that would mean to price,” he notes, but says the same people use GMO corn and soybeans “and really like those products.

 “There are pros and there are cons and it’s up to the farmer to decide whether it makes any sense for them,” he says.

Wenzel’s calculation of what makes sense is shaped partly by the European Union’s decision to bar imports of genetically modified corn. “The [U.S.] corn growers lost all of their European markets in 1998 when the EU moratorium went into effect and that effectively cost them $300 million a year in exports,” he said.

Later, U.S. wheat growers looking at EU corn restrictions took a position that caused Monsanto to pull back, Wenzel said.

 “The wheat growers kind of looked at that and said, we export 50 percent of what we grow and if we lose those major markets in the EU and Asia, we have effectively killed our potential to make our industry survive.”

Wheat growers, he said, “mounted an effective campaign” that by 2004 stopped the commercialization of Monsanto’s Roundup-ready wheat.

It’s the Food…

Wayne Weiland reviewed his upbringing on a Monroe County dairy farm, saying, “My goal in life was to become a veterinarian and the purpose of doing that was to help dairy producers of any size.” He then turned to population growth and the demand for food, fuel, and fiber.

“We had a billion people on planet Earth in 1930,” he said. “By 1960 we had three billion and by 1990 we had six billion and today it’s 6.85 billion so we’re just a tick shy of seven. If projections hold we’ll have about nine billion people in this world by 2030, 2040, somewhere in that range. The point is, we have a growing world population that we have to feed and the question becomes how are we going to do that?”

He produces a penknife and an apple, representing the Earth. The apple is quickly quartered and three quarters are put aside, eliminating the part of the planet covered by water. The remaining quarter is then halved, eliminating ice caps, mountain ranges and deserts.

The remaining eighth is then quartered, to represent the planet’s arable land. A sliver of skin peeled from the last 1/32nd of the apple, Weiland says, represents topsoil.

 “That’s what we grow everything on. It ranges from three to six inches up to maybe five feet, but this is what grows all the food that supports the world. We’re down to a pretty tiny bit of planet Earth to work with and we’d better take care of it,” Weiland says.

 “The answer is improved efficiency, improved productivities,” he says: getting more from less.

 “The reason I take a pro-technology, pro-biotechnology approach is, if we’re going to feed this future world we have to be able to improve efficiencies, and technology and biotechnology are one way to do that, he says.

With policy makers having chosen a new mission for agriculture, Weiland notes that the challenge has intensified: “What used to be agriculture’s challenge to meet food and fiber needs has now become food, fiber, and fuel. And if you don’t think that’s putting a stress on things pay attention to your bill at the grocery store.”

Listing safe, affordable food; environmental protection; a strong social structure; and healthy communities, Weiland argues that the goals of a company like Monsanto and those of the NFFC are “really not that different,” but even so, “We can want the same thing and see two radically different paths to get there.”

It’s the Risk…

The debaters keep things cordial but their differences of opinion are more starkly revealed as the conclusion draws near.

Wenzel says genetic engineering is simply not the answer to “a huge problem in terms of where we’re going to get our food, fiber, and fuel for an ever-growing population.”

In July, Wenzel says, Monsanto announced a 40 percent price increase for certain corn varieties. “Now, in impoverished third-world countries, how are farmers going to pay for those seeds whether or not they work, which is a huge issue. I think we have to at least come to it from an economic standpoint to say does this make any sense economically, to try to use genetically engineered crops as the salvation to third world hunger issues, and I would say no.

 “What makes more sense from our perspective,” Wenzel says, “would be to use some of the knowledge and some of the conventional technologies that we can take to the third-world countries and show them better methods of farming in the climates, in the cultures that they have in a system that is economically viable for them.”

He takes aim at alleged ill-treatment of farmers, saying, “Monsanto likes to sue farmers for suspected and alleged unauthorized use of their GMO technologies and as a federal court judge has indicated in one of his opinions in southern Illinois, ‘these scorched–earth policies of Monsanto are destroying the fabric of rural communities in America.’”

Weiland retorts that it’s all about risk, and whether taking a risk or not taking one is, well—the bigger risk.

Acknowledging that errors can result both from action and from inaction, Weiland says, “Supporters of biotechnology see what can go right with the technology and see it as a tool to meet those future world needs that we talked about. Biotech ‘distractors’ want to avoid [action-related] errors. They want to avoid any mistake occurring. They see what could go wrong with the technology and they don’t want to take that chance.”

He adds: “We have to balance innovation with conservation, and typically the market will tell you when to innovate and when to conserve. The market, at least in my mind, tells me that we have a challenge ahead of us to feed the world, to improve diets, to improve health, and so forth and that biotechnology offers an opportunity.”

Wenzel has characterized the issue as one involving “a corporate culture versus a culture that says we can provide other cultures with the tools necessary to make their agriculture self-sustaining and we can do it in a way that fits their climate, their culture, and their beliefs.”

 “There are better ways to solve the world food crisis than to force genetic engineering technology down the throats of the rest of the world,” he says.

Weiland replies, “I don’t think any biotechnology company has forced it on people, I beg to differ. I believe that the market has indicated a need and I think that the rapid growth of biotechnology across the world has indicated that there’s a market demand for it, and I don’t think there’s anybody that’s forcing that issue.”  

It’s Not Going Away

Toward the debate’s end, a listener might have visualized two determined advocates digging in to hardened positions with no intention to budge, a tone reflected in questions that followed from the fully engaged audience.
In fact, the audience mirrored the debaters. Clearly, there was less interest in seeking information—questioners for the most part felt they had the information—than in putting an editorial comment on the record and challenging the advocates’ claims.

Welcome to the biotech debate. The co-ops’ version lasted one hour. By the time it’s resolved, we’ll have lost count.—Dave Hoopman