Effects Of Genetic Engineering On Agriculture Essay

, Research Paper

Effects of Genetic Engineering on Agriculture By: Nic The Effects of Genetic Engineering on Agriculture Agribiotechnology is the study of making altered agricultural products. Agribusiness is trying to alter the genes of already existing products to try to enhance the biocompetitiveness and adaptability of crops by enhancing plant resistance to drought, salinity, disease, pests and herbicides. They are going to try to enhance their growth, productivity, nutrient value, and chemical composition. The old way of doing this was through selective breeding, special fertilizer, and hormones. This seems now somewhat outdated with today s technology. Genetic engineering comes with many downfalls. Increased production through genetic engineering could exhaust nonrenewable resources more rapidly and fail to feed a larger and more dependent human population. In Africa, and South and Central America, super breeds of crops, irrigation and hydroelectric dams, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and agripoisons exported to less developed countries produced great short-term profits but destroyed already existing, more regenerative, traditional farming practices, ultimately destroying the communities and fragile land. Natural deserts, swamps and salt marshes need to be preserved to protect biodiversity and the integrity of the Earth s ecology. Introducing genetically engineered organisms into the environment means that these areas could be invaded by these new species therefore furthering loss of natural ecosystems. A major concern of farmers and scientists regarding engineered crops is that they are afraid that these new plants which would be resistant to herbicides and other chemicals would breed with a nearby weedy relative and thus creating a superweed that would be resistant to herbicides. These plants would then choke out the crops. Another example of this would be with Pseudomonas syringae. This is a common bacterium on plants that causes frost to form on them. The lipoprotein coating of this bacterium is blown from the plants and soil into the atmosphere. Once in the upper atmospheric regions, these particles act as nuclei around which water collects and freezes to form ice. Some scientists consider this process absolutely essential for rain to fall. Genetic engineers are working on a strain of P. syringae that would not form frost on plants. Some scientists are concerned that these strains could conceivably cause serious climatic perturbations that inhibit rainfall and cause drought. Farmer s fields are not the only places that are threatened. Scientists are looking for a way to destroy lignin, an organic substance that makes trees rigid, by use of a genetically engineered enzyme. They believe that it would be of use to clean up the effluent form paper mills or for decomposing biological material for energy. This poses a threat to forests because it could destroy massive amounts of them by eating away their lignin. We could end up with no trees. Engineers could try to create organisms with a suicide gene so they only live for a very short time, but they would be alive long enough to do damage. These engineers and businesses, like Pioneer, Sandoz, Imperial Chemical Industries, Dow, Ciba-Geigy, Monsanto, Upjohn, Elanco, and Pitman-Moore to name the leading corporations in agribiotechnology, don t understand the impact that these engineered organisms can have on the existing fragile ecosystems. It is clear that the biotechnology industry is potentially one of the most serious threats to the biodiversity and ecological integrity of planet Earth. The threat will become a reality if this technology is applied with the same values and attitude toward life and the biosphere that sanctioned and promoted the wholesale application of pesticides and the development of capital-intensive monoculture farming and forestry. But this is not to say that this new technology could not be used appropriately. For example, it could be used to engineer plants to help halt the spread of deserts; to develop microorganisms and plants to synthesize essential biologics, such as insulin and antibodies; to help in water treatment to remove pesticides (bioremidiation), heavy metals, and other industrial and agrochemical poisons. Scientists must be extremely cautious about releasing genetically engineered organisms into the environment. The deliberate and accidental release of exotic, nonindigenous plant and animal species has caused considerable harm to the ecosystem already. Modern agriculture operates so close to the edge of disaster that the U.S. Department of Agriculture Research Service spent $23.5 million in 1991 on biological control programs. Exotic foreign weeds, such as the field star thistle, and bugs such as the Russian wheat aphid, accidentally imported in contaminated agricultural produce and seeds, along with indigenous agricultural pests such as grasshoppers and medflies, are a serious and costly problem. The rationale of using high-risk biological controls – such as releasing Australian wasps to control grasshoppers- as an alternative to more costly pesticides is the same rationale that the biotech industry is employing to justify the use of various genetically engineered products as alternatives to chemical pesticides. The plethora of biological immigrants – exotic plant and insect pests that are a threat to agriculture and are responsible for millions of dollars of crop damage and loss in the