Date: Apr 23, 2016 Author: Emma Ea Ambrose Source: Journal & Courier (
click here to go to the source)
When Purdue University President Mitch Daniels blasted attacks on GMOs as "the most blatant anti-science of the age," he set off a rigorous debate about their merits.
Daniels' comments, although said out-of-state at the Agricultural Outlook Forum in Virginia, have resonated in a state already invested in the issue of genetic modification.
GMOs are genetically modified organisms whose DNA has been altered by the inclusion of non-naturally occurring traits. The process, in which individual genes are inserted into an organism, is often used to enhance performance, durability or immunity to certain substances.
With more than 15 million acres of farmland, one of the country's pre-eminent land-grant universities and a budding local foods movement, Indiana exists at a crossroads of communities with high stakes in the GMO discussion.
Despite the pervasiveness of GMO crops, however, there exists no consensus among professionals about the effects GMOs have on the environment, our health or the food and agriculture industry. And the debate is playing out across Greater Lafayette -- from restaurants to campus, from farmers to consumers.
It's about the product, not the politics
This is the case for Jon Hurley and Justin Henry, owners and chefs at Heirloom, a Lafayette farm-to-table restaurant. Heirloom stays away from most GMO products, but Hurley and Henry said it isn't a political decision -- it comes down to the kind of food they want to serve.
When people talk about GMO crops, the owners said, they're usually referring to corn or soybeans. Eighty-nine percent of corn grown in the United States is genetically modified, as are 94 percent of all soybeans, according to 2015 U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics.
"No one's talking about GMO cauliflower," Henry said.
Furthermore, most people aren't eating GMO crops in their natural state, but the processed result. An abundance of corn and soy perpetuates the abundance of processed food, Henry said, and that for Heirloom is the crux of the GMO issue.
Daniels calls out GMO opponents
"In Indiana right now, two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight and one in three children are. That is directly tied to GMO corn and soy. That is because those things are not food, they are food products. ... They are cheap textured protein. They become high fructose corn syrup, and they become simple carbohydrates that get put into processed food."
According to the Non-GMO project, 80 percent of processed foods contain GMOs. Non-GMO runs a product verification program to assess whether products are non-GMO. Retailers that want to identify products as non-GMO partner with the project to receive a verification seal.
Heirloom almost entirely forgoes processed ingredients.
"That makes us one of those places which makes you think, 'Oh they must be anti-GMO because they're taking a stance,' but it was a stance of quality," Henry said.
Hurley and Henry expressed concerns about environmental sustainability as GMOs become more pervasive, and neither buys Daniels' argument about GMOs providing food security.
"I think it's scary to see a former governor, who was responsible for his citizens (and) their continued health, then become a president of a land-grant college and say that GMOs are a solution in their current state." Henry said. "The products that are made of corn and soy and put into boxes are not nutritious; they're empty calories. So the argument falls short."
Take, for example, one of the common corn byproducts Henry referenced. High fructose corn syrup constitutes what the FDA calls an "added sugar," or one that is not naturally occurring and contains little nutritional value.
The FDA has advocated the labeling of products with added sugars on recommendations from health organizations, including the American Heart Association, that suggest Americans decrease their intake of non-natural sugars. The FDA also refers to these products as "empty calories."
Transgenic vs. genomic technologies
One solution is to develop nutrient-rich crops through transgenics or genomics.
Genomics naturally selects favorable genes that are crossbred with other varieties, often to enhance nutrition. Transgenics is the technology used to create GMOs, which inserts an entire gene into an organism.
Torbert Rocheford, a Purdue University agronomy professor, used genomics to develop an orange corn variety enhanced with vitamin A, a project tied closely to issues of food security. He sought to combat the issue of vitamin A deficiency in Africa, a pervasive problem that accounts for about 250,000 deaths annually.
When he was developing orange corn in 2001, Rocheford said, African governments didn't typically accept GMO seed. It was out of necessity -- not a distrust of transgenics -- that Rocheford used genomics.
Working with HarvestPlus, Rocheford introduced the crop to several African countries. HarvestPlus is a non-governmental organization that promotes crops, such as orange corn, that are fortified with vitamins and minerals, in less developed nations.
A pile of "orange corn" in Zambia.
A pile of "orange corn" in Zambia. (Photo: Courtesy of Torbert Rocheford & HarvestPlus.)
When Rocheford approached Heirloom about serving the corn, Henry and Hurley agreed to incorporate it into their menu. In 2015, Rocheford founded NutraMaize with his son, Evan Rocheford, who now serves as the company's CEO. The intent is to make orange corn available to U.S markets, according to Torbert Rocheford, because it is nutritious and "tastes so good."
Ensuring that orange corn is eaten in the West is key to promoting the crop within Africa and less developed nations, and part of the reason Heirloom agreed to serve it.
"In less developed nations they will ask, 'Well, do Westerns eat it?' Because they don't want our dregs. They don't want our cast offs. And who would?" Henry said.
Evan Rocheford and his father said because orange corn is non-GMO people assume they are anti-GMO, but that's not the case. Both see potential for the technology in different areas, although both anticipate different shortcomings.
Torbert Rocheford agrees with Daniels' stance on GMOs.
"He was reaching out to universities and industries to be more proactive in providing the facts, providing education on GMOs, because the anti-GMO movement has taken the initiative and they're building momentum. Universities and industries aren't doing enough to get the facts out there," he said.
Torbert Rocheford with his corn at Purdue's Agronomy
Torbert Rocheford with his corn at Purdue's Agronomy Center for Research and Education (ACRE). (Photo: Courtesy of Torbert Rocheford.)
Gauging consumer perspective
It's not yet clear how important non-GMO products are to consumers.
Kaitlin Kelly-Thompson, who shops at Fresh Thyme Farmer's Market in Lafayette, said she doesn't make purchasing decisions based on whether a food is genetically modified or contains GMOs.
"I don't go out of my way to purchase food with a non-GMO label. My primary goal when purchasing food is to find things that are vegan and being able to buy in-season fresh produce," Kelly-Thompson said.
On the other hand, shoppers like Sara Moulton are disconcerted by the pervasiveness of GMO products.
"I think the jury is still out. ... I think there are unforeseen consequences to messing with nature, and until we've done more research, I don't think it should be so pervasive," Moulton said as she browsed City Foods Co-Op Wednesday afternoon. Moulton is an American chef and TV personality who is in town to teach a cooking series.
Food businesses struggle with supply, demand
She added that she feels Americans need to be told when GMOs are present in foods.
Katie Rocheford, Torbert Rocheford's wife, volunteers with City Foods in downtown Lafayette. She and others at the co-op are trying to assess more broadly what the market for non-GMO crops looks like in Greater Lafayette.
"We're trying to figure out what things really interest people and what they firmly care about and what we think they care about that maybe they don't," Rocheford said. She said it has been difficult to balance the concerns of more vocal patrons while also trying to make wares affordable.
Rocheford said she senses people are starting to care not just about organic, non-GMO labels but local produce.
She, however, doesn't believe there is anything inherently wrong with GMO technology and said a lot of fear over GMOs stems from a misunderstanding of the technology. Denying the potential for GMOs is to deny the validity of science, Rocheford said, and she sympathizes with Daniels' frustration.
"Things that you can't figure out, maybe your natural inclination is to be skeptical or afraid," she said.
Searching for sustainability
Evan Rocheford agreed anti-GMO activists have successfully cultivated suspicion over GMOs, but the concerns they tout are not the central problem with GMOs, which are, in his opinion, ecological.
"It's really easy to say this a zombie food and it might hurt you," he said. "It's a lot harder to discuss the potential environmental impacts of GMOs because each specific GMO technology affects the ecology and sustainability of our cropping systems differently."
Sustainability, of course, is a matter of perspective.
"Everyone has their own interpretation of sustainability," said farmhand Neil Moseley. "To me, sustainable is balancing economic, environmental and social impact factors and how that affects everybody within the balance. If we focus on nothing but environmental impacts, we might cause detriment to those other areas."
Moseley works on several local farms that use GMOs, including Osborn Farms. He also serves on Tippecanoe County's Farm Bureau. The greatest benefit Moseley said he has witnessed is a higher crop yield per acre and the ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions.
"You're actually able to produce instead of relying on insurance," he said.
More women assuming leadership on farms
Moseley appreciates Daniels' support of GMO technology. He said Daniels' comments are not politically motivated but reflect the scientific consensus.
But for most farmers, Moseley said, growing GMO crops is a business decision. Questions of science and politics don't enter into the equation.
This is the case for farmer Jim Benham, who owns a farm that cultivates non-GMO soybeans. In 2014, Benham began to see a market for them and knew he could get a higher premium, so he began the process of cultivating a non-GMO crop.
"I'm not the saint you think I am," Benham said, "I just follow the dollar."
Conventional soybeans sell for about $10 a bushel whereas organic non-GMO soybeans bring in about double that price, according to Christopher Hurt, a Purdue agriculture economics professor.
Benham doesn't have environmental or health concerns when it comes to GMOs, but he said he thinks they are responsible for driving down the cost of corn and soybean crops. Because of GMOs, farmers can't get a fair price for their product, according to Benham.
"Unfortunately in agriculture, we're making half what we did three years ago," Benham said, a fact he attributes to the oversaturation of corn and soy markets. The net cash income for agriculture has dropped by more than $44 million since 2013, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which didn't specify a cause for the decrease.
Moseley said the decision to grow GMOs comes down to the economic realities for each farmer. Although he has found it difficult to explain the benefits of GMOs to opponents while countering their emotion with facts and science, he said the best way to fight fear and misinformation is to continue research.
Still, Henry worries about the impact GMOs have on smaller farmers. While no farmer is forced to grow GMO crops, contracts with large seed companies like Monsanto can be difficult to get out of, and accompanying patent laws ruinous.
GMOs, Henry said, "pull you into this structured system of economy where you're wrapped into it and there's no way out. You've seen farmers have killed themselves in some of the least developed nations because they end up in this system and they end up stuck in it. ... From what I've seen, the GMO system hasn't worked in America. ... I think we've been tricked."
The inability to escape the pull of GMOs may be true even for farmers who have encountered success with non-GMO crops. Benham's own situation reinforces this notion. He said many aspects of contemporary agriculture are made easier by growing GMO crops.
"I'm retiring," Benham said, "and my son-in-law is going back to using GMOs because it's easier to fight weeds."
Trangenics vs. genomics
Transgenic technology is used to create GMOs. It is the process of inserting an entire gene from one organism into another. For example, a gene from a fish might be inserted into a tomato to produce a certain trait.
Genomics identifies favorable natural variation in DNA that may then be crossed with other organisms, often to enhance nutrition.
Purdue company to save starving alpacas in Peru
