Writing this column over the years, I have been a supporter of the idea of genetically modified agriculture.
When I look to the future, I see two trends that suggest to me there is a need for genetically modified crops and livestock.
On the one hand, world populations are trending ever higher, with little effort being made to even discuss how to control that side of things. At the same time, agricultural land is very much a finite resource.
Those two trends run counter to each other, and in the future could well spell far more hungry mouths to feed with not enough food to do it.
Genetic modification of plants that could increase food production levels is, to me, a logical road for science to head down.
That said, when one starts down a road, it is likely you will hit a few bumps, and come to some curves that may warrant slowing down a bit as the impact of taking that corner is fully understood.
Most in the agricultural community are now aware of the so-called "terminator" gene. The idea of the gene has met with some strong opposition, and perhaps with good reason.
The idea of the gene has little to do with increasing production, but has a lot to do with increasing profits.
The gene is designed to make a crop so that the seed produced will not produce a subsequent crop.
That runs counter to the long held tradition of farmers being able to retain seed for subsequent crops.
The inability to grow a crop year-to-year is particularly disturbing in terms of farmers in Third World countries where farmers have limited resources to seed.
Terminator genes are a good way to help ensure seed companies sell product, and protect proprietary varieties, but they may not be the best things in terms of feeding a growing population.
And then in the August 2012 edition of The Ag Advance, there is a story on controlling diamondback moths.
"New on the scene, Oxitec Ltd. from Oxford, UK, has developed a new alternative strategy that holds great promise. The British biotech company uses advanced genetic techniques to insert a female-specific 'lethality gene' into the moth genome. This allows for large-scale production of Oxitec males to be released into a specific target area. They mate with wild females and the resulting female offspring will not reach adulthood. As the females in the population decline, the local target insect population will follow," details the story.
The idea of a "lethality" gene is one that even has me, as a supporter of GM technology, doing a double take.
While the application of the technology to control insect pests is something that could greatly improve crop production, it is also something that has the potential to be a disaster in the making, whether by a transfer to wild populations or by the technology being ill used.
In a time of terrorism, when nerve gases and the potential for viral attacks is already all too real, the mere thought of "lethality" genes has to be worrisome.
The use of GM technology may be the best hope to feed the world of tomorrow, but the technology must also be used with caution to avert the stuff of science fiction gone bad.
