Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment: Science, Policy, and Social Issues By S. Krimsky and R. P. Wrubel (review)

Abstract

Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment: Science, Policy, and Social Issues. By S. KRiMSKYand R. P. Wrubel. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1996. Pp. 294. 47.50; Paper 18.95 The fact that controversies over the environmental implications of agricultural biotechnology have been so prominent seems somewhat ironic. As Krimsky and Wrubel stress in Chapters 1 and 11 ?? Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment, agriculture is a fairly minor sector ofcommercial biotechnology, accounting for only 17.7 percent of private investment in the early 1990s, or less than a quarter of the amount invested in diagnostics and therapeutics. In addition to agriculture being small potatoes in the world ofbiotechnology, agricultural biotechnology involves the utilization of "natural" processes, which should allow these technologies to be more environmentally benign than the chemical inputs they are presumably replacing. As if to anticipate these objections, Krimsky and Wrubel note on the first page of the book, " [I]nevitably, the questionwill be, Whatwas all the fuss aboutbiotechnology?" Krimsky and Wrubel's Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment does an admirable job at explaining "the fuss." Their book is the most comprehensive social analysis to date of the reasons for and complexities of the environmental impacts and implications ofagricultural biotechnologies. The book has three major components . The first is introductory material (Introduction and Chapter 1), which provides background on theory and empirical research on agricultural research and technological change. The heart of the book consists of nine case-study chapters on particular biotechnology products. The selection of case studies is comprehensive and appropriate, including: biotechnology products of historical significance (i.e., die "ice-minus" Pseudomonas that largely defined the early politics of regulation of GEOs) ; all of the major agricultural biotechnology products now in the pipeline that are likely to have significant environmental implications or impacts (especially bST, herbicide-tolerant crop varieties, Bt-engineered crops) ; transgenic plant products and "identity-preserved" crops (e.g., Flavr Savr tomato); biotechnologies with future promise but uncertainty of future success (e.g., transgenic nitrogen -fixing crops and bacteria); and combinations of the preceding categories (e.g., transgenic livestock for "transgenic pharming" vs. food production). The concluding material (Chapter 11 and Conclusion) provides an overview of the issues and evidence on agricultural biotechnology and the environment. Each of the case-study chapters contains a terse but useful history of the development of the technology and of the debate and evidence regarding environmental and other impacts. The core scientific literatures on each technology are identified relatively well, though the coverage of the critical or dissident literature is generally better than that of the conventional or promotional literatures. For better or worse, "environment" is employed in a broad way, with human health implications figuring very prominently in many of the chapters. The chapters are also excellent at teasing out potentially important indirect environmental effects of particular biotechnology products, as well as the more obvious direct ones. A good example concerns recombinant bST. While promoters of the technology claim that bST will have environmental benefits (because it will reduce the cow population and involve less land under cultivation and less manure) , Krimsky and Wrubel demonstrate that it could have the opposite effect. Because bST is a capital-intensive technology that is most suitable for larger farms, the remaining cows will be concentrated on larger (often "factory") dairy farms, where manure disposal and pollution can be more 310 Book Reviews serious problems. And the cropland "released" from feeding dairy cows will notjust lie fallow. It will likely be shifted from legumes and grasses to more environmentally destructive monocultural row crops. The essence of Krimsky and Wrubel's argument is that while biotechnology need not have negative environmental impacts, several of these technologies are very likely to do so. In the authors' view, while biotechnology has some potential to substitute for chemicals, the overall thrust of the first generation of agricultural biotechnologies is that they are being developed to be compatible with intensive, chemically based agriculture. Also, most of these biotechnologies were developed through a "technology push" process; rather than being "demand-pull" technologies that respond to a social need, agricultural biotechnologies tend to be solutions in search of problems. The textbook example of this is said to be...