Abstract
The development of genetically engineered (GE) crops has focused predominantly on enhancing conventional pest control approaches. Scientific assessments show that these GE crops generally deliver significant economic and some environmental benefits over their conventional crop alternatives. However, emerging evidence indicates that current GE crops will not foster sustainable cropping systems unless the negative environmental and social feedback effects are properly addressed. Moreover, GE crop innovations that promote more sustainable agricultural systems will receive underinvestment by seed and chemical companies that must understandably focus on private returns for major crops. Opportunities to promote crops that convey multi-faceted benefits for the environment and the poor are foundational to a sustainable food system and should not be neglected because they also represent global public goods. In this paper, we develop a set of criteria that can guide the development of GE crops consistent with contemporary sustainable agriculture theory and practice. Based on those principles, we offer policy options and recommendations for reforming public and private R&D and commercialization processes to further the potential contributions of GE crops to sustainable agriculture. Two strategies that would help achieve this goal would be to restore the centrality of the public sector in agricultural R&D and to open the technology development process to more democratic participation by farmers and other stakeholders.
Highlights
According to their proponents, genetically-engineered (GE) crops foster agricultural sustainability by boosting economic performance and addressing key environmental challenges facing adopting farmers [1,2]
He argues, the role of those who work the land and handle the food is reduced for the most part to the role of ―inputs.‖ In the contrasting paradigm, ―sustainable agriculture denotes a holistic, systems-oriented approach to farming that focuses on the interrelationships of social, economic, and environmental processes‖ ([4], p. 195)
Building on Ervin and Welsh, we propose the following criteria, which must be adopted in an integrated fashion, for genetically engineered (GE) crop development to help advance sustainable agriculture goals [8]: 1. Engineer traits that mimic ecological processes and natural defenses that confuse, avoid or deter pests or delay or tolerate damage and not rely on the killing of pests through engineering toxins into the plant or making the plant able to withstand the application of herbicides
Summary
Genetically-engineered (GE) crops foster agricultural sustainability by boosting economic performance and addressing key environmental challenges facing adopting farmers [1,2]. Such an orientation fails to appreciate how social structures and processes of technological development are embedded within each other, and subsequently do not represent accurate evaluations of a technology‘s sustainability potential We challenge this deterministic orientation by presenting a comprehensive set of criteria that can be used to assess the sustainability of current GE crop usage and to help guide a process of technology R&D that fosters agricultural sustainability. The small amount of resources for public GE crop research, which traditionally has been more open to such input, has not proven an effective counterweight to the strong private control If these same patterns pertain to non-GE crop R&D, our thesis maintains that the potential of new technologies to advance progress on sustainable agriculture will be limited. This analysis builds off of a recent report by the National Research Council on GE crops and farm sustainability in the U.S, follow-on papers to that report by Ervin, Glenna and Jussaume and Ervin and Welsh, and a new National Research Council report on moving toward sustainable agricultural systems in the 21st century [6,7,8,9]
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