This week was the first week for our new intern, Anna Kushnir. You may know her as one of Nature Network’s more active bloggers. She’s just graduated with her PhD from Harvard Medical School and will be spending six months helping us grow the community on Nature Network. Welcome Anna to the NN family!
She will also help me cover the Boston beat so starting today you’ll see posts here from both me and her. Over time, this blog will evolve to be less like “Corie’s” blog and more the “Boston blog” with multiple people contributing.
So to kick off, today, here is Anna’s entry about a talk she attended on Wednesday.
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Genetics and the future of food and farming
Anna Kushnir
A talk that combines science and food? This was a talk I could not afford to miss. This week, I had the distinct pleasure of attending Pamela Ronald’s lecture at MGH discussing her new book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food.
Dr. Ronald is a geneticist and runs a large lab in the Department of Plant Pathology at University of California, Davis. She has just written the aforementioned book with her husband Raoul, who is, conveniently enough, an organic farmer. (She is also a blogger on Nature Network.)
In her talk, Dr. Ronald listed multiple (and ominous) drawbacks of the current model of agriculture including soil erosion, farmers poisoned by rampant use of pesticides, ecosystems damaged by fertilizer run-off, among others. A possible solution to the problems caused by current agriculture practices and the increasing food demands of the world’s growing population, she suggests, is a combination of sustainable organic farming practices with genetically engineered (GE) plants.
One of the most interesting and dramatic examples that Dr. Ronald gave of the benefits of GE plants was the generation of submergence tolerant strain of rice. Rice normally grows and thrives in areas with high average rainfall. However, some of those areas are prone to flooding. Rice seedlings submerged for 2 to 3 days die, leading to poor rice yields and starvation in the affected communities.
However, one strain of rice that could survive for 2 weeks while submerged was found in India. Dr. Ronald’s laboratory identified a set of submergence resistance genes that conferred survival. Transfer of one of those genes to a susceptible rice strain yielded a strain of rice that yielded 5 to 6 times more rice in flooded conditions, as compared to the parental strain.
The list of such examples is long, including a researcher who saved the Hawaiian papaya industry by engineering generated a virus-resistant strain of papaya using a version of RNA interference, as well as golden, beta-carotene enhanced rice that can save populations vitamin A deficiency and subsequent blindness and/or death.
There is, unfortunately, a lot of public resistance and fear surrounding GE crops, perhaps due in part to a lack of understanding and a general distrust of all things too sciencey. GE crops are not considered organic, which I find terribly confusing since they can be farmed using organic practices. They are labeled with scary and misleading labels and banned in whole countries in Europe and parts of California. Do GE crops deserve such harsh handling? Likely not. Do they serve as very cool examples of science translating into real life and making a difference? Definitely. Is there a need for them in the world? Absolutely.
Whatever the cause of the distrust and distaste for GE crops, I hope that opinion changes soon allowing golden rice and other GE crops to be planted. I also hope this happens before the planet is no longer able to sustain the levels of food production necessary to feed everyone.
P.S. I recorded the talk, so please let me know if you would like an audio of the lecture.
Wish I could have gone to the talk. As a former food science student (who was studying food science during the height of the GMO controversy), I spent a lot of time thinking about genetic engineering of food crops and why there has been so much public resistance.
I think a lot has to do with image/communication and use of the technology. (I’m sure Pamela has discussed this already—sorry, I haven’t read the book yet.) The first wave of GM crops in the West really didn’t benefit the consumer (eg herbicide-resistant soybeans) and the companies trying to promote these crops just didn’t do a good job of building trust with the public.
But given the new environment today, with food prices going up and higher demands for food, a technology that increases yield for people who are in dire need of food might put these crops and the technology in a more favorable light…again, if communicated well.
Another way could be to show how, as you say Anna, GM crops can be farmed organically. I thought it was really interesting that the book was written by a plant biologist who believes in ag biotech and an organic farmer (and they’re married!). Did Pamela talk much about how organic farming and GM crops can peacefully co-exist, and how? Is Raoul the only organic farmer out there who is open to GM crops?
Pamela, can you comment?
Dear Corie,
Thanks for your interest Cori and good questions.
First, I agree that there is an image problem with GE crops. Many consumers have not forgotten that Dow Chemical and Monsanto were the two largest producers of Agent Orange for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Many consumers fear the power, and question the business practices, of these companies. Few people are willing to trust the maker of Agent Orange to genetically engineer our food.
I believe the reaction to genetic engineering would have been different if it had first come to public attention after it was used to develop crops that benefited poor farmers or malnourished children (golden rice is predicted to save the lives of thousands of children each year), or if the first products had been funded by nonprofit agencies, like the GE papaya (funded by the USDA, distributed free to growers and credited with saving the Hawaiian papaya industry).
The first wave of crops did benefit the consumer, although indirectly. Bt-cotton has led to drastic reductions in pesticide use in China and modest reductions in the US as well. The herbicide tolerant crops have been credited with the expansion of no-till farming (which helps prevent erosion of the soil – a finite resource) and with reduction in the the overall toxicity of herbicides sprayed. I think one of the problems is that the urban consumer does not come into contact with spray planes or farmworkers so are not worried about the overuse of peticides. They have grown to accept them. I live in the country in the Central Valley of California and encounter spray planes on a regular basis. They even spray near the kids school!
Organic farming is an integrated system that relies on improved seed. For that reason, it is quite logical to use GE seed in organic systems. Both GE and organic farming are biological approaches, and as I pointed out in an earlier post, something that Rachel Carson, may well have supported in her lifetime.
We do know that there are other organic farmers that are open to GE and some that even support the idea. Unfortunately, most of these people are too busy farming to advocate or blog (takes a lot of time doesn’t it?). We do interview these friends in our book and let them speak for themselves.
PS. You might be interested in taking a look at an interview with Raoul and I in US new and world report that addresses some of your questions in more detail.
Here’s Tony Trewavas’s Wikipedia entry, pretty blunt, with some links to his Nature and other pieces on genetic modification “vs” organic farming.
He writes (Nature 410, 409-410; 2001) :
Organic agriculture began as an ideology, but can it meet today’s needs?
There is a widespread belief that low-yielding organic agricultural systems are more friendly to the environment and more sustainable than high-yielding farming systems. The current aims of organic systems — maintenance of soil fertility, avoidance of pollution, use of crop rotation, animal-welfare concerns and wider environmental aspects — would be hard to quarrel with. But the rules and regulations that have to be followed to achieve these ends caused one leading organic researcher to admit that that in organic farming “there is very little science” and “this gives rise to a great deal of illogicality and confusion particularly in some areas of production”
The article concludes:
Organic agriculture was originally formulated as an ideology, but today’s global problems — such as climate change and population growth — need agricultural pragmatism and flexibility, not ideology.
I wonder whether things have moved on since then, and whether there is a fundamental disagreement between the argument Trewavas makes and the argument that you make, Pamela? As a consumer, I am conscious that “organic” does not necessarily equal “good” or “better”. I have no fears about buying food on sale that has been genetically modified. I am aware of the opposing views on supporting small farmers in Kenya to help farmers be self-sustaining rather than depending on external aid, and the air miles used up by exporting their produce.
So what should a consumer (eg me) do?
Hi Maxine
Thanks for your interesting question. In our book, we do address the issues that you raise in some detail.
The problem is that much of the high yield achieved here in N. America is dependent on synthetic inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers, which are costly and can degrade the environment.
So what are we to do? Should we abandon modern farming practices? I agree with Tony that this would be a dismal plan. We have already carried out this experiment in Africa. Poor African farmers have no improved seed, no chemical fertilizers and no irrigation. Nor have they adopted the modern organic farming approaches of crop rotation and cover cropping. They are suffering as a consequence. As Paarlberg notes in his book “Their meager crops provide less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished.”
Yet with the cost of synthetic fertilizer increasing everyday because of the energy needed to produce it, we clearly need to adopt approaches that do not rely solely on this approach to foster soil fertility.
This is especially true in Africa, where farmers do not have cash to buy synthetic fertilizers.
Cover crops used by organic farmers help fertilize the soil. They also help suppress weeds, deter the build up of insect pests, and add organic matter to the soil. This added organic matter enhances microbial activity and builds soil structure.
Expanding the number of organic farms cannot be the sole approach. Although in some cases organic farming can yield as much as conventional agriculture; in other situations, especially under conditions of environmental stress or disease epidemics, organic farms do not yield as much as conventional farms. What this means is that even if we convert ALL of agriculture to high yielding organic farms (now only less than 3% in the United States), we still need to increase yield if we want to spare land, protect wildlife and feed the growing population.
It is clear that for organic agriculture to be successful in feeding the world, huge changes will be needed: recycling of organic waste back to farms for nutrients, development of crop varieties with enhanced tolerance to pests and stresses, and reduced meat consumption so that more of the food crops can go to humans rather than animals.
Part of the solution is to bring more science into farming, not less. This includes development of improved seed (including GE seed) as well as improved methods of farming.
This raises the question of whether GE varieties can help forge a future sustainable agriculture. Both conventional and organic farmers rely on genetically diverse and improved plant crop varieties to increase their yields, and I see no reason why GE seed should be treated differently.
What we need is a successfully blend of two important strands of modern agriculture – genetic engineering and organic farming. If we rely on GE seed alone, without introducing the most productive aspects of organic agriculture such as crop rotation, we will not be able to maximize the benefits from GE.
Regards
Pam
PS. I just saw that Oxford University Press just posted an exchange between me and Robert Paarlberg on their blog that addresses the points you raise.
Thanks for the detailed response, Pamela. Clearly, I must buy your book ;-), and look at the OUP blog. Your reply puts me in mind of another Nature Commentary I edited (400, 15-16; 1999), “Why Africa needs biotech”, by Florence Wambagu, which stated:
“There is urgent need for the development and use of agricultural biotechnology in Africa to help to counter famine, environmental degradation and poverty. Africa must enthusiastically join the biotechnology revolution.”
But clearly I need to brush up on what has happened between the early 2000s and now.
I agree with Anthony Trewavas. I too have a big problem with organic farming as being better than conventional farming, especially in regards to fertilizer use and environmental impact.
For the most part plants only absorb inorganic nutrients. Nitrogen is only absorbed as ammonia or as nitrate. The plant can’t tell the difference between synthetic ammonia and natural ammonia. The same is true of virtually all other nutrients that plants absorb. When crops are harvested, trace and bulk nutrients are removed from the field. Nitrogen can be restored by nitrogen fixing bacteria, phosphorous and potassium must be replaced or the soil will eventually become depleted.
There is nothing wrong with chemical fertilizers. Plants cannot tell the difference between organic sources of chemical nutrients and synthetic sources. Synthetic sources are often cheaper and easier to apply in more concentrated form. The labor and energy cost to apply concentrated fertilizers is less than that to apply dilute organic fertilizers.
The largest problem I have with organic farming is that the yield is lower. That means more land needs to be farmed to produce the same quantity of food. More farmed land means less land available as wildlife habitat. I consider the difference between organically farmed land and conventionally farmed land as wildlife habitat to be negligible. Both are virtually useless for the vast majority of wildlife. A few species might do ok, such as deer. The vast majority of species that form the biota of wild land are simply not present at all.
In my opinion, on an equal food production basis, the environmental degradation in conventional farming is much less than the environmental degradation due to organic farming. The vast majority of the most serious degradation is directly proportional to area farmed.
For much of Africa the problem is the very poor soil. Europe and the US have good soils because the glaciers stripped everything away to bedrock and that recently weathered bedrock contains nutrients that have been leached out of the far more ancient African soils. African soils can only sustain agricultural production with input of fertilizer. Only nitrogen can be produced biologically. Phosphorous, potassium and trace minerals can only be supplied exogenously. Fallow periods can increase these slightly by allowing deep rooted plants to extract them from the subsoil, residues from those plants can then supply them to the surface soil.
Dear David
Thanks for your comments and for pointing out the important problems of soil degradation and land use. I agree that the plant cannot tell the difference between organic sources of chemical nutrients and synthetic sources. I also agree that if crops do not yield well, we will need to use more land, which has huge negative impacts on biodiversity and contributes to global warming. However, you indicate that you have “a big problem with organic farming as being better than conventional farming”. What we are NOT saying in our book is that one approach is “better” than the other. In fact, we believe that the concept of a “choice” is highly artificial and detrimental to the discussion of a future sustainable agriculture. One of the major themes of our book is that the judicious incorporation of two important strands of agriculture—genetic engineering and organic farming—is key to helping feed the growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. We are not suggesting that organic farming and GE alone will provide all the changes needed in agriculture. Other farming systems and technological changes, as well as modified government policies, undoubtedly are also needed. Yet it is hard to avoid the sense that organic farming and genetic engineering each will play an increasingly important role, and that they somehow have been pitted unnecessarily against each other. Our ambition in this book, therefore, is not to be comprehensive, but to identify roles for both GE and organic farming in the future of food production.Many new technologies for agriculture have been developed through human endeavor and creativity. Which one of these technologies is truly “appropriate” for agriculture? There is no simple answer to this question. When the goal is a productive and ecologically-based farming sys-tem, there are usually many interwoven possibilities. As the physicist and philosopher Jacob Bronowski pointed out fifty years ago, “We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game by taking sides. . . . No one who has read a page by a good critic or a speculative scientist can ever again think that this barren choice of yes or no is all that the mind offers.
Pamela’s asked me to insert a sentence she left out in her comment immediately above.
“The plant cannot tell the difference between organic sources of chemical nutrients and synthetic sources. However, there is a big difference in the environmental consequences. Overuse of synthetic fertilizers on farms bordering the Mississippi River causes a 6500 square foot dead zone to form at the mouth of the river every year.”
I sometimes wonder if organic is going too far, and that sustainable farming is what we should be aiming for. I guess this would be lower input, making use of some of the techniques from organic farming (e.g. inter-cropping and variety mixtures), presumably as well as a more focussed application of fertiliser, pesticides etc. and better crop varieties (whether GM or not).
I agree completely
Yes, I think this is also Tony Trewavas’s argument, that one can use best-practices from a range of approaches, without being evangelical for or against any particular one?
For a consumer who isn’t an expert though, it can be confusing, given the evangelicism that exists (organic=good by definition, GM=bad by definition).
Hence, I am going to read Pamela’s book to get up to speed.
Yes, I agree with Maxine. The popular perception is that GM and organic are mutually exclusive. Not sure how we can change people’s minds, other than of course, writing books!
Bob, I agree, sustainable farming is what we should be aiming for. Advocates for sustainable farming need to adopt a different term than organic farming because what is called organic farming, as it is practiced is not going to meet the needs of future generations by a long shot.
I completely agree that overuse of fertilizer is undesirable and wasteful. Every bit of the fertilizer that has leached to the sea is fertilizer that was not absorbed by a plant and incorporated into biomass. Some amount of leaching is unavoidable. Organic fertilizers can leach just as well as inorganic fertilizers.
The irrational lack of acceptance of GE foods in Europe is preventing developing nations from adopting GE crops because then exports to Europe are threatened. Golden Rice is a case in point.
I don’t know how to work with people who are irrationally opposed to technology. I see many of those in the organic farming area to be irrationally opposed to technology. The definition of “organic farming” is arbitrary and has nothing to do with plant physiology, soil chemistry, nutritional value of crops or sustainable agriculture.
What I would like to see, and I appreciate this is many years off, is massively large floating plantations on the equator growing GE crops engineered to grow in sea water. I think this is the only way that sufficient biomass can be grown to substitute for fossil fuels to provide what people in developed countries consider to be an acceptable standard of living to the entire world.
I think that needs to be our goal, to be able to supply to everyone what everyone considers to be an acceptable standard of living, and to do so sustainably for the indefinite future. Organic farming isn’t going to get us there. Maybe some amount of organic farming is part of a path that gets us there, but the ultimate supply of biomass to feed and fuel civilization will not be achieved through organic farming.
Hello everyone
Thanks for your great comments. I agree we need a new term. I like “Genetically engineered, organically grown”
I must disagree with David on two points.
1. Organic fertilizers do not leach just as well as inorganic fertilizers. On organic farms there is 4 to 6 times less nitrate leaching than on conventionally farmed fields (Kramer et al.2006).
2. Not all in the organic farming community are irrationally opposed to technology (please see chapter in our book on tools). My husband for instance! Interestingly, those in the organic community who have read our book have been quite receptive to the integrative concepts we propose.
I do agree with David that our goal should be provide an acceptable standard of living, and to do so sustainably for the indefinite future. Lets keep our eyes on this goal and be open to any technology or farming approach that gets us there.
bq1. The irrational lack of acceptance of GE foods in Europe is preventing developing nations from adopting GE crops because then exports to Europe are threatened.
What about rational lack of acceptance?
Pamela probably knows this better, but didn’t Switzerland have an “intensivo” scheme that was intended to be sustainable?
Lots of scientific advances are not accepted for “irrational” reasons. Energy, reproductive (developmental) biology, and climate science to name but three.
Nobody can predict the future, so sometimes, probably not often, these irrational reasons can turn out to be right.
My understanding is that this dilemma is what underlies the “precautionary principle” but I cannot say I find that persuasive, as you can be so precautionary that you never do anything.
But risk assessments are hard to do when you don’t know what the risks are. It isn’t like an epidemiological model, eg spread of AIDS, where you know the science of the vector and about behaviour associated with spread, so predictions can be quite accurate.
When “science” is faced with the unknown, eg an unknown problem with GE crops, we are, well, stumped to use an English expression. All main UK supermarkets make promotional capital out of being “GM-free”. How can we even get to first base if that is reflecting general conviction?
Quite. I was part of a Finnish project to do just this for GMOs. In the end we chickened out and concentrated on the processes we knew about.
The consensus is that risk assessments for GMOs will have to be on a case-by-case basis. My guess is that if this happens, we’ll learn that most GMO pose little threat (except for problems like contamination). But I think we need to go through that process in order to gain public confidence in GMOs. And we’ll probably find that a few aren’t so safe.
We have a lot of information on pollen flow from domesticated varieties to wild species (so-called "contamination"). As far as I know, there is not a single case where pollen from domesticated crops hybridized with wild species and created a weed problem. If a crop is genetically engineered, most scientists believe that the risks remain the same. This is because GE introduces one to few well characterized genes at time and pollen flow issues are taken into account before release.
There has not been a single instance of a detrimental effect to human health or the environment from GE crops (over 1 billion acres planted).
This is not to say that all future crops will be so totally benign. Each must be looked at on a case by case basis.
Pamela, the paper you cited on leaching used a flawed fertilization schedule. There is no reason to apply fertilizer in the fall after the season when plants are not active. Plants absorb nitrogen when they are actively growing, taking up water and synthesizing proteins. That does not occur during the winter, it is expected that any nitrate based fertilizer would only leach over the winter and be lost through denitrification.
Nitrate that is absorbed must be reduced to ammonia, and when the tree is not doing photosynthesis, those reducing equivalents must come from stored reserves. Ammonia would be a better fertilizer to add in the fall because ammonia doesn’t leach (it is ion exchanged on soil) and there is some delay in nitrification.
A better schedule would be to fertilize in the spring and summer when the trees are actively photosynthesizing. I wonder if the fertilization schedule was deliberately chosen to maximize leaching of the conventional fertilizer, or simply to match the timing of the organic fertilizer application. Synthetic fertilizers don’t need to be mineralized by soil bacteria, so there is no need to add them before they are needed.
A true comparison of conventional vs. organic leaching would use optimum fertilization schedules for both.
Bob, there are no “wild” plants native to Europe that can cross breed with GMO maize or with GMO potatoes. Maize is solely propagated with human intervention. Maize cannot go “wild” and become an invasive weed. It is simply not possible. I am not sure what kind of “contamination” GMO maize or GMO potatoes could produce in Finland.
Each plant has ~50,000 genes virtually all of which are unknown. Why adding a few known genes via GM techniques adds considerable danger is not something anyone has ever explained to me.
As Freeman Dyson pointed out to me in a recent email “No one has ever seen a wild poodle”
David – we do grow more than 2 crops in Europe. Oil seed rape is already a weed. Sugar beet can also contaminate wild populations. There are also wild cereals and grasses. And GM crops can contaminate non-GM. You may not be bothered by that, but some people are and I pity the poor farmer who has a crop certified as GM because of accidental contamination.
If you want practical problems, look at herbicide resistance. If that gets into the feral OSR population, then the herbicides become less effective (oilseed rape is a weed in fields). Also, the Field Scale Evaluations in the UK showed that introducing GM could reduce biodiversity (IIRC they found this with one GM variety), although overall the effects were mixed, and also depend on how the fields are treated otherwise.
My honest opinion is that most GMOs will be relatively harmless, and introducing them will have little effect. But (1) we have to look at mitigation of the effects, (2) the effects will vary, and it is better to spot the bad effect early, and (3) public and institutional confidence in GMOs is necessary before they are adopted widely.
Dear Bob,
Crops do evolve resistance to herbicides but this happens whether the plants are GE or not. Thus if a country agrees that herbicide resistance is a problem, it makes more sense to ban the herbicide than the GE crop.
Rather than saying GM crops can contaminate non-GM, it would be more accurate to say that gene flow can occur between crops (don’t forget all domesticated crops are genetically modified by conventional breeding). Because this already occurs, the important question is whether it occurs any more with GE than GE crops.
Regarding biodiversity, all the evidence to date indicates that there is much more biodiversity (measured by the diversity of beetles, ants etc.) in GE fields than fields sprayed with pesticides. There is more biodiversity in fields that are not sprayed at all, but then there is usually a yield penalty.
Finally, although I generally agree with your last 3 points, it is important to note that the virtually all the scientific agencies (including the National Academy of Sciences and the UK GM science review) have concluded that the crops on the market are safe to eat. So gaining public confidence is more a matter of education than anything else.
Bob, the reduced diversity observed in the Field Scale Trials had nothing to do with the GM status of the crops, only with the herbicide application schedules used, as the authors explicitly state. Any effective weed elimination method, including removing weeds by hand will reduce biodiversity.
I was not able to find any reference to yield differences between the conventional and the GM fields. I consider it disingenuous to not explicitly account for yield differences. If the same food can be grown on less land, that unfarmed land will have enormously higher biodiversity than any farmed land.
If the objective is to maintain diversity of weed species, there are much more efficient and effective ways of doing so than by preventing the use of GM varieties.
Not in Europe it isn’t. There is a very clear policy in the EU on contamination by GM crops. Regardless of whether you like it, it’s there and it’s what we have to work with. As a consumer, I feel I have a right to know if the food I am eating contains transgenic material, so I can choose whether to eat it. So if a crop is to be certified GM free, we have to know whether it has been contaminated (or to what extent it is contaminated).
You’ve just moved the goalposts. For me the effects on the environment are a bigger concern – it is clearer that there will be less food safety concerns (unless someone gets potatoes to massively over-express caffeine genes).
What about the effects on biodiversity of, say, growing forests with a changed lignin composition? We don’t know what will happen – it hasn’t been done. So if we’re honest, it’s not just about educating the public; there are still unknowns. My guess is that most GM crops will be fine, but (a) I may be wrong, and (b) some may have unintended consequences and I would rather we find out what they are before release.
And why were the herbicide applications what they were? Because of the gene that had been inserted. Which does have rather a lot to do with the GM status of the crop.
When we discussed the FSE after the results were published, the point that was being made was that this research showed that we had to consider not just the GM crop but also how it was cultivated. The point was that transgenes can affect things like herbicide application, and we need to consider the whole process.
The pattern of herbicide application depends on the herbicide resistance of the crop and the availability of the herbicide, not the GM status of the crop. If herbicide resistance is introduced through “traditional” methods of selective breeding, chemical mutation, or ionizing radiation induced mutation the crop is not regulated the way GM crops are.
It makes no sense to me to extend the scope of analysis to include the borders of the field but then not include yield and so extend the analysis to how much land needs to be farmed in the first place.
Food borne diseases kill many people each year. There are a number of diseases that are spread by fecal matter. I would like to know if the food I purchase is grown on land fertilized with fecal matter, and especially with fecal matter from animals fed antibiotics. But perhaps that is a different issue.
PNAS has an interesting article (open access) on the substantial reduction in environmental impact by rbST on milk production.
The reductions in environmental impact of milk production by using rbST are quite significant. Table 3 compares conventional with rbST and organic methods to produce the same quantity of milk. The differences are striking.
If I drank milk I would want it to be produced using rbST because of the reduced environmental impact.
Looking into the scenario of ever-growing food demands around the world and the demand for more land for produce, GE crops could be the alternative for tackling soil erosion, very wide use of chemical pesticides. GE crops, especially rice, could survive and thrive monsoon floods. But the fact is many countries around the world have banned GE, GE crops and many consumers are stepping back to avoid GE produce, maybe because they think it would do more harm than good. Its a whole new concept and there is a lack of understanding about GE. There should be communities setup by the organizations, where in they could answer any possible questions or concerns related to GE and make a good understanding of GE to the farmers, consumers. The hardest thing might be to make a governing body to introduce GE crops. There is a long way for GE to go to dwell into the developing countries.