A: In our industrial agriculture the farmer's role is generally seen
to be
to produce as much food and fiber as they can, as efficiently as they
can. I happen to think the farmer's role is more than that, I think the
farmer also can produce clean air and clean water and quality soil and a
lot of other public goods that we sometimes don't credit the farmer for.
Q: Given that position, how does biotechnology fit or not fit into the
farmers role?
A: In my view biotechnology is a very complex issue and unfortunately
I think we've oversimplified it. We generally look at it in terms of is
there a specific gene which can create a specific trait that or specific
outcome that we want in our production systems. So if we want taller
corn we find a gene that we can zap in to get taller corn or if we want
corn that kills pests we insert a gene to kill the pests. I think one of the
things I've learned as a farmer is that life out there on the farm is a lot
more complex than that. We are dealing with very complex
ecosystems. So if the goal is to produce food and fiber on a long-term
basis we have to look at the ecosystem which sustains that production.
That's a very complex system. Biotechnology may very well be a tool to
tweak some part of that system, but what we're after is not this single
gene to get a single effect, what we're looking at is to make the whole
system more robust and more resilient so that we have better
production and more sustainable production.
Q: What impact will genetic engineering have on the family farm?
A: The way genetic engineering is currently used is very likely to
further
the attrition of families off the farm. Because primarily we're using it as
a tool to further enhance the abilitiy of farms to produce more of a very
narrow band of crops and that means we;'re going to have larger
monocultures and try to use the technology in a way to make that work,
when the toxics approach, the chemical approach is failing. So it will
extend this trend that we've been on, to larger farms occupied by fewer
and fewer farmers.
Transcript for Clip 2 -- Labeling:
It seems to me that labeling is a fundamental right that consumers
should have. I mean, we...live in a democracy and people should have
access to information. The only way that you can have adequate access
to information in terms of how your food was produced is if you have
some kind of label that says "here's what happened." Even if there are
only ten consumers that demand [labeling], it seems to me those
consumers have a right to be heard. If someone does get ill and the
food is not labeled, there's no way to track it. If someone comes down
with an allergy and the food hasn't been labeled and there's no way to
know whether or not the food they ate was a genetically engineered
variety or not, how do you track that? So then you really can't protect
future consumers from [potential food-related problems]. I think labeling is
essential.Transcript for Clip 3 -- Feed the World:
Even if we are wildly successful with producing tons of additional corn
and soybeans or other commodities as a result of genetic engineering,
it's not going to feed the world. I mean, we are producing more corn
and soybeans right now than the world can possibly consume and we've
got 840 million people who are malnourished on this planet. Hunger is
caused by a very complex set of factors. It has to do with everything
from local ecologies and local social systems, and fundamentally it
boils down to the fact that people aren't entitled to food. It isn't that
there isn't enough food available but they're not entitled to it for all of
these complex social and ecological factors. Just producing more [food]
isn't going to change that. So the reason that I say [it is immoral to the
issue of world hunger as a reason to use genetic engineering] is that
we are leading the public to believe that all we need to solve the
hunger crisis with an expanding population is just produce more stuff,
and that's not true. More comments from Fred Kirschenmann...
Q: What do you see as the farmer's role in our society?
Top
Posted March 6, 2001