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By Hugh Lovel
Human problem solving becomes foolish, pathological and unsound whenever we approach it from the viewpoint of applying solutions–one after another–rather than investigating the true nature of our problems. Parents and grandparents have long used nursery tales to bring such fundamental truths home to their children or grandchildren in early childhood, thereby sowing cultural wisdom. For example, there is the nursery rhyme about the lady who swallowed a fly (perhaps she’ll die). She proceeded to swallow a spider (which wiggled inside her) to catch the fly. Then she swallowed a bird (how absurd) to catch the spider-and then a cat (imagine that) to catch the bird. She kept this up, progressively swallowing a dog (what a hog), a goat (right down her throat!), a cow (oh wow!) and finally she swallowed a horse (she’s dead of course).
The Solutions of Modern Agriculture
In the case of modern agriculture its problems go back to the beginnings of the industrial age and the replacement of wooden ploughs with steel, making tillage and mono-cropping too easy. This resulted in loss of soil biology, increased erosion and nutrient leaching. By the 1850s German farmers took their ‘problem’ of declining fertility to Justus von Liebig, the foundational genius of analytical chemistry–who said, “I see, we can fix that.” So he analysed plants to see what elements they contained and analysed soils likewise, supplying what seemed most deficient with refined chemicals. This appeared to work amazingly at first, but in the process these salty ‘manures’ further injured soil biology, accelerating nutrient loss and encouraging weeds. Since using more and more chemicals made crops salty, watery and susceptible to diseases and pests, the next ‘fix’ was to apply poison to combat these problems–which resulted in further, imbalances, more weeds and reduced biology. Breeding plants to live on slimmer fare and harsher conditions was seen as another fix, and many disease resistant varieties were produced with little concern for the true mission of agriculture–nutrition. Meanwhile more and better solutions were tried ranging from bigger tractors and deeper tillage to no-till farming. Finally the fix we have come to is genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Do We Really Need GMOs?
The answer is, no. Genetic modification (GM) technology will not
address our fundamental problem. We have forgotten how to make plants
thrive. GM will merely be swallowing the horse. We must restore the
fertility of our soils and the nutrient density of the food we eat,
since this is the true basis of our agricultural problem. Why not ask
how the soil became fertile in the first place before we lost it?
How Do Plants Thrive In Nature?
Plants photosynthesize. They inhale carbon dioxide and drink
water, which they combine to make sugars using the sun’s radiance.
Geologically, plant growth occurs between the opposite poles of lime,
which is fundamentally sedimentary, and silica, which cooks up out of
the earth’s mantle, floating the continents and thrusting up mountains.
Between these poles lies clay-alumina allied with silica. Clay
forms humus complexes with the carbon compounds created by plants. These
clay/humus compounds-with the aid of the microbes living on them-catch,
hold and release every other nutrient in the soil.
Clay/humus complexes are home base for soil microbial life, but
most of these organisms are dormant most of the time, waking up when
sugary root exudates come their way. Amongst this microbial diversity
are the key organisms that use boron (the primary ally of alumina) to
stir silicon into fluidity so that sap uptake occurs. At the other pole
other microbes use lime to draw nitrogen away from its aerial love
affair to engage in its job as the key player in carrying architectural
blueprints for plant chemistry. Still other types solubilize phosphorous
for energy transfer. Another set elaborates sulphur for its catalytic
ability to organize carbon chemistry. For every micronutrient and enzyme
co-factor there is some microbe or other doing the job; and between them
all they produce a rich, nutritional broth for plants to absorb.
Interestingly, most of the players mentioned above do not give
directly of themselves to the plants whose roots they live around.
Usually protozoa and higher soil animals have the role of eating the
soil’s primary elaborators and releasing their nutrients in a
continuous, delicate, freshly digested stream as plant roots grow
through the soil-much as protozoa do in humans and animals. This,
potentially, gives plants optimum nutrition, though no one is really
sure how good optimum can get.
Nature, in her wisdom, releases nutrients in increasing amounts
as the plant grows into needing it. Whenever the plant shifts gears and
goes into another phase, the mix of microbes living around its roots
shifts too. Actually very little of the soil’s fertility should be
soluble at any one time. If nutrients are soluble in any quantity at any
distance from plant roots, they tend to wash away or build up as salts
before the plant gets to them.
Thus plants photosynthesize and feed their syrupy gifts to the
web of life living in the clay/humus between the settling lime and
buoyant silica poles. These micro-organisms elaborate, retain and
release a mineral rich sap that flows upward into the growth of plants.
The more dynamic this give and take is, the more the land can be said to
flow with milk and honey. That this often is not even known in
mainstream agriculture today shows that in the main, modern agriculture
has lost the plot-although here and there the knowledge and expertise
exists for us all to get back on track.
Are There Proven, Viable Alternatives To Using GMO Technology?
Yes, there are many successful biodynamic, organic, natural, biological
and related farms which are reducing inputs while their soils steadily
improve through being farmed. But we must remember these examples all
involve farming with an intimate understanding of how nature works. Our
biggest culture-wide shortcoming in reversing the current farming
problem-cycle is a skills shortage as a result of generations of farmers
getting their training and their toolboxes from scientists, advisors and
sales reps who are not themselves skilled farmers.
There is an old saying that those who can, do; and those who can’t,
teach. A large percentage of those who teach and research agriculture in
our schools and institutes of higher learning are not, and never have
been farmers with an intimate understanding of the holistic nature of
successful, natural farming. They treat nature as though it was a
collection of parts and they have no conception of it as a fully
integrated whole. They characterize farming as ‘wresting a living from
the soil’ as though there was a war going on with nature. We should
study the many instances in nature where fertile and productive
situations have occurred without inputs. The conventional approach has
been to study things once the balances have been upset, and to come up
with ‘fixes’ that can be manufactured and marketed without concern for
the side effects of their use. There are, of course, notable exceptions.
One such was George Washington Carver, once cited by Time Magazine as a
black Leonardo (da Vinci). His birth in slavery and early years of rural
life gave him an intimate understanding of nature and its relationship
to agriculture. As a luminary professor at fledgling Tuskegee Institute
in Alabama he worked wonders in uplifting a generation of sharecroppers
trying to farm soils mono-cropped to death with corn and cotton. Their
budgets were so tight that everything they did had to pay while they
brought their fields back to life without fertilizers. By turning such
things as peanuts and sweet potatoes into commercial crops and
instructing an entire generation in the observation of nature, Carver
had a major influence on the farming of his era. Rudolf Steiner, born in
rural Austria, herded pigs as a young boy and went on to earn his
doctorate in math, chemistry and biology at the Technische Hochschule in
Vienna. As a doer, writer, teacher, scientist, architect, sculptor and
seer, Steiner delivered an agricultural course of lectures whose
overarching concepts and penetrating insights formed the foundation for
what is known today as biodynamic agriculture. Because of the need for a
scientific method to determine integrity and quality in agriculture, he
introduced an inexpensive, simple method of paper disc chromatography
that is used in many places in the world today.
What Is Paper Disc Chromatography?
This method involves a dilute solution of caustic soda to
dissolve a soil or a biological specimen. The resultant solution is
wicked out from the centre of silver-nitrate-treated filter paper, which
is then dried and developed in sunlight to reveal colourful patterns of
infinite variation, each more or less individual to the specimen tested,
despite the way universal principles are revealed. As the solution
spreads outward, the more highly charged components–such as lime,
minerals and metals-begin attaching to the paper close to the centre;
while non-polar compounds–such as carbon and silica complexes-keep
spreading toward the edges. Everything in the chemistry of the specimen
is revealed in one way or another. And since the chemistry can sometimes
be quite complex, beautiful patterns can emerge, revealing a high degree
of organization.
Since organization is the universal characteristic of living
organisms and since complexity relates to nutritional density, a paper
disc chromatogram yields a holistic picture of the vitality and nutrient
quality of the specimen. It was Steiner’s insight, as both chemist and
biologist, that everything in agriculture occurs between the polarities
of lime and silica. This is a testing method that reveals the strength
and balance of these polarities in whatever is tested. In living
organisms this is particularly important because lime is at work in the
cell’s nucleus with its amino acid chemistry, while silicon is at work
in the cell wall with its complex carbon chemistry.
Widespread cultural belief has it that our DNA tells our body’s cells
what to do, but this is incorrect. For example, in the development of
the embryo every cell carries the same DNA from the point of the
zygote’s formation onward–as witness the widespread use of blood or
hair in forensic DNA analysis. But early in the embryo’s development
specialization occurs, and each cell takes on a different role which it
tends to stick to thereafter. Clearly our DNA acts as a library of
architectural blueprints out of which various sets of templates are
activated in specialized cells so that one type of cells grows into a
liver, another a brain.
Fritz-Albert Popp, a contemporary German biophysicist, confirmed that
our cells exchange what he called biophotons between each other and
their environment via their cell walls. This biophotonic luminescence
tells each cell what role to play and what its DNA will do in relation
to the surrounding cells in that body. In other words, our body
generates a glow, and it is that glow that tells the DNA of each cell
what to do. Thus the strength of the outermost boundary of a paper disc
chromatogram measures the density of the cellular boundaries where the
glow is generated. It is an indicator of the degree to which that
specimen glows, since it is in this peripheral ‘cell wall’ region or
silica polarity where the biophotonic luminescence occurs. What makes
this particularly important is a discovery made at the T.E.A.M
Laboratories in the Netherlands when testing genetically modified (GM)
soybeans with paper disc chromatography.
What Is Genetic Modification and How Does It Work?
GM differs from previous breeding methods, such as
hybridization, in by-passing the need to cross one plant with another
close relative in order develop a new breed. Instead of
cross-pollinating with entire chromosomal sets, GM allows scientists to
by-pass cellular membranes and attach specific genes from one species
directly onto the chromosomes of another unrelated species. Viruses do
this in nature when they invade cells and take over their internal
chemistry.
GM uses viral mechanisms to invade plant reproductive cells
(e.g.
pollen) and attach foreign genes to chromosomes. Although many of the
organisms so produced are unviable or fail to accomplish the desired
result, by taking a shotgun approach and selecting the most successful
specimens a new ‘genetically modified organism’ (GMO) can be produced
that can be replicated as a new variety. Ordinarily the first generation
GMO is hybridized to improve yields, since the initial GM plants are
often less productive than their parents. Thus something like the gene,
which produces a toxin that paralyses caterpillar digestion, can be
transferred from a tiny microbe like Bacillus thuringiensis into corn,
cotton or canola crops. Then every cell in the new variety will produce
this gene with its caterpillar toxin. Moreover, the new variety can
spread and hybridize with other non-GM relatives in its surroundings.
This raises the question of the spread of GM genetics to non-GM
crops or to wild relatives in their surroundings. Do GMOs spread their
genes? Yes, they do. It is clearly established that bees can spread GM
canola and cotton genes to nearby crops and to wild relatives in the
surroundings. Corn, because it is wind pollinated, can transfer GM corn
genes over long distances, depending on how the wind blows. GM corn
genes have even been detected in wild corn ancestor teosinte plants in
the Mexican mountains.
The T.E.A.M. chromatogram work with soy brings up the question
of how confident are scientists that the viral mechanisms used to breach
cell membranes shut down once their payloads are delivered? Are we
spreading these viruses via GM crops, and if so, what is their effect in
the environment? Though they are said to be ‘de-activated’ could they be
re-activated? How well has this been researched?
Another question arises that geneticists are in almost complete
denial of. Companies patenting varieties would like to believe their
genetics, once established, are unchanging. However, Barbara McClintock,
a Kansas based genetic researcher and home gardener, won the Nobel Prize
in genetics in 1987 for demonstrating that corn mixes up its genes with
every generation. Because corn is monoclinic–meaning there is no
variation in the female chromosomes within a given ear, only the pollen
varies–her job was simplified by half. Using colourful Indian corn with
its convenient genetic markers this took her 20 years. McClintock’s work
substantiates Rudolf Steiner’s assertion in his second lecture on
agriculture that these genetic rearrangements occur with all plants with
every generation, and who is to say he was wrong? What does this mean in
terms of GM crops morphing into unanticipated varieties or species?
Interestingly, there has been no rush to fund research in this
direction. Those funding genetic research seem to shy away from knowing
anything further along these lines. They have adopted a stance that
McClintock’s discovery just involved corn and was benign. But then,
McClintock’s research was not conducted with GM corn, so how blithe is
this assumption?
What Drives the Rush to Spread GMOs?
Clearly it is neither science nor solving the problems of
agriculture that drives the rush to spread GM. The push comes from
boardrooms, stockholders and investment bankers, who are about as
divorced from the scientific and social issues as possible. Current
investment in companies working on GM technology runs into the hundreds
of billions of dollars. Some of the giants like Monsanto have so many
interlocking interests in GM that the expectation of profits from GM
technology is staggering.
In the minds of such investors and corporate officers, GM is
very low risk. Patent law is ironclad for GM varieties, especially after
Monsanto’s big win against canola seed grower, Percy Schmeiser, in
Saskatchewan. Monsanto claimed he stole their herbicide resistant
genetics, though Schmeiser insisted his seeds were contaminated without
his awareness. Monsanto won.
This set the precedent that anyone caught with GM genetics in
their seeds, presumably even organic growers (who would believe they
hadn’t ‘cheated’), would have to pay Monsanto’s premiums or face legal
action. Some organic growers have joined together to take Monsanto to
court on the issue of offensive contamination, but this is like a flea
going up against an elephant-brave, but probably inconsequential
considering the profit potential is epic enough to buy a few court
decisions if necessary.
It is clear that scientists working for GM companies are
encouraged by their employers to brush aside any worries and cheerlead
the assertion that GM technology not only is safe, it will be the
saviour of agriculture, mankind and the environment. Those who drag
their feet won’t be promoted. Those who publicly say we need to learn
how to stuff things back in the bottle before we let them loose will be
fired and black balled from a profession they invested heavily in
learning. They stand to lose their house, cars, medical insurance,
retirement funds, and maybe their families will break up. They could
drive taxis and sleep in flop house hotels for the privilege of being
serious scientists.
And there is little chance of their bosses understanding the
scientific issues. They hire scientists to get results, and they want to
be sure of those results. These same executives will suck up to
politicians and peak scientific bodies while gladly arranging funding
for University science departments to ensure the seamless support of the
credentialed academic community, thus ensuring they can brush off the
vast majority of their detractors as fear mongering idiots. That’s the
way the game is played.
In Summation, Why Should We Worry?
In the first place GM technology is unnecessary and its adoption
by agriculture has all the earmarks of the lady who swallowed a horse.
More specifically, there may be no one alive today with the genetic
savvy to say what the consequences are of opening up the boundaries
between widely divergent species. Moreover, no one seems able to say how
we can close this Pandora’s lid. Should we–for the sake of corporate
profits–take the risk? Shouldn’t we all be concerned? Aren’t our
futures and our descendents’ futures at stake? Nature tends to be
incredibly wise, and the boundaries between species may be there for
good reason.
*****
For a glimpse at the different chromatogram pictures for GM and Non-GM
soybeans, go to page ten at this website:
http://www.demeter-bd.nl/Downloads/DP200303.pdf
*****
Hugh Lovel is an avant Australian agriculture teacher with 30 years
experience as a biodynamic farmer in Georgia. In his university days
studying chemistry and biology he felt uncomfortable with the
intellectual self-deception of institutionalized science and stepped
outside the ranks of academe into the school of hard knocks to learn
about God, humanity and nature first-hand. An intellectual maverick,
Hugh has excelled at a wide range of professions, ever continuing his
diverse course of studies sans degrees. In his words, “Surely I will not
graduate ’til the day I die.”
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