Aiming for Safety and Sustainability in U.S. Agriculture and Biotechnology

LAYOUT Each World Resources Institute report represents a timely, scholarly treatment of a subject of public concern. WRI takes responsibility for choosing the study topics and guaranteeing its authors and researchers freedom of inquiry. It also solicits and responds to the guidance of advisory panels and expert reviewers. Unless otherwise stated, however, all the interpretation and findings set forth in WRI publications are those of the authors. the manuscript does not necessarily reflect their views. The author also acknowledges Karen Holmes and Robert Livernash for their excellent work on editing and improving the manuscript. While recognizing the contributions of those mentioned above, the author retains sole responsibility for the opinions expressed in this report. Acknowledgments 1 DESIGNING GENES The health and productivity of agriculture is vital to U.S. national interests. Current agricultural practices, however, carry serious environmental and economic costs, making a shift toward sustainable alternatives imperative for U.S. agriculture. Modern agricultural production is based on heavy use of irrigation, energy, and chemical inputs (pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers) that degrade the environment and impose considerable economic burdens on current and future generations. Most commodity farming in the United States relies on high levels of synthetic chemical inputs and only modest use of crop rotations and conservation tillage. Agricultural practices increase greenhouse gas concentrations by adding carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere, contributing to the threat of global climate change. National policies to reduce food prices and expand agricultural exports through subsidies and high production levels have also taken their toll on farm profitability over the last half century, with most U.S. agricultural production now carried out at or near economic loss. In this context of unsustainable agriculture, genetically engineered (GE) crops have become a major feature of current U.S. agricultural practice whose value and desirability is hotly debated. U.S. farmers strongly prefer the GE varieties of many principal commodity crops, including corn (45 percent of the annual crop), cotton (76 percent of the annual upland cotton crop), and soy (85 percent of the annual crop). Crops genetically engineered for herbicide tolerance and insect resistance are now planted on over 110 million acres of soybeans, corn, and cotton in the United States. Scientific assessments show that GE approaches to crop improvement generate potential benefits in many arenas of agricultural performance, including reduced volume and toxicity of agricultural chemical use, increased prevalence of conservation tillage and no-till practices, and …