1. The Issue
Genetically engineered crops are often taken automatically for the main reason of biodiversity loss.
There are numerous false claims of this kind, such as Vandana Shiva gives in her frequent world tours: Shiva, V., Emani, A., & Jafri, A.H. (1999) Globalization and threat to seed security - Case of transgenic cotton trials in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 34, 10-11, pp 601-613 http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Cotton/Shiva-Globalisation-Threat-Seed-Security-1999.pdf
“In such a situation, the introduction of genetically engineered (GE) seeds becomes worrisome. In absence of any such regulation, the costlier GE seeds will offer no guarantee for whether they perform well or not. This will lead to complete erosion of the agricultural biodiversity and adversely affect the socio-economic status of the farmers. This will be further aggravated since GE seeds will be patented, and corporations will treat information about them as proprietary.”
And another citation from Greenpeace Great Britain, downloaded from their website November 12, 2009 see Greenpeace, statement on GM crops http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Fundamentalists/Greenpeace-Biodiversity-GB-website-20091112.pdf AND http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/gm
“The introduction of genetically modified (GM) food and crops has been a disaster. The science of taking genes from one species and inserting them into another was supposed to be a giant leap forward, but instead they pose a serious threat to biodiversity and our own health. In addition, the real reason for their development has not been to end world hunger but to increase the stranglehold multinational biotech companies already have on food production.”
The contrary is true, GM crops can help reduce the application of herbicides which are problematic for the environment, and a plethora of hard data proofs that non-target insects often survive quite well in Bt maize fields, whereas in non-GM crop fields, often the non-target organisms suffer from massive spraying of chemicals problematic to the environment and life. Another set of hard facts has been generated from the no-tillage culture of herbicide tolerant soybeans, where it is proven that soil fertility is greatly enhanced.
2. Summary
The need for biodiversity on all levels is made clear: Biodiversity provides a source of significant economic, aesthetic, health and cultural benefits (3.). Relationsships between biodiversity and ecosystems is given in a table (3.1.) and a new concept of sustainability with more emphasis on development and progress is given (3.2.)
Types of biodiversity are often used without clear definition: genetic biodiversity - species diversity and ecosystem diversity are all part of biodiversity (4.).
A short chapter on global distribution on biodiversity closes the general part (5).
The loss of biodiversity has one main reason: habitat destruction through urbanization, land use and agriculture (6.1.). Another threat to indigenous biodiversity is invasive species and species migration due to human activities (6.2.). Biodiversity is a kind of biological insurance for ecosystem processes (6.3.).
In chapter 7 crop biodiversity gets a closer look: the genome of transgenic crops is not basically different from non-transgenic crops (7.1.).). Strikingly enough, the ancestral crop species chosen by the first farmers have lived in monodominant stands (7.2.). Agricultural biodiversity is characterized through high dynamics of all processes (7.3 and 7.4).
Chapter 8 deals with a series of proposals on how to enhance agricultural biodiversity through (landscape) management (8.1.), mixed cropping (8.2.), enhancing crop diversity through fostering orphan crops (8.3.) varietal mixture of genes and seeds of the same crop (8.4.), allow indirectly more diversity of non-target insects with the use of pest resistant transgenic crops and by reducing pesticide use and through no-tillage (8.5.), push-and-pull technologies (8.6.), better plant breeding (8.7), enhancing natural resistance with biotechnology (8.8.).
In an interlude chapter 9 on the activities of the protest industry and opponent scientists it is explained why the obvious success of GM crops is not really making progress in Europe.
In chapter 10, two case studies on GM crops are given with some detail on how those crops with widespread commercialization are helping efficiently to regain biodiversity in regions with intensive and industrial agriculture: Herbicide tolerant crops (10.1.) and pest tolerant Bt crops (10.2.)
In a final chapter 11, the health benefits of Bt maize are documented: transgenic Bt maize has much lower mycotoxin levels than non-transgenic maize.
The full text under the following link: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/AF-11-Biodiversity/AF-11-Biodiversity-Biotechnology-20091123-web.pdf
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