The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.7           February 17, 1997 
 
 
Should Workers Oppose Genetically Engineered Crops?  

BY BILL KALMAN
DES MOINES, Iowa - What should workers and farmers think about the introduction of genetically engineered crops? Is this a case of technology gone berserk in service to agribusiness? Should the technology itself be opposed, or is the real culprit the social organization of agriculture for profit?

These are some of the questions raised by the explosion of genetically altered crop seeds, particularly corn, soybeans, and cotton, that are being made widely available to U.S. farmers for the first time this winter, in time for the spring planting season. The availability of these seeds has provoked a big discussion among farmers, environmental activists, and others on the safety, marketability, and impact of bioengineered crops. This fall protests against these types of crops, including an instance where Greenpeace activists spray-painted soy fields, have made headlines in the Midwest and around the world.

Now that it is possible to alter crops to increase yields, resist disease, and even boost nutritional levels, what stance should workers and farmers take towards these developments? It is important to start with what is involved scientifically.

In a sense, the genetic manipulation of crop seed is simply the next step beyond what farmers have been doing for thousands of years, selectively breeding seeds and stock animals for favored characteristics. With advances in both the science of genetics and the development of technology, the speed and efficiency of this process has accelerated greatly in the past 50 years.

The development of hybrid crops through selective cross- pollination results in crops that are hardier and more robust. The large-scale use of hybridization of corn that began in the 1930s increased yields immediately by 25 percent.

Genetic engineering speeds up this selection process even more by manipulating a plant's DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) to change its inherited characteristics - to increase its resistance to disease, chemicals, or insects, or to introduce other characteristics. For example, it is now possible to alter cotton plants to produce fibers containing small amounts of polyester, which retains heat better than natural cotton.

Monsanto Co. has developed soybeans that can tolerate that company's widely-used Roundup herbicide. An estimated 10 million acres of "Roundup Ready Soy" will be planted in the U.S. in 1997. Monsanto, alone and through its subsidiary DeKalb Genetics, owns the biotechnology that produces the genetically altered soy seed. While only two seed companies offered the altered beans in 1996, some 65 companies will sell them for the 1997 growing season. About half of the soybeans grown in the U.S. are for export.

Debate over altered crops in Europe
The European Commission, an executive agency of the European Union (EU), recently decided to allow the sale of Bt corn, which is genetically altered to produce its own pesticide. It approved the importing of altered soybeans earlier last year. The new corn produces the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) chemical to ward off the European corn- borer, a pest responsible for damaging millions of dollars worth of corn every year; traditional and Bt corn will be mixed together in the processing cycle.

The move to import genetically engineered crops has been controversial. In Germany, the food conglomerates Unilever and Nestle have pledged to use only regular soybeans. This may be difficult to carry out as altered beans are routinely mixed with regular beans in silos, barges, railroad cars, and ship holds. Germany is one of the world's top five importers of U.S. soybeans.

EuroCommerce, a major European trade association, has also stated its opposition to using the altered crop. According to Reuters news agency, Switzerland's two largest food retailers are demanding that the beans be separated, but "the US grain industry says it would be costly and impractical." In December the Austrian health minister banned the import of Bt corn for safety reasons.

While the EU's 15 countries imported 108 million bushels of U.S. corn last year, Japan imported some 635 million bushels, making it the largest customer for U.S. corn exporters. The Japanese government has recently decided to allow the importation of Bt corn into that country as livestock feed. Earlier the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare allowed the use of Bt corn for human consumption.

The battle for acceptance of genetically-altered crops is the battle for oversees markets. As a recent Wall Street Journal article points out, "Time is running short ... as foods made from these new crops begin to reach supermarkets, lawmakers must decide how to label these products; the agro-chemical industry, food processors and retailers must convince Europeans that the new species are safe; and European Union authorities must try to ensure that the effort doesn't produce new fissures in the already fractured single market. If these efforts fail, Western Europe's farm sector could be left trailing the Americans in the global grain trade."

Capitalist competition fuels dispute
Many people around the world have a healthy suspicion of U.S. agribusiness, especially on questions of food safety. In their mad rush to corner the market, the U.S. capitalists do not adequately test these new crops and have no safeguards in place for potential problems, such as the narrowing of the gene pool and the impact on reducing seed diversity. Like all technologies developed under capitalism, the positive effects are often accompanied by unexpected negative consequences. While immediate drawbacks to genetic engineering aren't clearly apparent yet, anticipation of them has made many working people wary about wholesale acceptance of this new technology. This undoubtedly played a role in many of the recent protests in Europe.

But it is hard to ignore the nationalist, protectionist thrust of the these actions, which were organized by the big European food monopolies to restrict U.S. imports into the EU.

U.S. government agriculture and trade officials are worried about potential European boycotts. "If we don't do something about it, it's going to be a major problem," maintained Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa. "It could keep every kernel of (U.S.) corn out of Europe."

U.S. agriculture secretary Dan Glickman told reporters, "We've got to make sure sound science prevails, not what I call historic culture, which is not based on sound science. So, it's just going to mean a tough, consistent position on the part of the United States."

An article in the November issue of Wallaces Farmer magazine sums up the fears of the U.S. ruling class: "Will U.S. grain be locked out of export markets? Concern by foreign consumers over genetically modified crops such as Roundup Ready soybeans and Bt corn has quickly grown into one of the biggest ag trade issues of this decade."

The drive to get a piece of the new technology has spawned a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the multi- million dollar seed industry. Companies need to own or license the appropriate patents to make use of the genetic engineering, which they hope will give them an edge over European and other rivals. This consolidation in the seed industry has "farmers questioning who will have access to future seeds, and how much those seeds will cost," stated an article in the Farm Journal magazine.

Monsanto, the St. Louis-based chemical and pharmaceutical giant, is moving out of the chemical business and into agricultural biotechnology. In the process the company expects to throw between 1,500 and 2,500 people out of work. Roundup Ready soybeans are expected to increase sales of Roundup, the company's 25- year-old herbicide.

The political implication of the Greenpeace protests is to lay at least partial blame on working farmers for being "dependent" on the big chemical companies for production. Other groups advocating "sustainable agriculture" in the United States, echo this reactionary notion by maintaining that U.S. farmers should go back to a time when agricultural inputs and outputs were not dominated by capital as they are today. Class-conscious workers have no use for such utopian notions.

Farmers are a vital part of the solution to the capitalist crisis in the countryside, and are not the natural allies of agribusiness. Most small farmers are aware of the impact of their labor and technology - including chemicals - on the land. Farmers interviewed in Iowa have expressed a wide range of opinions on genetically altered crops and the Greenpeace protests.

One common opinion was expressed by farmer Gene Mueller in the Iowa Farmer Today newspaper. "My biggest complaint is price. Monsanto has a one-sided contract," he said. "They can come and test your beans any time they want to. You can be charged by them for 10 times the value of the beans for the seeds they give you. You don't have any legal angles in the contract. Everything is dictated to you." Working farmers see quite clearly the predicament they're in.

Rather than protesting the development of technological advances in agriculture, workers and farmers need to put forward a political platform that defends small farmers from the ravages of capitalism and helps mobilize a revolutionary movement to overturn capitalist rule; a movement capable of establishing a workers and farmers government.

The capitalist ruling class uses technology to defend their interests at the expense of urban and rural toilers. A fighting alliance of workers and farmers, which replaces capitalism with a revolutionary government, will use as tools the technology it inherits from the old system. Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky explained in 1925 that "socialist society accepts with utmost gratitude the heritage of the positive sciences, discarding... everything that is useless in acquiring knowledge of nature but only useful in justifying class inequality and all other kinds of historical untruth. Every new social order appropriates the cultural heritage of the past, not in its totality but only in accordance with its own structure."

A workers and farmers government in the United States would extend all previous advances in agricultural production, including seriously studying the question of genetic engineering, to meet humanity's needs for food and fiber around the world.

Bill Kalman is a member of United Transportation Union Local 867 in Des Moines.  
 
 
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