New GMOs in Agriculture: No gain, much pain

The European Commission justifies the deregulation of new genomic techniques with sustainability benefits & higher yields. This promise is untenable as deregulating NGTs won’t do the job, writes Karl Bär.

Karl Bär is a Green Party member of the German Bundestag. In 2019, working for the Munich Environmental Institute, he was one of the organizers of the European citizens’ initiative “Save Bees and Farmers”, which called for a gradual phase-out of the use of chemical pesticides.

The European Commission plans to exempt most plants that can be produced using new genomic techniques (NGT) from genetic engineering legislation. Frans Timmermans called the deregulation of NGTs a tool to achieve the goals of the Green Deal. But taking a closer look, this promise turns out to be untenable.

If the Commission really wants more sustainability and stable yields in agriculture, it is backing the wrong horse with NGTs.

On July 5, the EU Commission published a proposal to abolish environmental and consumer protection measures for the use of NGTs in plants. Genetically modified plants will no longer have to undergo the an approval procedure with risk assessment.

Food produced using genetically modified plants will no longer have to be labelled. The advantage? Seed companies will be able to sell products in Europe which consumers do not want to buy.

In its press release, the Commission justifies these changes with noble motives: “They allow developing improved plant varieties that are climate resilient, pest resistant, that require less fertilisers and pesticides and can ensure higher yields, helping to cut the use and risk of chemical pesticides in half, and reducing the EUs dependency on agricultural imports. ”

According to my research, these goals cannot be achieved by deregulating NGTs.

This can be illustrated by taking a closer look into the prospects of reducing pesticides with NGTs. Herbicides, insecticides or fungicides account for 90% of the pesticides used in the EU. To contribute to halving the use of pesticides by 2030, NGT plants with properties that reduce the use of agrochemicals would have to be available very soon.

However, even without strict requirements and regulations, after ten years of NGT research, only a small range of a few NGT varieties are growing in fields in the USA, Argentina or Brazil.

These plants are either herbicide-tolerant or have consumer-oriented characteristics. They include, for example, vegetables that do not turn brown so quickly.

Meanwhile, a look at publications on the new plant traits being developed with NGTs shows that despite many interesting research projects, hardly any NGT products are ready for the market.

There is not even an intellectual approach to cut the use of herbicides through NGT. However, there are plants produced with both old and new genetic engineering methods that are resistant to these weedkillers. The use of herbicides has therefore risen rapidly in the USA and South America in recent decades and will continue to rise where such plants are established.

The ideas how to save insecticides with genetic engineering are neither new nor promising: Transgenic plants which produce bacterial insecticides have been on the markets since the 1990s.

The result is a race against nature. Using these plants saves chemical insecticides until important predators adapt through evolution and become resistant to the toxins in the plant. Spraying of insect killers rises again after some time.

There are now transgenic varieties that produce several bacterial insecticides at once. However, it is impossible to win the race in the long term. NGT plants can copy this approach but are not yet on the market or in the development pipeline.

Only regarding fungus-resistant varieties, there are projects in the pipeline that are relevant for the EU. Experience has shown that plant varieties that are resistant or tolerant to fungal infestation can reduce the use of fungicides for a period of time.

This can already be achieved through traditional breeding with resistance genes from existing varieties or related species. However, even here there is the problem that pathogens can break through resistance.

NGTs promise more speed in the race against fungal evolution by introducing genes from related varieties and species into good yielding varieties. However, no fungus-resistant NGT seeds are yet on the market.

Of the nine research projects in the development pipeline to develop fungus-resistant NGT plants, four are relevant for Europe. And only one of these has any relevant fungicide-saving potential in Europe – a Botrytis-resistant NGT vine.

My conclusion: NGTs will not contribute to reducing the use of fungicides in the EU in the foreseeable future, let alone cutting it in half by 2030.

As in the debate about e-fuels in cars and nuclear fusion for energy production, genetic engineering in agriculture is being used to delay a necessary transformation of the system. It is ideology in the original sense of the word: it obscures the view on reality and serves the existing power relations.

The most important reason for the high use of pesticides in Europe is the lack of diversity in the fields. Even slightly wider crop rotations, as practiced by every organic farm, significantly reduce the use of pesticides.

Other agroecological measures such as building up humus and planting hedges and trees increase the resilience of the farming system and are therefore also helpful in adapting agriculture to climate change.

There is nothing to gain from the new GMOs in agriculture, but a lot to lose. It leads to a dead end. The deregulation of these controversial technologies against the will of consumers is worsening confidence in European agriculture.

The EU should maintain its tried-and-tested legislation and promote measures that have already proven to achieve the desired effects.