One feature of the current rural crisis in Australia is the problem of farmers' dependency on new technology with associated environmental problems. RICHARD HINDMARSH, an environmental researcher from the Science Policy Research Centre at Griffith University, looks at genetic engineering and the corporate-driven biotechnology revolution.
Throughout Australia a new technological innovation is slowly emerging from the laboratories that eventually, it is planned, will surface all around us — a parallel "artificial" nature that all naturally occurring species will have to contend with, especially those in agroecosystems.
Both proponents and critics of the newly concocted web of life call it a bio-revolution. It emanates from the biological sciences and uses genetic engineering as its central means of "conquest" over nature. Through genetic engineering, totally unrelated species that cannot naturally interbreed can be modified to share each other's genetic material. Natural barriers are being overthrown.
Such is the controversy over genetic engineering that the French press call it an "eco-war" between geneticists and ecologists. There, the petunia flower has become the symbol of environmentalists at demonstrations against genetic engineering. A gene-altered petunia has been developed by biotechnologists in France, just as a blue rose has been "created" by gene engineers in Australia.
In the USA and European countries, so called eco-terrorists are employing intimidation and direct action tactics against companies engaged in building up a corporate "arsenal" of genetic technologies for profit, accumulation and control.
At the policy level, other greens are waging a very difficult and complex battle to influence the research and regulatory agenda against the powerful forces within and behind the bio-industry.
Whose agenda?
This battle is difficult because proponents of genetic engineering co-opt the environmental agenda; they project a cleaner and safer planet — an ecologically sound cornucopian future. They claim:
* the creation of herbicide-tolerant crops implies a shift from toxic herbicides to environmentally benign herbicides;
* gene-splicing naturally occurring bioinsecticides into plants (the transgenic biopesticide) is an effective biological pest-control strategy;
* genetically engineering cereal crops that fix their own nitrogen will eliminate the use of costly inorganic fertilisers;
* releasing genetically engineered organisms is low risk, and environmental consequences will be negligible.
All these claims have been challenged by environmentalists. The more ncrease in chemical usage from herbicide tolerance; widespread development of insect resistance to natural biotoxins, thus creating a new problem for both conventional and alternative agriculture; and nitrogen-fixing plants that can absorb synthetic fertilisers more effectively, thereby continuing chemical accumulation in ecosystems.
In opposition to those who project genetic engineering as low risk, ecologists say that nature simply cannot be simulated in the sterile laboratory and scientists cannot yet predict with any reasonable degree of certainty how altered organisms will behave once released into the open environment. This is due to a limited scientific database concerning many aspects of genetics, ecosystems and ecological processes.
Risks
The risk of releasing novel organisms into the open environment is a transfer of spliced-in traits — such as tolerance to herbicides, insects, disease or salinity — from modified organisms to non-target, naturally occurring organisms.
The difference in risk perception is one of scientific training as well as of vested interest. While molecular biologists or microbiologists specialise in biology at the molecular and cellular level of interaction, ecologists specialise in biology at the organism-ecosystem-biosphere levels of interaction, and are independent.
This means ecologists are better placed to assess the consequences of releasing novel organisms. Low-risk scenarios are analogous to those of atomic energy scientists with regard to the environmental impacts of nuclear power.
The overall risk with numerous large-scale releases of genetically engineered organisms is a lessening of natural species and genetic diversity, a distortion of natural ecological processes through to the eventual disruption of ecosystems equilibrium and, possibly in the longer term, a significant impact on biosphere equilibrium.
Corporate interests
Who are the proponents? In general, they are members of the chemical-seed-bioindustrial complex — petrochemical transnational corporations (which also incorporate pharmaceutical and chemical corporations), powerful pro-industry government agencies, bio-entrepreneurs, university-industry collaborators and scientists involved in the research and commercialisation of biotechnology. In other words, vested interests. By far the most powerful player is the corporate sector. To date, only a very few organisms have been released or put up for sale. Most are still in the experimentation stage under laboratory containment, while others are being trialled in small-scale field tests to assess their commercial viability. Yet large-scale releases are now being proposed in the US. The next step is widespread diffusion into the marketplace or open environment.
The "hidden" agenda of corporate biotechnological change is the restructuring of agribusiness, and thus the protection and expansion of the corporate domain in agriculture.
Sensing the commercial opportunities presented by biotechnology, (predicted to be US$50-100 billion by the year 2000), as well as its technological-fix potential to overcome environmental limits to growth, mega-transnational corporations began to seek control of biotechnology development, application and regulation from the mid-1970s on.
Their strategies have been to develop in-house research and development programs, form joint ventures with university and public-sector research facilities and take over small biotechnology firms and seed companies.
Seed money
The seed is the vector for biotechnological change. Seed merchants sell DNA — they annually provide farmers with small packages of genetic information. Through genetic engineering and private ownership of seed, chemical companies sustain and expand the role of herbicides in agriculture and continue the dependency of farmers and society on chemical pest-control regimes, as well as creating a new dependency on complementary pest-control strategies like the transgenic biopesticide.
Ultimately, such dependence sustains and expands corporate revenue and power. To consolidate such growth, chemical companies have spent more than US$10 billion buying up seed companies internationally during the last decade.
An indication of the nature of the financial returns is indicated by the US$20 billion annual global market for synthetic chemicals, and the US$25 billion market for commercial seed. Estimates are that by the year 2000 the global commercial seed market will be worth US$28 billion, of which there is a US$12 billion opportunity for biotechnological products.
Transnationals funding genetic engineering research in Australia include ICI, Monsanto, Groupe Limagrain, and Johnson and Johnson. Other foreign corporate players on the Australian scene with significant genetic engineering programs include Sandoz, Bayer, Eli Lilly, Du Pont, Ciba-Geigy, Hoechst, and Rhone-Poulenc or their subsidiaries. Their bio-products will be diffused into the Australian market through their domination of the domestic agrochemicals and crop protection sector, as well as a strong presence in the seed sector, and through joint ventures in research and development with smaller
State support
Geoff Lawrence has charged that the state has introduced specific measures to expand and protect the development of a corporate-sector biotechnology industry in Australia. Major strategies employed by pro-industry government interests include:
- a "user-friendly" regulatory regime; a narrow reliance on vested interests for policy advice;
- subsidising of joint ventures and strategic alliances, particularly with foreign corporations;
- prioritising the field of molecular biology as a recipient of government research grants;
- the partial privatisation of plant genetic material through the introduction of plant variety rights legislation in 1987, and the more complete privatisation of genetic material through the Patents Bill 1990.
Overall, the general idea of Australian collaboration is to share biotechnologies, markets and profits, yet instead the Australian bio-industry is becoming firmly entrenched within the global corporate context.
The corporate biotechnological program is deeply flawed both ecologically and socially. It is not addressing the central issue in the development of a sustainable agriculture — the need for a naturally sound ecological modus operandi, from the ecological substructure to farm and technological practices.
The environmental problems which biotechnology now claims to resolve are simply outcomes of an earlier round of innovations which were themselves technological fixes attempting to overcome ecological limits. In this sense, biotechnology will come to represent, not an environmentally acceptable alternative to conventional agriculture, but a new form of conventional agriculture which promises to escalate our environmental problems.
The biotechnological attempt to produce an environmentally cleaner, safer and more effective agriculture will fail, and at a cost that threatens to be too high for our society and fragile ecology. The corporate vision of biotechnological sustainability is unacceptable, and needs to be countered effectively.