Lecture 7 & 8 — Chapter 8 Flashcards
Central Case: GM Maize and Roundup-
Ready Canola. PERCY SCHMEISER
“If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread; otherwise there will be no peace.”
—NORMAN BORLAUG, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER AND “FATHER” OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION
“I never put those plants on my land. The question is, where do Monsanto’s rights end and mine begin?”
—PERCY SCHMEISER
• Schmeiser charged with reusing or growing patented seed without a contract
• Schmeiser claimed the seeds blew onto his field from the neighbor’s adjacent field
• The courts sided with Monsanto for a patent violation, a fine
of $238 000
• An appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the violation but exempted the fine because the farmer had not benefitted from the seed
The Race to Feed the World. World’s population will swell to 9 billion by the middle of
this century.
• Agricultural land covers 38% of Earth’s land surface.
True or false?
True
What is Agriculture?
practice of raising crops and livestock for human use and consumption.
– Cropland: land used to raise plants for human use
– Rangeland: land used for grazing livestock
Agriculture First Appeared Around 10,000
Years Ago.
• Agriculture was invented independently by different cultures. True or false?
See slide 5.
True
Is Agriculture a form of intensification?
See slide 8
Yes, is a way a way to increase the productivity and carrying capacity of a given unit of land.
• Increased productivity
• Increased carrying capacity
What is Traditional agriculture?
Biologically powered agriculture, using human and animal muscle power.
– Subsistence agriculture– families produce only
enough food for themselves
Agriculture First Appeared Around 10,000
Years Ago. True or false?
True.
Industrialized Agriculture Is More Recent. What is Industrialized agriculture?
Using large-scale mechanization and fossil fuels to boost yields
– Vast fields of single types of crops – monoculture
– Occupies about 25% of the world’s croplands
We are Producing more food per person.
True or false?
See slide 9.
True
What is Food security?
The guarantee of an adequate, reliable, and
available food supply to all people at all times.
No guarantee that agricultural production will continue to outpace population growth depends on what?
– depends on water resources and crop biodiversity
– ability of soils to support crops and livestock
What is Undernourishment?
People receive less than 90% of their daily caloric needs.
– mainly in developing countries
– dominant reasons for undernourishment is economic
– >1 billion of the world’s population live on < $1.24/day
What is Overnutrition?
Receiving too many calories each day.
– In Canada, 48% of adults exceed their healthy weight and 14% are obese
What is Malnutrition?
A shortage of nutrients the body needs
– The diet lacks adequate vitamins and minerals
The Green Revolution Has Had Both
Positive and Negative Impacts
• Positive effects on natural resources
– Reduced pressure to convert natural lands
* prevented deforestation and habitat conversion
• Negative effects on natural resources
– Intensive use of water, fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.
* Pollution
* Erosion
* Salinization
* Desertification
What is Fertilizer Impacts?
See slides 14 and 15.
– Inorganic– or industrial fertilizers are mined or
synthetically manufactured mineral supplements
(nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium)
– Organic– natural materials such as animal manure, crop residues, fresh vegetation, compost
– Runoffs can lead to phytoplankton blooms and pose human health risks
What is Irrigation Impacts?
See slide 17.
– Agriculture main reason for extraction and use of fresh water worldwide
– Efficiency is quite low as only 43% of the water applied gets used by plants
– Can lead to waterlogging and salinization of soils
– Drip irrigation is one possible solution
What is Monoculture Impacts?
– Large expanse of a single crop
– More efficient, increases output
– Devastates biodiversity
– Susceptible to disease and pests
– Contributes to a narrowing of human diet:
* 90% of our food comes from 15 crop species and
* 8 livestock species
What are Pesticide Impacts?
– Poisons that target pest organisms
– Pest organisms pose greater threat in a monoculture situation
– Annual cost of pesticides is about $45 billion
– Concerns about cumulative effects of pesticide use
What is Pest?
Any organism that damages valuable crops.
– Bigger problem in monoculture
Insects, fungi, viruses, rodents, and weeds that eat or compete with our crops have taken advantage of the ways we cluster food plants into agricultural fields. True or false?
True
What is Weed?
Any plant that competes with crops.
Thousands of Chemical Pesticides Have
Been Developed. What are Pesticides?
Poisons that target pest organisms:
– Insecticides– target insects
– Herbicides– target plants
– Fungicides– target fungi
91% of pesticide sales are for agricultural purposes
85% of pesticides sold in Canada are herbidices
Pests Can Evolve Resistance to Pesticides
• Usefulness tends to decline with time as pests evolve resistance to pesticides.
• Small fraction of insects and microbes have genes that confer some degree of immunity to a given pesticide
• If an insect survives pesticide, resistance is passed through their genes to insect offspring
• Evolutionary arms race: chemists increase chemical toxicity to compete with resistant pests. True or false?
True
What is Evolutionary arms race?
See slide 23
chemists increase chemical toxicity to compete with resistant pests.
Biological Control Pits One Organism
Against Another. True or false?
True
What is Biological control (Biocontrol)?
See slide 24.
uses a pest’s natural predators to control the pest
Why Removing a biocontrol agent is harder than halting pesticide use?
Because due to potential problems, proposed biocontrol use must be carefully planned and regulated
The agent may have __________ effects on the
environment and surrounding economies
“nontarget”
No one can predict the effects of an introduced species. True or false?
True
IPM Combines Biocontrol and Chemical
Methods. True or false?
True
What is IPM stands for?
Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
What is Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
See slide 27.
uses multiple techniques to suppress pests:
– Biocontrol
– Chemicals, when necessary
– Population monitoring
– Habitat alteration
– Crop rotation and transgenic crops
– Alternative tillage methods
– Mechanical pest removal
We Are Critically Dependent on Insects to
Pollinate Crops. True or false?
True
What are Pollination?
See slide 28
• Pollination– male plant sex cells fertilize female sex cells
• 1500 crop species depend on insect pollination
– Translates into 3–8% of global crop production
• Pollinators at risk from many factors
Conservation of Pollinators Is Vital, true or false?
Yes, Bees devastated by parasites and Colony Collapse Disorder;
• North American farmers regularly hire beekeepers to bring colonies to their fields
• To conserve bees and other pollinators:
– reduce or eliminate pesticide
use
– plant flowering plants
Genetic Modification of Organisms Depends
on Recombinant DNA, true or false?
True
What is Genetic engineering?
Laboratory manipulation of genetic material
– Creates a genetically modified (GM)
organism.
What is Recombinant DNA?
DNA patched together from the DNA of multiple organisms.
What is Biotechnology?
The material application of biological science to create products derived from organisms.
Biotechnology has helped us create medicines, clean up pollution, understand the causes of cancer, dissolve blood clots after heart attacks, and make better beer and cheese
What is Transgenic organism?
An organism that contains DNA from another species
What is Transgenes?
The genes that have moved between organisms
Genetic Modification of Organisms Depends
on Recombinant DNA, but what is involved in this?
GRBTT
- Genetic engineering
- Recombinant DNA
- Biotechnology
- Transgenic organism
- Transgenes
Biotechnology has helped us create medicines, clean up pollution, understand the causes of cancer, dissolve blood clots after heart attacks, and make better beer and cheese. True or false?
True
Genetic Engineering Is Like, and Unlike,
Traditional/Selective Breeding. What does similar do?
– Both alter gene pools for preferred characteristics
– Both apply to plants and animals
Genetic Engineering Is Like, and Unlike,
Traditional/Selective Breeding. What does Different do?
– Traditional breeding uses genes from the same species
– Selective breeding deals with whole organisms, not just genes
– In traditional breeding, genes come together on their own
Important fact about Genetic Engineering Is Like, and Unlike, Traditional Breeding?
• Most GM crops today are engineered to resist herbicides, others to resist insects
• 3/4 of the world’s soybean plants are transgenic
• 1/4 corn plants and over half of all cotton plants
• Globally, in 2013, GM foods grew on 175 million hectares of farmland, producing $10.5 billion worth of crops Genetic
What Are the Impacts of GM Crops?
• As GM crops expanded, scientists, citizens, and policy makers became concerned:
– Dangerous to human health
– Escaping transgenes could pollute ecosystems and damage nontarget organisms
– Pests could evolve resistance
– Could ruin the integrity of native ancestral races
– Interbreed with closely related wild plants
• So far, evidence of negative ecological
effects is limited
• Numerous mechanisms whereby genes can “escape”
• Critiques argue that we should adopt the precautionary principle
– The idea that one should not proceed until the ramifications of an action are well understood
Debate over GM Foods Involves More Than
Science, involves:
• Ethical issues play a large role like
– People don’t like “tinkering” with “natural” foods
– With increasing use, people are forced to use GM products, or go to special effort to avoid them
– Multinational corporations threaten the small farmers
– Research is funded by corporations that will profit if GM foods are approved for use
– Crops that benefit small, poor farmers are not widely commercialized
Debate over GM Foods Involves More Than
Science, also involves The future of GM foods:
• The future of GM foods seems likely to hinge on social, economic, legal, and political factors as well as scientific ones
Debate over GM Foods Involves More Than
Science, involves also the Transnational spats:
• Transnational spats will surely affect the future direction of agriculture, but consumers and the government’s of the world’s developing nations could exert the most influence in the end
– India and Brazil approve of GM crops
– China is expanding use of transgenic crops
Crop Diversity Provides Insurance Against
Failure with:
• Preserving native variants protects against crop failure
• We have already lost a great deal of genetic diversity in crops
• Market forces discourage diversity in food’s appearance
What is Preserving native variants protects against crop failure?
– Monocultures are vulnerable, so wild relatives contain genes that could provide resistance to disease and pests
What is We have already lost a great deal of genetic diversity in crops?
– Wheat varieties in China dropped from 10,000 (1949) to 1,000 (1970s)
– Mexico’s famed maize varieties number only 30% of what it was in the 1930s
What is Market forces discourage diversity in food’s appearance?
– Consumers prefer uniform, standardized food
Seed Banks Are Living Museums for Seeds, what are Seed banks?
Preserve seed types as a living museum of genetic diversity:
– Seeds are collected and preserved, and periodically planted
– Hand pollination preserves genetic
distinctiveness
– The Royal Botanic Garden’s Millennium Seed Bank in Britain aims to bank 20% of the world’s plants by 2020
– Norway has started a “doomsday vault” seed bank
Why Raising Animals for Food?
• Most people eat animal products
• People don’t need to eat meat to live full, active, healthy lives
• As wealth and commerce increase, so does consumption of meat, milk, and eggs
– Global meat production has increased fivefold since 1950
– Per capita meat consumption has doubled
Consumption of Animal Products Is
Growing, true or false?
True
Why High Consumption Has Let to Feedlot
Agriculture?
•for Pressure of global population has led to feedlots
What is Feedlots?
Huge warehouses deliver energy-rich food to
animals living at extremely high densities:
– Also known as “factory farms” or CAFOs
– Necessary to keep up with meat consumption in Canada and the United States
– Over ½ of the world’s pork and most of the poultry come from feedlots
What are Benefits of feedlots?
– Greater production of food
– Keeps up with high meat consumption
– Reduces the impact of livestock on land (use less space)
* No overgrazing and soil degradation
What is Drawbacks of feedlots?
– Contribute to water and air pollution
– Poor waste containment may cause human disease
* E. coli, Salmonella
– Cattle: steroids used to stimulate growth
– Heavy uses of antibiotics to control disease
What are the three Pressure of global population has led to feedlots?
• Feedlots
• Benefits of feedlots
• Drawbacks of feedlots
Our Food Choices Are Also Energy Choices, true or false?
Yes,
• 90% of energy is lost every time energy moves from one trophic level to the next
• The lower on the food chain from which we take our food sources, the more people the Earth can support
• Land and water are needed to raise food for
livestock
• Producing eggs and chicken meat requires the least space and water; beef requires the most
We Also Raise Fish on “Farms”, what is Aquaculture?
Raising aquatic organisms for food in a controlled environment
– open-water pens or
– land-based ponds
The fastest-growing type of food production
– Provides 1/3 of the world’s fish for human
consumption
Aquaculture Has Benefits and Drawbacks, what are some benefits?
• Benefits:
– A reliable protein source
– Sustainable
– Reduces fishing pressure on overharvested wild fish stocks
– Energy efficient
Aquaculture Has Benefits and Drawbacks, what are some Drawbacks?
• Drawbacks:
– Diseases can occur, requiring expensive
antibiotics
– Reduces food security
– Large amounts of waste
– Farmed fish may escape and introduce disease into the wild
• Genetically modified salmon grow many times larger than wild ones
• May weaken wild stock by interbreeding
• May also increase risk of extinction
What is part of the Sustainable Agriculture?
• Sustainable agriculture
• No-till agriculture
• Low-input agriculture
• Organic agriculture
What is Sustainable agriculture?
Does not deplete soil, pollute water, or decrease genetic diversity
What is No-till agriculture?
Depth and frequency of ploughing and
tilling are kept to a minimum to protect soil moisture and compaction
What is Low-input agriculture?
Uses smaller amounts of pesticide,
fertilizers, growth hormones, water, and fossil fuel energy than industrial agriculture
Organic Agriculture Is on the Increase, What is Organic agriculture?
Uses no synthetic fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, or herbicides
– Relies on biological approaches (composting and biocontrol)
• 2006: Organic Products Regulations establishes national standards for organic products
• Multi-ingredient products must be 95% organic ingredients
• Organic certification logo
• Market for organic foods is on the increase (20% annually)
• More than 500,000 ha are used to grow organic products in Canada
Organic Agriculture Is on the Increase
• For farmers:
- Lower input costs,
- enhanced income from higher-value products,
- reduced chemical costs and pollution
– Obstacles include the risks and costs of switching to new farming methods and less market infrastructure
Organic Agriculture Is on the Increase
• For consumers:
– Concern about pesticide’s health risks
– A desire to improve environmental quality
– Obstacles include the added expense and less aesthetically appealing appearance of the product
What are some Organic Approaches Reduce Inputs and Pollution?
• Lack of use of chemical pesticides
• Yield 80% of what conventional fields produce
– 97% fewer pesticides
– 35–50% less fertilizer
Locally Supported Agriculture Is Growing by in:
• In developed nations
• Community-supported agriculture
What are In developed nations?
– farmers and consumers are supporting local small- scale agriculture
– increased production of fresh, local produce in season
What are Community-supported agriculture?
consumers pay farmers in advance for a share of their yield:
– consumers get fresh food
– farmers get a guaranteed income
Organic Agriculture Can Even Succeed in
Cities, by community of gardens but what are they?
Areas where residents can grow their own food
How can Organic Agriculture Can Even Succeed in Cities?
• Community gardens = areas where residents can grow their own food
• Organizations offer workshops to assist
• Often have associations with food banks
