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미국에서는 지금 디캄바라는 제초제의 오용으로 인한 피해 사례가 급증하고 있다는 미국 환경보호청의 보고서입니다.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-08/documents/fifra-dicambacomplianceadvisory.pdf
왜 이런 일이 생겼는지 분석한 글을 보면 아주 흥미롭습니다.
바로 유전자변형 작물의 맞춤형 제초제에 내성이 생긴 풀들을 죽이려다가 발생한 일이라고 합니다.
20년 가까이 몬산토 등의 유전자변형 작물을 재배하면서 풀들도 그에 적응을 했고, 그래서 맞춤형 제초제를 쳐도 죽지 않는 풀들을 죽이려다 보니까 디캄바에까지 손을 댔다네요. 보고서에 보면 디캄바는 작물을 심기 전, 또는 작물을 수확한 이후 풀을 죽이는 데 쓰는 강력한 제초제라고 합니다. 그런 제초제를 오용하다니, 농민들이 생각이 없지는 않을 테고 다 이유가 있어서 사용했겠죠?
슬슬 유전자변형 작물의 폐해가 농업 현장에서 드러나고 있는 요즘입니다.
앞으로 다국적 농기업들에서는 또 어떤 상품을 들고 나올지, 어떤 해법을 내놓을지 흥미롭습니다. 함께 지켜봅시다.
토종, 도대체 토종이 무엇인가 (0) | 2016.09.05 |
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토종 씨앗의 역습 (가제) (0) | 2016.09.05 |
GMO 표시제 논란 (0) | 2016.07.07 |
토종 마늘의 변신 (0) | 2016.06.24 |
소로리 볍씨는 가장 오래된 재배 벼인가? (0) | 2016.06.23 |
유전자변형 작물이 도입된 지 어느덧 20년이 되었다.
그동안 이 유전자변형 작물을 둘러싼 논쟁은 치열했고, 아직도 무어라고 명확하게 결론은 나지 않았다.
찬성 측의 이야기를 들으면 그 소리도 옳고, 반대 측의 이야기를 들으면 그 소리도 옳다. 물론 틀린 부분도 있지만 말이다.
아무튼 20년이 지나면서 알게 모르게 우리의 밥상에는 유전자변형 식품들이 오르고 있다.
아래에 나오는 것 말고 가장 많은 양을 차지하는 건 아무래도 육류일 것이다.
가축을 유전자변형으로 품종개량하는 것이 아니라, 유전자변형 작물을 재배해 곡물사료를 얻고 그걸 가축에게 먹임으로써 그렇다는 말이다.
그런데 그동안 가축이 그렇게 직접적으로 유전자변형 작물을 섭취했어도 어떠한 문제가 있었다는 보고는 없었다.
모르겠다. 가축은 그 수명이 워낙 짧아서 -자연수명은 길지라도 가축으로 사육되는 이상 고기용 닭은 1달 남짓, 달걀용 닭은 길어야 2~3년, 소는 그나마 길어서 3년 정도일 테니- 그 위해성이 드러나지 않은 것일지도.
사람도 아래와 같이 알게 모르게 섭취하고 있지만 딱히 인과관계가 명확히 드러난 피해는 보고되지 않으니 그것이 위해한지 아닌지 판단하기가 어려울 뿐이다.
그렇다고 해서 이 부분도 딱 잘라서 아무 해가 없다, 아니면 있다고 말하기 어렵다.
아무튼 이와 관련하여 매일경제에서 좋은 기사가 하나 떴다.
읽어 보시길 권한다.
http://vip.mk.co.kr/news/view/21/20/1405082.html
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작물의 영양소는 예전보다 감소했는가? (0) | 2015.09.15 |
육종이 바꾸어놓은 작물들 (0) | 2015.08.07 |
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이런 논문을 보았다.
<1996~2012년, 미국의 잡초 관리 변화와 유전자변형 제초제 저항성 작물> https://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/gmcrops/article/958930/
이런 걸 보면서 드는 생각은 이렇다... 농업 부문, 특히 작물학 분야의 유전공학은 결국 생산효율성을 위한 일이었다고 생각한다.
그러니 거기에 과도하게 식량생산이니 세계평화니 하는 얼토당토 않은 개소리를 갖다 붙이지 말자.
씨앗을 뜻하는 두 한자 (0) | 2015.01.31 |
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중국의 유전자변형 작물 개발 (0) | 2015.01.21 |
일본의 토종 무 복원운동 (0) | 2014.09.05 |
유전자변형 작물의 왕국, 미국 (0) | 2014.08.29 |
통일벼와 농민 (0) | 2014.08.01 |
가까운 일본에서는 녹조가 생기는 논에 소나무 가지를 꺾어다 꽂아 놓는 방법을 이용해 문제를 해결하는 움직임이 널리 퍼지고 있단다.
일본의 농민들이 이야기하기를, 녹조가 생기면 가장 큰 문제는 제초제가 통하지 않아 피와 같은 풀 문제가 심각해진다는 점이다. 그를 해결하기 위해서라도 녹조의 발생을 줄이는 것이 중요하단다.
이러한 녹조가 발생하는 이유는 역시 풍부한 유기물 때문이겠다. 농사를 지어야 하니 논에 거름을 넣어야 하고, 그 거름이 양분이 되어 녹조가 쉬이 발생하는 원인을 제공하는 것이다. 이 농민들도 매년 논에 유기물을 많이 넣고 있는데, 이렇게 소나무 가지를 꽂은 다음부터 녹조가 발생하지 않거나 덜하다고 한다.
또한 녹조의 발생이 물의 흐름과 수온과도 관계가 있는 것 같다는 이야기도 나온다.
물이 가로세로로 넓게 퍼지는 곳에서는 아무래도 소나무 가지의 효과가 더 좋은데, 그렇지 않고 한 방향으로만 흐르는 곳에서는 수온도 높고 효과가 덜하다는 증언이 이어진다. 즉, 논에 댄 물의 온도차가 높으면 높을수록 녹조가 훨씬 더 잘 발생한다고 한다. 논의 수평을 잘 잡는 것이 녹조의 발생을 줄이는 데에도 중요하다는 말씀이시겠다.
아무튼 그 원리가 무엇 때문인지 밝혀 보겠다는데 나까지도 궁금하다.
동네 어르신에게 들은 이야기 중에는 논의 물꼬에다 밤나무 가지를 가져다 꽂아놓으면 해충이 죽어 병에 덜 걸린다는 말도 들은 적이 있다. 왜 그런지 밝히지 못하여 아직은 믿거나 말거나 수준이지만, 언젠가 그러한 옛 농사법들의 원리가 꼭 밝혀지면 좋겠다.
자세한 내용은 아래의 주소로 들어가 보시길 바란다.
http://lib.ruralnet.or.jp/cgi-bin/ruralhtml.php?DSP=video!gn!201408_1.html
순환하는 삶 (0) | 2014.07.24 |
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논을 삶다 (0) | 2014.07.09 |
오렌지의 녹병에 대처하는 두 자세 (0) | 2014.06.27 |
메소포타미아의 작물 관개가 질병을 퍼뜨렸을 수도 있다 (0) | 2014.06.27 |
공부모임: 금양잡록 1 (0) | 2014.06.23 |
흥미로운 그래프.
미국에서 유전자변형 작물이 도입된 후 이른바 슈퍼잡초가 증가하고 있다는 이야기.
물론 유전자변형 작물 자체의 잘못이라기보다는 제초제가 만연해진 농업 관행을 짚고 넘어가지 않을 수 없다.
유전자변형 작물을 재배하지 않는 한국의 논에서도 제초제에 내성이 생긴 풀들이 많이 발견되고 있다는 연구결과가 있으니 말이다.
농사에서 풀은 지긋지긋한 존재로 여겨지곤 한다.
그도 그럴 것이 확실히 작물은 풀과 경쟁하도록 그냥 놔두면 좀처럼 풀을 이기지 못한다.
결국 인력이 개입할 수밖에 없는데, 그것은 곧 생산비의 증가로 이어져 농민의 소득이 감소하게 된다는 현실적인 문제를 불러온다.
풀과의 공존공생... 이상적인 일일 뿐일까?
어느 선까지 풀과 타협하여 함께 할 수 있을까?
늘 조심스럽고 고민이다.
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벌레 먹은 배추 (0) | 2014.06.12 |
생물다양성이 식량안보를 강화한다 (0) | 2014.05.06 |
진딧물을 조종해 확산되는 바이러스 (0) | 2013.12.06 |
충남, 밭토양 비옥도 '양호' (0) | 2013.10.21 |
Palmer amaranth has taken root as a herbicide-resistant ‘superweed’ in many US cotton fields.
In the pitched debate over genetically modified (GM) foods and crops, it can be hard to see where scientific evidence ends and dogma and speculation begin. In the nearly 20 years since they were first commercialized, GM crop technologies have seen dramatic uptake. Advocates say that they have increased agricultural production by more than US$98 billion and saved an estimated 473 million kilograms of pesticides from being sprayed. But critics question their environmental, social and economic impacts.
Researchers, farmers, activists and GM seed companies all stridently promote their views, but the scientific data are often inconclusive or contradictory. Complicated truths have long been obscured by the fierce rhetoric. “I find it frustrating that the debate has not moved on,” says Dominic Glover, an agricultural socioeconomist at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. “The two sides speak different languages and have different opinions on what evidence and issues matter,” he says.
Here, Nature takes a look at three pressing questions: are GM crops fuelling the rise of herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’? Are they driving farmers in India to suicide? And are the foreign transgenes in GM crops spreading into other plants? These controversial case studies show how blame shifts, myths are spread and cultural insensitivities can inflame debate.
Jay Holder, a farming consultant in Ashburn, Georgia, first noticed Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) in a client’s transgenic cotton fields about five years ago. Palmer amaranth is a particular pain for farmers in the southeastern United States, where it outcompetes cotton for moisture, light and soil nutrients and can quickly take over fields.
Since the late 1990s, US farmers had widely adopted GM cotton engineered to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate, which is marketed as Roundup by Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri. The herbicide–crop combination worked spectacularly well — until it didn’t. In 2004, herbicide-resistant amaranth was found in one county in Georgia; by 2011, it had spread to 76. “It got to the point where some farmers were losing half their cotton fields to the weed,” says Holder.
Some scientists and anti-GM groups warned that GM crops, by encouraging liberal use of glyphosate, were spurring the evolution of herbicide resistance in many weeds. Twenty-four glyphosate-resistant weed species have been identified since Roundup-tolerant crops were introduced in 1996. But herbicide resistance is a problem for farmers regardless of whether they plant GM crops. Some 64 weed species are resistant to the herbicide atrazine, for example, and no crops have been genetically modified to withstand it (see ‘The rise of superweeds’).
Still, glyphosate-tolerant plants could be considered victims of their own success. Farmers had historically used multiple herbicides, which slowed the development of resistance. They also controlled weeds through ploughing and tilling — practices that deplete topsoil and release carbon dioxide, but do not encourage resistance. The GM crops allowed growers to rely almost entirely on glyphosate, which is less toxic than many other chemicals and kills a broad range of weeds without ploughing. Farmers planted them year after year without rotating crop types or varying chemicals to deter resistance.
This strategy was supported by claims from Monsanto that glyphosate resistance was unlikely to develop naturally in weeds when the herbicide was used properly. As late as 2004, the company was publicizing a multi-year study suggesting that rotating crops and chemicals does not help to avert resistance. When applied at Monsanto’s recommended doses, glyphosate killed weeds effectively, and “we know that dead weeds will not become resistant”, said Rick Cole, now Monsanto’s technical lead of weed management, in a trade-journal advertisement at the time. The study, published in 2007 (ref. 1), was criticized by scientists for using plots so small that the chances of resistance developing were very low, no matter what the practice.
Glyphosate-resistant weeds have now been found in 18 countries worldwide, with significant impacts in Brazil, Australia, Argentina and Paraguay, says Ian Heap, director of the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds, based in Corvallis, Oregon. And Monsanto has changed its stance on glyphosate use, now recommending that farmers use a mix of chemical products and ploughing. But the company stops short of acknowledging a role in creating the problem. “Over-confidence in the system combined with economic drivers led to reduced diversity in herbicide use,” Cole tells Nature.
On balance, herbicide-resistant GM crops are less damaging to the environment than conventional crops grown at industrial scale. A study by PG Economics, a consulting firm in Dorchester, UK, found that the introduction of herbicide-tolerant cotton saved 15.5 million kilograms of herbicide between 1996 and 2011, a 6.1% reduction from what would have been used on conventional cotton2. And GM crop technology delivered an 8.9% improvement to the environmental impact quotient — a measure that considers factors such as pesticide toxicity to wildlife — says Graham Brookes, co-director of PG Economics and a co-author of the industry-funded study, which many scientists consider to be among the field’s most extensive and authoritative assessments of environmental impacts.
The question is how much longer those benefits will last. So far, farmers have dealt with the proliferation of resistant weeds by using more glyphosate, supplementing it with other herbicides and ploughing. A study by David Mortensen, a plant ecologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, predicts that total herbicide use in the United States will rise from around 1.5 kilograms per hectare in 2013 to more than 3.5 kilograms per hectare in 2025 as a direct result of GM crop use3.
To offer farmers new weed-control strategies, Monsanto and other biotechnology companies, such as Dow AgroSciences, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, are developing new herbicide-resistant crops that work with different chemicals, which they expect to commercialize within a few years.
Mortensen says that the new technologies will lose their effectiveness as well. But abandoning chemical herbicides completely is not a viable solution, says Jonathan Gressel, a weed scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Using chemicals to control weeds is still more efficient than ploughing and tilling the soil, and is less environmentally damaging. “When farmers start to use more sustainable farming practices together with mixtures of herbicides they will have fewer problems,” he says.
During an interview in March, Vandana Shiva, an environmental and feminist activist from India, repeated an alarming statistic: “270,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide since Monsanto entered the Indian seed market,” she said. “It’s a genocide.”
The claim, based on an increase in total suicide rates across the country in the late 1990s, has become an oft-repeated story of corporate exploitation since Monsanto began selling GM seed in India in 2002.
Bt cotton, which contains a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis to ward off certain insects, had a rough start. Seeds initially cost five times more than local hybrid varieties, spurring local traders to sell packets containing a mix of Bt and conventional cotton at lower prices. The sham seeds and misinformation about how to use the product resulted in crop and financial losses. This no doubt added strain to rural farmers, who had long been under the pressures of a tight credit system that forced them to borrow from local lenders.
But, says Glover, “it is nonsense to attribute farmer suicides solely to Bt cotton”. Although financial hardship is a driving factor in suicide among Indian farmers, there has been essentially no change in the suicide rate for farmers since the introduction of Bt cotton.
That was shown by researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, who scoured government data, academic articles and media reports about Bt cotton and suicide in India. Their findings, published in 2008 (ref. 4) and updated in 2011 (ref. 5), show that the total number of suicides per year in the Indian population rose from just under 100,000 in 1997 to more than 120,000 in 2007. But the number of suicides among farmers hovered at around 20,000 per year over the same period.
And since its rocky beginnings, Bt cotton has benefited farmers, says Matin Qaim, an agricultural economist at Georg August University in Göttingen, Germany, who has been studying the social and financial impacts of Bt cotton in India for the past 10 years. In a study of 533 cotton-farming households in central and southern India, Qaim found that yields grew by 24% per acre between 2002 and 2008, owing to reduced losses from pest attacks6. Farmers’ profits rose by an average of 50% over the same period, owing mainly to yield gains (see ‘A steady rate of tragedy’). Given the profits, Qaim says, it is not surprising that more than 90% of the cotton now grown in India is transgenic.
Glenn Stone, an environmental anthropologist at Washington University in St Louis, says that the empirical evidence for yield increases with Bt cotton is lacking. He has conducted original field studies7 and analysed the research literature8 on Bt cotton yields in India, and says that most peer-reviewed studies reporting yield increases with Btcotton have focused on short time periods, often in the early years after the technology came online. This, he says, introduced biases: farmers who adopted the technology first tended to be wealthier and more educated, and their farms were already producing higher-than-average yields of conventional cotton. They achieved high yields of Btcotton partly because they lavished the expensive GM seeds with care and attention. The problem now is that there are hardly any conventional cotton farms left in India to compare GM yields and profits against, says Stone. Qaim agrees that many studies showing financial gains focus on short-term impacts, but his study, published in 2012, controlled for these biases and still found continued benefits.
Bt cotton did not cause suicide rates to spike, says Glover, but neither is it the sole reason for the yield improvements. “Blanket conclusions that the technology is a success or failure lack the right level of nuance,” he says. “It’s an evolving story in India, and we have not yet reached a definitive conclusion.”
In 2000, some rural farmers in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, wanted to gain organic certification for the maize (corn) they grew and sold in the hope of generating extra income. David Quist, then a microbial ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, agreed to help in exchange for access to their lands for a research project. But Quist’s genetic analyses uncovered a surprise: the locally produced maize contained a segment of the DNA used to spur expression of transgenes in Monsanto’s glyphosate-tolerant and insect-resistant maize9.
GM crops are not approved for commercial production in Mexico. So the transgenes probably came from GM crops imported from the United States for consumption and planted by local farmers who probably didn’t know that the seeds were transgenic. Quist speculated at the time that the local maize probably cross-bred with these GM varieties, thereby picking up the transgenic DNA.
When the discovery was published in Nature, a media and political circus descended on Oaxaca. Many vilified Monsanto for contaminating maize at its historic origin — a place where the crop was considered sacred. And Quist’s study came under fire for technical deficiencies, including problems with the methods used to detect the transgenes and the authors’ conclusion that transgenes can fragment and scatter throughout the genome10.Nature eventually withdrew support for the paper but stopped short of retracting it. “The evidence available is not sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper,” read an editorial footnote to a critique10 of the research published in 2002.
Since then, few rigorous studies of transgene flow into Mexican maize have been published, owing mainly to a dearth of research funding, and they show mixed results. In 2003–04, Allison Snow, a plant ecologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, sampled 870 plants taken from 125 fields in Oaxaca and found no transgenic sequences in maize seeds11.
But in 2009, a study12 led by Elena Alvarez-Buylla, a molecular ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and Alma Piñeyro-Nelson, a plant molecular geneticist now at the University of California, Berkeley, found the same transgenes as Quist in three samples taken from 23 sites in Oaxaca in 2001, and in two samples taken from those sites in 2004. In another study, Alvarez-Buylla and her co-authors found evidence of transgenes in a small percentage of seeds from 1,765 households across Mexico13. Other studies conducted within local communities have found transgenes more consistently, but few have been published14.
Snow and Alvarez-Buylla agree that differences in sampling methods can lead to discrepancies in transgene detection. “We sampled different fields,” says Snow. “They found them but we didn’t.”
The scientific community remains split on whether transgenes have infiltrated maize populations in Mexico, even as the country grapples with whether to approve commercialization of Bt maize.
“It seems inevitable that there will be a movement of transgenes into local maize crops,” says Snow. “There is some proof that it is happening, but it is very difficult to say how common it is or what are the consequences.” Alvarez-Buylla argues that the spread of transgenes will harm the health of Mexican maize and change characteristics, such as a variety’s look and taste, that are important to rural farmers. once the transgenes are present, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of them, she says. Critics speculate that GM traits that accumulate in the genomes of local maize populations over time could eventually affect plant fitness by using up energy and resources or by disrupting metabolic processes, for example.
Snow says that there is no evidence so far for negative effects. And she expects that if the transgenes now in use drift to other plants, they will have neutral or beneficial effects on plant growth. In 2003, Snow and her colleagues showed that when Bt sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) were bred with their wild counterparts, transgenic offspring still required the same kind of close care as its cultivated parent but were less vulnerable to insects and produced more seeds than non-transgenic plants15. Few similar studies have been conducted, says Snow, because the companies that own the rights to the technology are generally unwilling to let academic researchers perform the experiments.
In Mexico, the story goes beyond potential environmental impacts. Kevin Pixley, a crop scientist and the director of the genetic resources programme at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in El Batan, Mexico, says that scientists arguing on behalf of GM technologies in the country have missed a crucial point. “Most of the scientific community doesn’t understand the depth of the emotional and cultural affiliation maize has for the Mexican population,” he says.
Tidy stories, in favour of or against GM crops, will always miss the bigger picture, which is nuanced, equivocal and undeniably messy. Transgenic crops will not solve all the agricultural challenges facing the developing or developed world, says Qaim: “It is not a silver bullet.” But vilification is not appropriate either. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
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