By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, from The Independent 

Major new study shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had “noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions”. He added: “People were asking the question ‘how come I don’t get as high a yield as I used to?’”

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto’s own weedkiller, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop’s take-up of the essential element from the soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya’s yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

The Nebraska study suggested that two factors are at work. First, it takes time to modify a plant and, while this is being done, better conventional ones are being developed. This is acknowledged even by the fervently pro-GM US Department of Agriculture, which has admitted that the time lag could lead to a “decrease” in yields.

But the fact that GM crops did worse than their near-identical non-GM counterparts suggest that a second factor is also at work, and that the very process of modification depresses productivity. The new Kansas study both confirms this and suggests how it is happening.

A similar situation seems to have happened with GM cotton in the US, where the total US crop declined even as GM technology took over. (See graphic above.)

Monsanto said yesterday that it was surprised by the extent of the decline found by the Kansas study, but not by the fact that the yields had dropped. It said that the soya had not been engineered to increase yields, and that it was now developing one that would.

Critics doubt whether the company will achieve this, saying that it requires more complex modification. And Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington – and who was one of the first to predict the current food crisis – said that the physiology of plants was now reaching the limits of the productivity that could be achieved.

A former champion crop grower himself, he drew the comparison with human runners. Since Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile more than 50 years ago, the best time has improved only modestly . “Despite all the advances in training, no one contemplates a three-minute mile.”

Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted – the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger.

Professor Bob Watson, the director of the study and chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when asked if GM could solve world hunger, said: “The simple answer is no.”

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Pardon us while we sound a trumpet.  The young farmer movement is taking root–roots deepening everyday in healthy soil and healthy communities.  Young farmers are in the public sphere–the NY TIMES and LA TIMES and KPFA Radio.  They are bridging the generational gap, farming in cities and suburbs, squatting land to farm, and negotiating partnerships to farm–farming by any means possible.  This might be the gateway impulse that leads others down the garden path–along the personal and professional trajectories of sustainability.  This brings us to our very good friend Zoe Ida Bradbury.

Zoe is an ally and multi-level hero.  She is a greenhorns collaborator and young farmer out in Oregon.  She is documenting her experiences in Diary of a Young Farmer over at Edible Portland.  Her stories are wonderful springtime reading–if only there were time in the spring!

Oh grand emergence–little sprout, without doubt. Thanks for your simple, purposeful, lucky little gesture.

For those of you who have been following the farm bill for months, or if you’ve just noticed how contentious and complicated it is, here is a good list (see policy platform below) of the programs developed that have direct bearing on our capacity as a nation to feed ourselves proper, healthy food. 

When you think that we spend approximately 14 million dollars per hour on the Iraq war, it becomes difficult to fathom how incredibly stingy and inadequate the allocations are for programs which are critical, critical! to the survival of our agricultural economy, and the transition to sustainable practices.

Here is a snapshot of the 2008 farm bill policy platform.

Severine reports on a mid-April train ride.

Did you know that it’s forbidden to take a bicycle on Amtrak?

This blog post has little to do with rural revivals or sustainable agriculture–or does it?

Bikes on trains is in fact a micro-parable of exactly the kind of transportation paradigm that we are working towards…I support bikes on trains as unambiguously as I support solar powered choclate.

I have been working on reducing my use of the car, and the dependency culture that it tends to incubate in our V-8 society–so usually I don’t drive anywhere. In California, I used to take a foldy bike on the BART, down to the Zipcar station or City Car Share, and in NYC I take the foldy bike in the Subway or in the taxi, and even on the airplane–Airhitch anyone?

So imagine my horror and total shock to discover that bikes are forbidden on Amtrak. Really.

Bikes, even folding bikes that are far smaller than a hockey bag, far smaller than golf clubs, far smaller than all of the innumerable chattels of the travelling public–bikes are not allowed on Amtrak–by virtue of being bikes. Instead the policy is that you must box your bike and pay fifteen dollars (in cash) to have it sent under the train.

This is a situation which must be remedied. I worked for a summer in Scotland and every weekend took my bike on a train to a ferry to another train on adventures all around the hebredies and highlands. On Virgin I could have my bike and wireless internet! Sometimes I was suppsed to have reserved a place for the bike, or it had to go in a certain compartment. But over the course of three months NEVER was I denied access to the train I wanted to catch. Not even once.

While my googles looking for activism about bikes on trains yielded little–I wanted to make sure everyone in the greenhorns blog world (and there are apparently 150 readers per day) knows about the tremendous resources that do exist for cyclists and other alternative transportation junkies–Bikes Aboard, seat61.com, Bikes not Bombs, Rock the Bike,  Two n Fro–fancy pants and formal shoes with bike clips on the bottom, bike blenders, bike touring, Ginger Ninjas–also the bike programs that use pedal power to pump well water, or grind grains in Guatemala, and let us not forget the phemonmenon for whom the blog is named: Critical Mass. Generally the critical mass is self-organizing by city, similar to Food not Bombs, but there is a great directory of critical mass at critical-mass.info.  

As the tremendous success of Paris’s bike rental program shows, the ridership for sustainable conveyance modalities is untapped–people are willing to break free of car culture–if only we can be given a chance.

If anyone out there is interested to start a campaign for BIKES ON TRAINS with me–please email severine@pixiepoppins.org

p.s. Amtrack does neither allow rabbits on board–needless to say with four of the former, it took me three hours to cry my way to the top of the bureaucracy in Penn Station and finally just break all the rules and get on the bloody train with a red cap to help it happen.

This is very last minute, but we wanted to alert the young farmers out there to a great opportunity to participate in International dialogue about small-scale production, traditional methods, and cross-cultural knowledge exchange. Maybe some of you have heard of it, or applied already, but this year will be the third edition of Slow Food’s Terra Madre. This conference of farmers, chefs, educators, and students from around the world will be held in October in Torino, Italy. Please learn more here: www.terramadre2008.com.

You must apply to attend, and if selected as a delegate, all of your expenses in Italy are covered by Slow Food. The applications were due April 30, but they are secretly still available until tomorrow. Make haste! Those from the US can apply online here: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/events/terra_madre_2008.html.

There is a special emphasis this year on young (under 35) farmers!

Unleash the depths of your agricultural knowledge on the

Webportal for Young Farmers Wiki!

We are in the initial stages of creating a webportal for young farmers. Its an online funnel that provides young farmers, apprentices, and new entrants into sustainable agriculture with resources necessary to begin farming or to expand their practice.

So far, Wiki pages include Case Studies, CSA’s, incubator farms, farm link programs, events, farm and food related blogs….and more! Please contribute at your leisure by going the the website : http://foryoungfarmers.wikispaces.com/ (once you create a log-in you are free to edit the pages).

local food farmer friends.  please join us in greenhorns fundraising festivities. may 2 2008 at Mission Pie (intersection of 25th st/mission st) from 7 to 10PM.  suggested donation is 100 dollars. if you can’t pay come help, volunteering is encouraged and welcomed! please contact Joylynn at joylynn@coconutdaughters.com or Severine at severine@pixiepoppins.org for more on this. fundraiser question hotline: 1 510 295 9842.  let’s grow the next generation of organic farmers! 

Severine reports from a bike excursion.

I just went on my bicycle over to the Farm Aid offices for a visit, and ended up eating pie, talking about strategic take-over of suburbia by determined and principled mothers working fearlessly to expand their domestic humanism out to the edge of the lawn, and beyond.  In Dirt We Trust.

They kindly gave me a bunch of Farm Aid swag– FARMERS kick ASS tote bag with neon green ink. And in the book pictures of their incredible rock concerts.

WOW! rock concerts.

I think that the lovelies over at Superforest are scheming to help us set up a rock concert of our own.