A drought of honesty, wisdom, and integrity in the White House

Obama's regulatory agencies have

prevented the development of new crop varieties that could have blunted the impact of droughts. It is far better to mitigate a natural disaster than to respond to it after the fact.

So writes Henry Miller, Henry Miller, a physician and molecular biologist; the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; and the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.

The benefits of genetically engineered crops are proven. According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, the use of modern genetic engineering technology increased crop production and value by $78 billion from 1996 to 2010; it obviated the need to apply 443 million kg of pesticide active ingredients to crops; in 2010 alone, it reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 19 billion kg, the equivalent of taking approximately 9 million cars off the road; it supported biodiversity by saving 91 million hectares of land; and it helped alleviate poverty by increasing the agricultural productivity and food security of 15 million small farmers worldwide.

Most of these new varieties of crops are designed to be resistant to pests and diseases — or to be resistant to herbicides— so that farmers can more effectively control weeds while adopting more environment-friendly, no-till farming practices and more benign herbicides. Other varieties possess improved nutritional quality. Perhaps the biggest advantage, however, comes from the ability of many of these new crop varieties to tolerate periods of drought and other water-related stresses.

Plant biologists have identified genes that regulate water use and transferred them into important crop plants. These new varieties grow with smaller amounts of water or with lower-quality water, such as recycled water or water high in natural mineral salts. For example, Egyptian researchers have shown that, by transferring a single gene from barley to wheat, the plants can tolerate reduced watering for a longer period of time. This new, drought-resistant variety requires only one-eighth as much irrigation as conventional wheat, and in some deserts can be cultivated with rainfall alone. One genetically engineered, drought-resistant corn variety has been commercialized in the United States and many more are in field testing.

Aside from new varieties that have lower water requirements, pest- and disease-resistant gene-spliced crop varieties also make water use more efficient indirectly. Because much of the loss to insects and diseases occurs after the plants are fully grown, the use of genetically engineered varieties that have higher post-harvest yields means that the farming (and irrigation) of fewer plants can produce the same total amount of food. We get more crop for the drop.

However, largely because of the unscientific policies of USDA and EPA, plant genetic engineering has realized only a small fraction of its potential.

The USDA’s treatment of genetically engineered plants, animals, and microorganisms has created a massive burden on both the scientific research community and commercial plant breeders.

Federal regulation discriminates against the most precise and predictable techniques for genetic improvement, requiring endless, redundant case-by-case reviews of plants crafted with those techniques. (By contrast, the testing and commercialization of similar seeds and crops made with less precise, less predictable techniques are most often subject to no regulation at all.) In order to implement this gratuitous regulation, the USDA has created a massive bureaucracy, the elimination of which would both reduce the department’s budget and stimulate private sector R&D.

The feds’ approach to biotech oversight violates two fundamental principles of regulation: similar things should be regulated in similar ways, and the degree of oversight should be proportional to the expected degree of risk. Regulators have, in fact, turned the second principle on its head, with more precisely and predictably crafted products subjected to the greatest regulation.

What we need is the president to use his pen and his phone to wise up his regulatory agencies. Unfortunately, there is a drought of honesty, wisdom, and integrity in the White House.