From Permaculture UK: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/yields-wheat-cross-bred-wild-grass-could-be-boosted-30
Yesterday over 36 countries held rallies and dozens more protested against Monsanto, producers of GM food. In the same week, British scientists announce they can create disease resistant and drought tolerant crops, without the risks associated with genetic modification.
Rozie Apps
Sunday, 26th May 2013
The use of genetic engineering in food production is hugely controversial. With the increase of genetically modified foods (GM), there is also growing evidence that those GM foods carry risks.
But scientists at the National Institute of Agriculture Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge, England, have produced a new variety of wheat without artificially changing the genetics of the grain. They have recreated an original rare cross between an ancient wheat and wild grass species that occurred over 10,000 years ago in the Middle East.
The new breed can be crossed with modern UK varieties, offering yield improvement, drought tolerance and disease resistance, without a spliced gene in sight.
GM foods have been created with the aim of being drought tolerant, higher yielding and with resistance to pests and diseases, but they are hugely controversial. The seed is ‘licensed’ by corporate owners who aggressively discourage seed saving, ensuring that seeds are bought annually by farmers whether they are small producers or huge conglomerated agribusinesses. Many varieties are created to be resistant to branded herbicides and encourage, even necessitate, the use of these substances (produced by the same suppliers, of course).
This is the ultimate in monocultural, industrial farming. Once these technologies are adopted, famers are locked into a fossil fuel based, mono-cropping system, relying on proprietary chemicals to gain larger yields. Short-term this may seem like a good idea but it is corporate controlled, industrial agriculture and entirely dependent on fossil fuels to transport seed and herbicides and then harvest the monocultures.
You couldn’t get further from the model of smaller farms with mixed organic systems growing grains as well as tree crops, and livestock mob grazing on pasture, as advocated by farmers like Joel Salatin.
Continue reading at: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/yields-wheat-cross-bred-wild-grass-could-be-boosted-30
