May 1, 2000
The State's crops bring home the global debate on genetics. And while one problem is solved, is another being created?
By Jim Erickson / Arizona Daily Star
Arizona cotton growers, who were among the first in the nation to embrace a
biotech version of the crop, are being sucked into a global firestorm over
genetically modified plants.
Arizona's bioengineered "Bt" cotton is feared by Greenpeace activists and
organic farmers who raise the specter of unstoppable superbugs.
Supporters call it the biggest technological breakthrough in pest
management since the development of synthetic pesticides.
Both sides agree that the stakes are high in the battle for the future of
Arizona's cotton fields.
"This matters to the average person because the effectiveness of Bt cotton
allows growers to produce cotton with a lot less insecticide, and that
means a better environment for everybody," said Bruce Tabashnik, head of
the UA entomology department.
Not so, said Michael Gregory, director of Arizona Toxics Information. The
Bisbee-based non-profit group and 70 others sued the Envronmental
Protection Agency last year to stop the release of Bt crops.
"There is the potential for catastrophic ecological effects," Gregory said.
"We would hope there would be a moratorium on Bt crops until this stuff is
tested properly."
Bioengineered cotton, most of which contains a bacterial gene that enables
the plant to make its own insecticide, was first offered by agri-chemical
giant Monsanto in 1996.
It was eagerly adopted by Arizona growers seeking relief from the pink
bollworm, a boll-munching caterpillar. Today, Monsanto's gene-spliced
cotton is grown on about 60 percent of Arizona's 250,000 acres of cotton,
said Paul Sawyer, Monsanto's Arizona sales representative.
Despite its widespread use here, Arizona's biotech cotton has gone largely
unnoticed by the public. Many Tucsonans probably aren't aware that they
pass fields of the stuff while driving to Phoenix on Interstate 10.
Most of the genetically altered cotton - which is visually
indistinguishable from conventional cotton - contains a gene from Bt, the
common soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.
Until now, opponents of genetically modified crops have focused most of
their efforts on foods like corn and soybeans. Cotton, which is viewed by
most people as something you wear but don't eat, has received little
attention.
But that's changing.
Arizona cotton growers raise much of the seed - both genetically modified
and conventional varieties - planted throughout the Cotton Belt and
overseas. Arizona cotton seed is prized by growers for its consistency and
vigor, and now it's also caught the attention of Bt-crop opponents.
In Greece this spring, Greenpeace protested the importation of a shipment
of cotton seed that they said was a Bt variety grown in Arizona and
Mississippi.
The protesters used giant fans to blow a ton of feathery cotton lint into
the air in front of the agriculture ministry in Athens. The lint was
supposed to symbolize "the spread of genetic pollution" from the seed,
according to a Greenpeace news release.
"People against GMOs (genetically modified organisms) see it like a mission
from God, and some of them make Greenpeace look like highly conservative
people," said Larry Burdett, a plant breeder for the Delta and Pine Land Company in Arizona.
Delta and Pine, the largest U.S. cotton seed producer, has a delinting
facility in Eloy, where the fluffy white cotton lint is separated from seed.
"And it's not just Europe," Burdett said. "It's happening in this country,
too. They're willing to destroy crops, destroy facilities. And the best
thing we can do, I think, is keep a low profile."
For the most part, Arizona cotton growers have been able to stay out of the
fray. But Greenpeace and other opponents of the agricultural use of
biotechnology plan to change that.
During the Athens cotton protest in March, activists erected a statue of
Frankenstein. Wary Europeans have dubbed biotech crops "Frankenfood," and
Greenpeace is spreading the word that cotton is a food as well as a fabric.
Cotton is widely used as animal feed, and cottonseed oil is an ingredient
in many processed foods - from potato chips to candy bars, said Charles
Margulis of Greenpeace.
"As more people realize that cotton's in their food and in animal feed,
there's going to be more concern, I think," he said. "Once you produce a
crop and release it into the environment, you have a whole host of really
irreversible consequences."
Greenpeace and the Center for Food Safety are among the 70 plaintiffs in
the EPA suit. It claims that Bt crops "will cause unreasonable adverse
effects on the environment."
UA entomologists and plant scientists who work with Bt cotton disagree with
nearly everything Greenpeace says about Bt crops - especially the claim
about harm to the environment.
Last year, Arizona cotton growers used less insecticide spray than at any
time in the last 40 years, and Bt cotton was largely responsible for the
drop, Tabashnik said.
It also helped that 1999 was a very light year for pink bollworm, a major
Arizona cotton pest known to growers as pinkie.
In 1995, Arizona cotton growers sprayed their fields an average of 12.5
times for insect pests, Tabashnik said. Last year, the average number of
sprays dropped to 1.7, he said.
The toxin produced by Bt cotton plants is a natural protein that kills more
than 99 percent of the pink bollworm caterpillars that feed on them in
Arizona fields, according to UA researchers.
Last month, Wiley Murphy planted 600 acres of cotton near Marana, and about
60 percent of it is genetically engineered.
"I know that in Europe and other places there's tremendous resistance to
this stuff, but I just don't see a downside," Murphy said.
During a recent tour of Murphy Farms, he reached into a 50-pound paper sack
and scooped a handful of Bt cotton seed. Each seed was a bit larger than an
apple seed and had a jade-green coating of protective fungicide.
"If I thought it was causing some harm to me and my family, I wouldn't be
growing it," said Murphy, president of the Arizona Cotton Grower's
Association.
The seed was grown in Arizona and sold by Delta and Pine, which has a
license from Monsanto to include the Bt gene in its cotton.
The arrangement has a parallel in the computer industry, where companies
like Compaq and Dell obtain licenses to use Intel's Pentium chips in their
machines.
About 20 percent of Delta and Pine's Bt cotton seed is grown in Arizona,
said Randy Dismuke, senior vice president at the company's Scott, Miss.,
headquarters.
Delta and Pine's Arizona-grown cotton seed "could end up in any other
cotton-producing state in the United States" and is exported to Mexico,
Spain, Greece and other countries, he said.
The Greenpeace protest in Athens did not involve Delta and Pine seed, he
said.
About a third of Arizona cotton is grown for seed production - a higher
percentage than in any other U.S. cotton-producing state, Dismuke said.
The bacterial gene in Bt cotton produces a toxin that home gardeners and
organic farmers have used in spray form to control insects for more than 30
years.
In their lawsuit against EPA, Bt opponents claim genetically engineered
crops threaten the future of Bt sprays, which will be "rendered
ineffective" as a pest control option for organic and conventional farmers.
The concern is that the widespread use of Bt crops will enable pests to
develop a tolerance, or resistance, to the toxin.
"Organic growers won't have any other emergency pest-control options,
because Bt is the only biological control allowed in organic farming,"
Greenpeace's Margulis said. "If the insects are resistant to Bt, it doesn't
matter whether you're spraying it on cotton or vegetables."
Such statements display a fundamental misunderstanding of the resistance
process, Tabashnik said.
If pink bollworms in an Arizona cotton field develop resistance to the Bt
toxin, that ability to tolerate the poison will not transfer to other
species of pests, he said.
"If Bt cotton causes resistance to the toxin, it would have no effect on
organic growers' use of Bt, because they're not using it to control the
same pest," Tabashnik said. "In Arizona, Bt is not used on cotton as a
spray."
Though they reject many of the Greenpeace claims as baseless, Tabashnik and
other UA researchers agree with the environmentalists on at least one
point: Pest resistance to Bt cotton is inevitable.
In fact, UA entomologist Tim Dennehy and his colleagues have already
isolated Bt-resistant pink bollworms in their Tucson laboratory.
At the UA's Extension Arthropod Resistance Management Laboratory, resistant
pink bollworms tolerate 100 times the concentration of Bt toxin that kills
susceptible caterpillars, Dennehy said.
The UA researchers spotted laboratory resistance in 1997 and expected a big
problem in the Arizona cotton fields the following year, Dennehy said. But
it hasn't happened, which baffles the scientists.
"We can't explain why we don't have a problem," Dennehy said. "We're going
into year five and the technology is still holding up, despite overwhelming
evidence that it should have failed."
Dennehy's lab works with the Arizona Cotton Research and Protection
Council, a quasi-governmental agency established by state statute in 1984,
to monitor the state's cotton fields and check for resistance to Bt.
Arizona ranked 12th among U.S. cotton-producing states in 1999.
UA researchers say Bt resistance could emerge in Arizona cotton fields at
any time. Scientists and cotton experts here have drafted an action plan to
guide the state's response when it happens.
If Arizona cotton growers lose Bt cotton because of resistance, they'll be
forced to spray more insecticides, Tabashnik said.
To help delay the onset of resistance, Monsanto has developed a
second-generation version of its Bollgard Bt cotton.
It contains a second Bt gene that makes a different protein toxin, and it's
expected to be in widespread use in 2002, said Vint Hicks, Monsanto's
technology development manager for Arizona and Southern California.
(posted without permission)
