An update on pro-GMO efforts to influence the food supply
The life of mammals, which of course includes humans, depends upon the health of trillions of microorganisms that are responsible for the digestion of our food, protection from pathogens and the production of neurotransmitters and amino- and fatty-acid building blocks. These microorganisms need a full smorgasbord of nutrients, including vitamins and minerals.
While most farmers — biological farmers, at least — realize that the fertilizers / soil amendments they use determine what microorganisms thrive and survive and which don’t, they frequently miss the same process with the diet they consume, which is the “fertilizer” provided to their gut microbiome. What one eats determines the makeup of the gut microbiome — and, more importantly, the ultimate output of that microbiome. The output of the microbiome is the nutrition that feeds our body or destroys it. The diet has a net anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory effect on our body.
A net pro-inflammatory effect leads to illness, disease and accelerated aging, while a net anti-inflammatory effect leads to healing, regeneration and anti-aging. Disease is fundamentally initiated by inflammation gone awry. Diseases with inflammatory origins include heart disease (the number one killer in America), cancer (number two) and pretty much every other disease one can name, from diabetes to Crohn’s Disease, IBS and arthritis.
There are a number of markers that track such inflammatory processes, including TMAO (trimethylamine N-oxide), which is generated by gut microbes and is protective for marine animals but pro-arterial-plaquing in humans. Another is FGF 21, which correlates to an anti-inflammatory diet; higher levels are associated with greater health and longevity. Alpha-synuclein is a neuronal protein that becomes denatured with pro-inflammatory diets, specifically dietary exosomes and galactose, leading to Parkinson’s and diabetes. I’ll leave the reader to look up the foods that lead to increased TMAO, reduced FGF 21 and alpha-synuclein denaturing.
Since diet is really the foundation to nutrition, inflammation and disease, it is only prudent to look at what agriculture has in store for its next great food experiment — all, of course, in the name of technological advancement, the feed-the-world campaign, and keeping the money flowing to Big Pharma.
That experiment is the next generation of “genetic engineering,” which uses nucleic acid/peptide complexes in a crop spray applied to the leaf of the growing crop. These applied complexes penetrate through the leaf surface into the plant cell nuclei and chloroplasts. Researchers have observed “efficient delivery of DNA molecules into plants using cell-penetrating peptide (CPP)- based foliar spraying.”
In doing so, they have successfully performed “gene silencing by introducing small interfering RNA molecules in plant nuclei via siRNA-CCP complexes…. This technology enables effective non-transgenic engineering of economically important plant traits in agricultural systems” (see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.1c07723).
Certainly, we have never seen a case of spray drift in commercial agriculture! We have never seen any case of misinformation regarding such technologies — so everyone should be happy! After all, it is for such a benevolent cause!
Serilini and his colleagues have showed that ingested GMO corn is highly toxic — inflammatory — and has resulted in disease in test animals. We know there are a number of problems with GMO crops, from the antigenic aspect of the inherent crop to glyphosate, or other herbicide, residue. The point is that GMO crops are not healthful for human or animal consumption; perhaps they are alright for ethanol production if one incinerates the distiller’s grain residue left over to generate electricity.
Since there is a social campaign, as Big Pharma sees it, to make GMO a bad word in the mind of consumers, spraying on the genetic engineering mechanisms after the crop is up and growing allows the seed company and the farmer to claim that the planted crop is a non-GMO variety. What happens between planting and harvest is just “cultural practices.”
Many readers have heard of CRISPR technology, which is a DNA editing process in which scientists cleve DNA sequences at certain places to delete “unwanted” (mistakes made by God, in their view) segments or to insert “beneficial” (again, God must have messed up) segments to get to desired gene expression outcome. CRISPR, the industry claims, is essentially the same as standard plant breeding processes to achieve new crop varieties.
It is not. CRISPR is artificial manipulation of DNA. It is employed in medicine in the treatment of cancer, liver and intestinal diseases and genetic syndromes. A new study out of Tel-Aviv University shows that CRISPR therapeutics adversely affect T-cells — immune cells — by causing them to lose significant genetic material, which can lead to destabilization of the genome and, subsequently, possible cancer. According to researcher Asaf Madi, “over 9 percent of the T-cells genetically edited with the CRISPR technique had lost a significant amount of genetic material” (Nahmad, et al., “Frequent aneuploidy in primary human T cells after CRISPT-Cas9 cleavage,” Nature Biotechnology).
Most importantly, genetic engineering is advertised to the public as “needed and necessary” to feed the world’s ever-increasing population and deal with that wretched mother nature. This brings on board the ministers, the doctors and all the “humanitarians” because they are all interested in feeding the poor and stamping out starvation. It’s a great campaign slogan, but it’s a big fat lie. We have varieties of every crop grown that out-produce every GMO variety.
The real issue is not genetics — it’s soil and crop nutrition. Yield is about nutrition. Insect and disease pressure is about nutrition. Weeds are about nutrition in the soil. Get the nutrition right and these “problems” fall away. It is a hard concept for most farmers to understand and an even harder one for the Big Pharma-paid researchers to admit, because it would dry up all corporate funding.
Part of the problem is the NOP (National Organic Program) in this country and abroad. The GMO industry often (rightly) points to the failure of organic farmers to produce yields close to their conventional counterparts, organic farmers contending they must be paid more because their input costs are higher but claiming their production is worth the higher price. Organic certification is purely procedural, completely failing the most important parameter of all: nutrient density of the crop. It’s only the elite farmers who understand nutrition who go the extra step to get the mineralization engaged, producing yields in excess of their conventional counterparts in terms of nutrient density.
A great way to monitor the status of crop nutrition is with a refractometer, measuring plant sap in Brix. Carey Reams always told us that our minimum desired Brix level was 12, and Tom Dykstra has refined that to 14 on a 24/7 basis. If the farmer maintains 14 Brix of the plant sap, there will be no insect feeding and no disease infection. Some growers, who can’t seem to get the Brix to move much, wish to discount the refractometer as a valuable crop monitoring tool and propose better testing needs to be developed (so that their fertilizer/farming recommendations don’t look so mediocre).
There are those developing x-ray spectroscopy for analyzing leaf nutrients in the field. This can allow, with the appropriate interpretation of results, for the correction of nutrient imbalances, resulting in elevated Brix values. Ultimately, it’s about Brix, as it matters little what the testing shows if the correction doesn’t raise Brix readings. Early results of this testing suggest that it has great promise for field testing and selection of the appropriate nutrients.
Sap testing, which has already employed been for several years, does result in better nutrient adjustments and rising Brix readings, but it requires overnight shipping of samples to the lab. I am confident the technology will evolve for less-expensive in-field testing within a few years. The more such technology is employed, the more consistent agronomic recommendations will be in raising crop Brix readings, which correlate to greater nutrient density and more anti-inflammatory food.
Genetic engineering of crops is a business plan for the biotech industry to monopolize the world’s entire food supply. It is purely a technology to skirt employing appropriate nutritive and physiologic technologies that are already proven to solve every problem (weeds, insect pests, disease, yield, taste, shelf life, drought resistance, frost resistance) the GMO industry contends needs to be solved by genetic engineering.
Do not be fooled by social media gaslighting that contends we have been genetically engineering crops for thousands of years via plant breeding, or that it is proven safe and effective, or that we need such technology to feed the ever-expanding world population. Don’t be fooled by the real “snake-oil salesmen” peddling the GMO elixir. Anytime they contend that the scientific research proves its validity, remember who funded the “research” and what they have to gain by its acceptance. As has now been proven regarding the COVID mRNA jab, the “safe and effective” contention is false.
The technologies we need to be employing have to do with appropriate soil and crop testing to help make real corrective nutritional and biological actions in the field and greenhouse. We need to learn to read what nature is telling us — such as how grass weeds indicate a calcium problem in the soil and broadleaf weeds a P:K biological problem; insect pests are a low-Brix problem; compaction is often a Ca:Mg functional ration problem; and so forth, all of which depends on appropriate biological/microbial life and activity in the soil. We need to look at better amendments, humic/fulvic products, energetically activated products, and timing of application, as well as hardware technology such as sprayer drones, IR mapping, water technologies (including vortexing) and application of Steiner technology and robotics. All these technologies help farmers and communities become more independent and self-sustaining — things the GMO industry discourages.
Non-GMO seeds allow farmers to build up the vitality of their seed and save it, if deemed desirable, and helps with the local preservation of seeds in times of disaster. The spraying of genetically engineered products is rife with drift consequences for the organic and non-GMO farmers who are working to maintain GMO-free status.
Arden Andersen DO, MSPH, Ph.D., is the author of The Anatomy of Life & Energy in Agriculture and Science in Agriculture.
