Suppose you are growing, say potatoes, organically and occasionally have to apply a natural fungicide or pesticide derived from another plant grown somewhere else.

Suppose someone genetically engineers -- using genes from wild relatives of the cultivated potato -- the exact potato variety you wish to grow so you will not have to apply fungicide or pesticide. They do it once and sell you the potatoes to grow and propagate and distribute to your heat's content.

Before... natural chemicals extracted from plants grown elsewhere.

After... zero chemicals. No need to extract chemicals from another crop grown somewhere else on the planet on additional acreage.

How is the first method more sustainable than the biotech crop?

Before... natural chemicals extracted from plants grown elsewhere.

After... pests with increased tolerance to the pesticide and a now useless "natural chemical," for both farmers who did and didn't use the GM product.

That is: when the pesticide is always present, as it is in BT potatoes, for example, BT resistant pests are artificially selected, leading to a pest population that is unaffected by what had been a useful tool for managing outbreaks.

...a person can engineer a plant to resist a certain pest by turning the pest's own physiology against it. It is not necessary to engineer a plant to produce a pesticide.

Engineering potatoes to resist a fungus, for example, does not involve creating a potato that produces a fungicide!  We could slightly modify a plant protein that the fungus exploits to attach to the plant so it no longer serves as a route toward infection. Or we could link a receptor for the fungus on the surface of the plant to a natural defense system. Some plants are not resistant to certain fungi simply because the two organisms did not evolve side-by-side and natural selection didn't create a link between attack by the specific fungus to the plant's defense system. We can transfer that link from a resistant plant to a non-resistant plant.

As far as insects are concerned, we might increase the number of certain types of hairs on the surface of the plant so sensitive tissue is no longer vulnerable. Or make the plant a bit stickier so pest cannot easily move about. Or modify a protein the insects exploit to find the plant. There is far more to making plants resistant to insects than expressing Bt in the leaves!

As far as viruses are concerned, one strategy involves engineering the plant to express just one of the proteins the virus normally uses to assemble a new coat. Throwing off the balance of viral proteins in the infected cell interferes with the assembly and spread of new virus particles. If the virus is no longer a threat, there might be no need to spray the plants with chemicals that kill the insect that spreads the virus.

Basically, if the "frankenplants" described do not work, we can always resort to traditional forms of pest control. There is no need to engineer plants to express pyrethin, Bt, the active compounds found in Neem Tree oil, or any other natural pesticide. There is no need to employ methods that could create pests resistant to current pesticides,

All the proteins added to the plants could be found in plants we already consume for food. Perhaps environmentalists should demand restrictions on genetic engineering to ensure that all the genes moved from plant to plant come from species we already consume and reduce the use of chemicals rather than calling for a total ban on genetic engineering.

There is far more to genetic engineering of plants than RoundUp resistance and Bt expression. There are sincere efforts to find stable or easily replaced forms of pest resistance and strategies for preventing the development of new strains of pests that are resistant to currently used pesticides, natural or synthetic.

"Suppose you are growing, say potatoes, organically and occasionally have to apply a natural fungicide or pesticide derived from another plant grown somewhere else."

You grow the natural plants that repel or suppress parasites along with the potatoes.  Even using crop rotation and mixing mulch made from the repellant plants into the soil for the next potato crop.

Mulch that stops fugus and pests.  And suppresses weeds.

And you make and apply the mulch and do the selective planting with robotic equipment, program it and watch it work.  All powered with renewable electricity.

With perfect organic fertilizer and water injected around each plant, they out compete almost every weed and pest anyway.  Mulch and mowing/mulching applied by robots, could eliminate pesticide, herbicide, chemical fertilizer, diesel fuel, 5000 dollar per month tractor payments, and all the GHG that agrichem farming produces.

With the productivity of this organic robotic method, the food per farmer figures could be as high as with chemical ag.  no human stoop labor for picking either, robots can do it, and a lot faster to maximize flavor and shelf life.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Why would Monsanto and friends bother to engineer a plant that would benefit the earth or consumers.  You can say that we can engineer a plant this way and that way and that it doesn't necessarily have to be Bt corn or Bt cotton.  I don't really see how Big Ag would benefit from these alternative crops you propose.  And if they don't stand to benefit, why would they waste the time and money to engineer these crops.  If it's so easy to do, why am I not hearing "90% of the GM crops planted were engineered for higher nutrition."  No, I'd venture to guess that Bt and Roundup-ready varieties of crops make up the bulk of all GM crops planted and always will until this technology goes away with cheap oil.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

is a good source on the political strong-arming with a friendly face that Monsanto has been known for over the past 10+ years. The whole Golden Rice thing stands out as a shining example of this. You would have to eat about a truckload a day of Golden Rice to prevent blindness from Vitamin A deficiency, if that was all you were eating. And yet it was touted as the thing that would save the poor. That's what they call a Trojan Horse strategy--and fortunately the EU wasn't buying.

I can't wait to see what wonder-crops they proffer next...

I read a recent Smithsonian article on Golden Rice and they definitely didn't say 4 oz. was sufficient.  The amount you'd have to eat to get the RDA was still in the kilograms.  That article must already be out of date...

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Reminds me of the study comparing organic and conventional methods of growing potatoes. The yields were almost identical; the organic might have been a few percent higher.

Left out of the equation when this study is used to oppose conventional agriculture... for every acre of organic potatoes, another acre of land was devoted to growing lupines to use as mulch and fertilizer. Technically, wouldn't the yield therefore be closer to half that of conventional agriculture?

Just asking.