Genetically Engineered Cotton in Jeopardy

by Marc Lappé and Britt Bailey September, 1997

In the early weeks of August, 1997, farmers throughout the mid-south region of the United States began watching their beautifully poised cotton bolls fall of their engineered plants causing millions of dollars in damage. The failing plants are the first to be grown commercially containing an inserted Roundup Ready™ gene, making the cotton plants able to withstand two seasonal dousings of Roundup® herbicide. The 1997 planting season was to be the debut of the much heralded Roundup Ready™ cotton product. In early spring, approximately 600,000 acres nationwide of the newly bioengineered crop, created by Monsanto Company, were sown with Roundup Ready™ cotton or about 2.3% of the 14 million acres of cotton planted nationwide.

But three quarters of the way through the growing season, something has gone awry. Cotton bolls, the billowy fruit of the plant which embraces the cotton seeds (which are ginned from the raw fibers) have become misshapen after the second and final Roundup® application. Many of the bolls are simply falling off of the plant. These failings are reportedly occurring in the states of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Lousiana. According to Robert McCarty of the Bureau of Plant Industry in Mississippi, whom we reached on September 2, 1997, "we are receiving complaints from farmers everyday." The complaints are identical: the bolls become deformed and subsequently fall off the plant. Mr. Bill Robertson, a cotton specialist in Arkansas claims that they are seeing similar problems. "We call the malformation 'parrot beaked,' because the bolls look like the beaks of parrots, then they fall off of the plant before they are mature," Robertson said. The first reports of the failure of the crops placed the number of affected acres in the 4-5000 range, though according to Mr. McCarty, "we are talking at least 20,000 acres in Mississippi alone and we are getting new complaints everyday. Now that is a lot of acreage, economically speaking. Some farmers are losing $1 million due to this problem."

At this point, the investigation of this disturbing reversal of fortune remains inconclusive. The state agriculture agencies are gathering economic data to help the farmers to gain compensation for their losses. Monsanto Company is also doing an investigation as to the economic losses, and are likely to be the only ones capable of discovering why the Roundup Ready™ cotton crops have failed. According to Karen Marshall of the Monsanto Company, "there are a number of environmental factors that can put stress on cotton plants." But the failures are not occurring in all cotton varieties, just those few varieties that are Roundup Ready™. Ms. Sunny Jeter, a Roundup Ready™ marketing representative of Monsanto, insists that the failure was only occurring in a very small portion of the Roundup Ready™ cotton crops. She emphasized Monsanto is being very proactive in getting information to farmers about the problem. When we spoke with Tommy McDaniel, a State of Mississippi agricultural specialist acting on the front lines, so to speak, he took a different tack, saying "Monsanto is not talking to anyone and they are not saying what is causing the problem."

The details that have emerged to date give little cause for optimism. Something has gone seriously wrong with the Roundup Ready™ technology. The failure is occurring in specific Roundup Ready™ Paymaster varieties #1244, #1215, #1330, and #1220. All of these varieties have been used in the two previous years without any apparent problems. But this year only the Roundup Ready™ versions of these varieties are failing. There is very little known at this time about the problem other than yields are being affected and the problems are only with plants containing the Roundup Ready™ gene. Several extension agents and investigators with whom we spoke are speculating about why the crops are failing. Most of the speculations assert that the newly inserted gene has caused instability within the genome.

As with the last apparent failure of a related genetically engineered crop, Bt cotton, this is a case of the unknown. We may never know. In attempting to speak to a Monsanto scientist to ask why crop failures are occurring and were told that "the information is not available." The government does not require this reporting, leaving the public and the farming community in the dark about the cause of the problem. The USDA's Director of Biotechnology and Scientific Services admitted he was "totally unaware of the problem."

We see a larger issue here. When Monsanto released its technology this year, they asserted it was "ready" for commercial scale application. But in this first year of large scale planting a significant portion of the released crops are failing. Should not Monsanto have anticipated this eventuality by field testing the 1997 crop? Should not geneticists have studied just where in the plant's genome its new gene was inserted? What occurred in the plant to make it shed its fruit prematurely?

We think this result underscores our concern that mass planting of transgenic crops are at the least premature. If these engineered plants were any other life form, no one would have permitted their widespread introduction into the environment without an Environmental Impact Statement. Though scientists are now able to isolate and implant genes into seeds, they lack a full understanding of how new genes function. Scientists still do not have answers to fundamental questions. We do not know why certain genes "take" in their new host and others do not, or where the gene goes once it is ensconced in its new host. These questions are even more difficult to understand with crops such as cotton. Most crops manufactured today are hybrids which means that in most cases the first generation of seed is a known genetic entity when it is planted. Cotton is not a hybrid. The seeds that are planted often represent the fifth or sixth generation of plant descendants. With each new generation there is a reorganization of the genes. So, the new gene may be effective in one place within the genome, but may cause another quite different reaction when reorganized the next year. In other words, Monsanto, the seed companies, and the farmers do not know on any given year where the new gene has become integrated in that year's genome, or how exactly it will affect the plant growth. Planting non-hybrid genetically engineered plants one year after another is, in fact, a genetic crapshoot. We are left with disturbing questions as transgenic crops go into mass production. How much are we willing to jeopardize our evolutionary future of food crops? How much uncertainty is generated by transgenic creation of new plants? And are we really ready to let large corporations play God in the critical area of food biotechnology?