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 Essay - sept/oct 2003
Technology: Choices and Consequences
James C. Delouche
Professor Emeritus Mississippi State University
Some folk are seemingly enamored of new things, especially new technologies, and compete to be among the first to adopt or introduce them. They are called early adopters. Others approach new technologies more cautiously and wait until they feel a real need for a technology before becoming involved, usually initially in a very selective way and to a minimal degree. They are known as late adopters. I belong to the latter group. Choice is usually presented as the operative determinant in decisions on adoption and use of technologies: a person can freely choose to be either an early or a late adopter. But, is this true? Does a person or society have real choices in dealing with technology?
About 6 years ago we finally choose to adopt cell phone technology which was already mature and well established and essentially ubiquitous on the University campus, at athletic events, in airports, vehicles traveling at high speeds on the highways, restaurants, department stores, supermarkets, almost everywhere. We had not adopted the cell phone technology because we didn't feel any need for it. Our daughter, however, pointed out that since we spent a lot of time traveling around the country by car a cell phone would be very useful in case of an accident or other emergency on the highway. We accepted her reasoning and choose to subscribe to a minimum cell phone "package", i.e., basic service with no "free" minutes, for emergency use when traveling by car. That was the last real choice we made relating to cell phones. Family and friends learned our cell phone number and began to use it to contact us while traveling and eventually around home and town, frequently at inconvenient places and times. Within a few months our cell phone bill became very costly so we changed it to a larger package with 100 minutes allowed per month. This was substantially exceeded in the next several months so we changed to a still larger and more flexible package. In the next several years we were somehow irresistibly advanced to the large, generous, two phone, multiple option, rather expensive system we now have and which we still feel is more of a nuisance than an asset except when we need it for travel emergencies. This little personal vignette captures the dilemma associated with the introduction of technology in our lives, professions and businesses. Choice essentially disappears once we make the initial decision to "try" a technology and we are then pulled completely into it and soon caught up in the consequences.
One of my former students who had achieved good success in the crop consulting business now has to deal with some of the consequences resulting from technology he helped introduce several years ago to his clients who are mostly cotton and soybean farmers. He advised them to try the new genetically modified (GM) varieties of cotton and soybean with herbicide and insect resistant, supervised the acquisition of appropriate seed stocks, the signing of and compliance with the required technology agreements and the initial plantings. Most of his clients liked the results of the trials, especially the management flexibility and simplicity associated with the GM varieties, and adopted near 100% GM varieties within a few years. They also recognized and appreciated the relative ease of managing production with GM varieties and begin to progressively reduce crop consultant services. For my former student, the crop consultant, a major consequence of advocating the new GM technology has been the loss of more than half of his consulting business. On the other hand some of his former clients claim to also be suffering adverse consequences: soybean markets and prices are falling because some import countries have a prohibition against GM soybeans. But, when I asked them if they planned to return to non-GM varieties, they said, " No, its too late and would be too difficult to turn back."
The GM Variety Dilemma The current rather acrimonious debate and negotiations between the producers and users of GM varieties, the U.S. and others, and the importers of feed grains and oil seeds, the EU and others, are usually characterized as mainly involving freedom of choice, the right to "choose." Everything would be settled in a harmonious way if food and other products that might make their way into the human diet were accurately and prominently labeled for the type and concentration of GM materials when present. This seems a sensible solution to the controversy, but is it feasible and realistic? Labeling for GM materials would require identity preservation (IP) protocols, techniques and procedures much, much more powerful and effective than presently available - or at least presently used - and expensive reorganization and investments in market, storage, and transportation facilities for grains and oilseeds. Would accurate and prominent labeling silence the criticism and stop the protests and direct, often malicious, action programs aimed at GM crop producers and products? It probably would not. The dispute has moved far beyond the arena of "freedom of choice" and into the sphere of politics where it will be resolved in due time in a rather arbitrary way because both sides are caught up in the GM technology and there is no turning back. In the meanwhile many important consequences are operative: limitations on use of GM varieties, or their non-use, that could substantially improve production and production efficiency, decrease the reliance on chemical pesticides, reduce the price of foodstuffs and increase their availability in developing countries, decrease the markets for agricultural products and increase the risks for the producers.
Producers recognize the risks and seem to be choosing to delay adoption of additional GM crops. U.S. wheat producers, for example, are very concerned about the consequences of introduction of GM wheat varieties on marketing and markets, e.g., market acceptance, and are apparently willing to wait until the principal concerns are fully addressed and resolved. Many hold the very sensible view voiced by a hard red wheat producer that without market acceptance, there is no future for GM wheat.
In a few years the differences in views and attitudes manifested in the present debates relating to food and feed varieties with GM pest resistant traits might seem to be rather minor compared to controversies that will arise in connection with the use of GM varieties for the production of biopharmaceuticals, nutriceuticals (products that enhance the nutritive value of food) and a variety of industrial products. (More than 25 such varieties are reported to be nearing commercialization.) First, the risks of products of such varieties entering the food chain are poorly understood and they could be more serious. Second, tolerances for the "adventitious" presence of GM materials are likely to be very, very small or even zero, thus difficult to meet. Third, production of some biopharmaceuticals and industrial products will probably have to be restricted to very isolated areas. Already there are proposals to prohibit the production of such varieties in the main food producing states in the U.S. While there are difficult issues to deal with, the potential consequences of the introduction and production of biopharmaceutical and industrial trait GM varieties are literally awesome in both the positive and negative senses. On the positive side there could and will be new, very powerful and relatively inexpensive pharmaceuticals, nutriceuticals (e.g., vitamins, amino acids) and industrial products, new opportunities for farmers, new industries and jobs, while on the negative side there could be serious and widespread contamination of the food supply with pharmaceutical and industrial products that might have serious side effects.
Will we be able to gather the more beneficial consequences of the GM biotechnology and related technologies and escape the more adverse consequences resulting from their adoption? I am confident that this will be possible in due time. The human species is not only ingenious, it is also patient. Avenues around or through the dilemma seemingly inherent in "choosing" technology are being researched and proposed. One avenue recently proposed in a quest editorial of a trade magazine is close monitoring of GM crops by "space-based and airborne remote sensing technologies" to identify the sources and spread of GM crops while they are still in the field, thus before they can enter the food chain. A working partnership between the biotech, food and remote sensing industries and the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration is proposed to accomplish this objective.
Our optimism that the present and future issues and controversies will be satisfactorily resolved needs to be tempered with recognition that the parties to the controversies are determined and persistent. "Organic foods" marketed in the U.S. must not only meet the standards and production protocols of the National Organic Standards for "organic foods" established in 2002, they must be produced from crops planted with organic seeds. It would appear that the purity of organic foods and the insatiability of the eco-environmental advocates will in time require that organic seeds also be produced from organic seeds and so on and on.
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