My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with' Oprah

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My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and
someone to share it with. Oprah

• The potato
• Solanum Tuberosum
• Its all about control
• The power is an amoral thing, like the Force
• And its not total, weather can ruin crops,

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• The more control you have the more potential for
  disorder there is.
• The decadence of Versailles led to the chaos of
  the Fr. Rev.
• Monoculturing our food leads to unimagined
  complexities

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Novelties of order

• When we exert control over nature unexpected
  thing pop up like edible potatoes. (Wild ones are
  bitter toxic)
• Our systems give freaks a chance to catch on and
  thrive when they wouldnt in the wilderness

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Order v. Novel complexity

• Chemical fertilizers
• Pesticides
• Advanced machinery
• Fuels to run above

• debt
• Health issues
• Erosion
• Depletion of soil
• Pollution

Who do you hear this argument from? Mostly
hippies But also industrial farmers, politicians,
and the very agribusiness that sold farmers this
stuff in the first place. Monsanto issued a
statement that current agricultural technology
is unsustainable. They wouldnt do this if they
didnt have the next thing.
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In your face science

• In any ecosystem, even a garden Everything is
  effecting everything else.
• Its nothing but variables.
• WE NEED CONTROL

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Genetic engineering History

• The name is new, the practice is not.
• Plants and animals have been bred for thousands
  of years.
• Human breeding has also been done now and then.
• All of this has worked by trying to enhance
  desired characteristics, without knowing how they
  are transmitted.

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Why bother?

• Designing plants animals from scratch
• This is not going to happen anytime soon
• Transgenic Engineering
• Putting genetic information from one type of
  plant or animal into another
• Cloning
• Making genetic copies of an existing plant or
  animal
• Lets look at the latter two of these.

Transgenic pigs have jellyfish genes that make
them glow in the dark. Really
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• An organism is called transgenic if it has
  genetic information added to it from a different
  type of organism.
• A.K.A. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)
• Viruses do something of this sort when they
  infect plants, animals or humans.
• Humans have begun to do this with plants and
  animals.

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Transgenic Plants

• This is the work that is furthest along
• Corn with its own insecticide
• Soybeans cotton resistant to herbicides
• Papayas resistant to viruses
• Transgenic crops are being grown in the Americas,
  South Africa, Europe, Australia and China

Papayas also called pawpaws Edible, slightly
spicy seeds A folk contraceptive
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Transgenic Animals 

• The work is less advanced here.
• Human genes have been inserted into
• Bacteria
• Mice
• To produce various human proteins for treating
  diseases.
• Cows with increased milk production

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Biosteel Goats with spider silk gene

• Spider silk is amazingly strong
• The gene for it is put in goats
• The goats milk contains these super strong
  fibers that can make bullet proof vests

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Advantages of Transgenic Engineering 
Better cotton plants

• Plants
• More disease-resistant
• Larger yields
• More transportable
• More nutritious
• Animals
• Make proteins for medicinal purposes
• Make organs for transplant to humans

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• Colorado potato beetle can kill a potato plant
  overnight.
• 1995 Our friends at Monsanto genetically
  engineered NewLeaf Potatoes
• make bacterial toxins (Bacillus thuringiensis) in
  every cell. These pesticides should pulp the
  beetles digestive system.
• Bt for short

Some people dont like Monsanto
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Bt has been around

• Bt is also sprayed as an environmentally friendly
  pesticide
• Only harms one or two orders of insect. Not
  helpful ones
• In 1985 a Belgian company put Bt in tobacco
  plants
• Only hurts insects that eat plants
• Safe for humans
• Bt-toxins present in peanut leaves (bottom)
  protect it from damage caused by European corn
  borer larvae (top)

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• Is it a good idea?
• Specifically who wants this?
• Who is this designed for?
• How are they framing their argument ?

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GMOs

• There more than 50 mil acres of these
• Potatoes that absorb less fat when fried
• Lawns that dont need mowed
• Food with vaccines in it
• Technicolor cotton

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Some legal aspecs

• So you might own any NewLeaf potatoes you bought
  and grew, but the genes in them are owned by
  Monsanto.
• Its against the law to save some and plant them
  next year.

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• GMOs are the biggest change to our relationship
  with nature since we started agriculture.
• Theyre new enough to get patented, but not
  different enough to have to be labeled.
• Their new in patent offices and on farms, but
  nothing new in terms of the envi and
  supermarkets.
• So which is it?

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• If agriculture enters the information age
  Monsanto wants to be the Microsoft
• It describes its technology as an Operating
  System
• This metaphor shows the P.O.V. they have in
  approaching agriculture
• Is the farm a factory?
• Is the forest a farm?
• Is our food software?

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• The Andes 1532, Spaniards show up to kill
  everyone and take the gold.
• 7 thousand years ago
• Potatoes domesticated
• Peruvian blue variety is similar to original

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The Incans relationship to their potatoes

• New York 7 thousand years ago
• Incans bred skinny, fat, red, pink, yellow,
  orange, smooth, russet, for droughts, floods,
  sweet, bitter and many other varieties
• Planting in near vertical regions meant
  specialized microclimates.
• Impossible for monoculture

machu picchu
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• An Andean farm is the opposite of an ordered
  orchard.
• Weedy wild potatoes intersperse their genes with
  domesticated ones
• But it can survive most things nature throws at
  it.
• Unlike Irish farms in 1845

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• You can get variety, but theres an interspecies
  limit.
• GMOs overcomes that limit.
• Man can produce variability now.
• Plants can have fireflies luminescence,
  flounders cold endurance, and bacterial disease
  resistance
• Its not coevolution, its us telling them.
• Control
• Im Rick James plants

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One way to look at it

• Weve put a little of our human intelligence into
  plants.
• Plants with bt gene take care of something we
  used to do.

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History

• Most of Europe
• No one trusts the potato (in Nightshade family)
  or the tomato
• Ger Fred the great had to force people to plant
  it
• Louis XVI runs good politics
• Has Marie where potato flower necklaces, plants
  some spuds in royal garden and puts an elite
  guard on it up until midnight.
• After midnight peasants came and stole what was
  worth guarding

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• Potatoes could grow in boggy land Roundheads had
  left Irish with
• Some say first potato washed ashore from wreck of
  Spanish Armada ?
• Easy to grow. No plowing just burying.
• Easy to cook
• With some milk you have a nutritionally complete
  diet
• Helped Irish escape English oppression tyranny.
• Control
• Part of why English are the big potato hold outs

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1794 UK wheat harvest fails

• Great potato debate
• UK needs potato, itll feed the poor cheaply
• Wait, since theyre eating so much the Irish are
  just reproducing way too much (IR pop had gone
  from 3 mil to 8 mil in the last c.)
• The potato is a damned root making the Irish more
  like animals and less civilized.

Actually won the chicago golden gloves at
seventeen
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• Bread, leavened wheat civilized.
• Processed by hard working English, infused with
  air, spiritual
• A traded commodity
• Potato just food.
• Thrown from mud into a pot by lazy Irish
• Not easily stored or traded as a commodity
• Easy food easy sex will lead to overpopulation
  and misery
• Economists worried about the potato

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• 1845, Phytophthora infestans fungus proves
  economists right.
• Potatoey Doom.
• 1 in 8 Irish will die over the course of 3 years
• Within a decade the population was halved as
  people fled.
• This is because of monoculture, the Garnet Chile
  potato is immune, but it wasnt planted.

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How you get genes into plants

• Transformation A cells uptake and expression of
  foreign genetic material
• By viruses transduction
• Between bacterian conjugation
• Animal cells transfection

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The gene gun

• An actual .22 caliber gun
• A heavy metal (W, Au, Ag) coated with plasmid DNA
  is air propelled at a gel.
• Besides relevant genes, an antibiotic gene
  accompanies the payload as a marker.
• So you expose cells to a pathogen and any who
  survive have the marker and the relevant gene you
  want
• The marker is also a genetic Product Code

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Theres still variability.

• If new gene winds up on wrong part of genome its
  no go
• Sometimes results can be potatoes superior in
  ways new gene cant explain
• Is it just throwing DNA against a wall and seeing
  what sticks?
• Once they made red petunias, but when the Temp
  hit 90 they all turned white
• This is not like putting software into a computer

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Uncontrolled

• This is the question raised about GMOs
• Bt plants make Bt pollen that bees carry off.
• Bt is building up in the soil. We consider it
  safe now, but there may be unintended
  consequences
• DDT was thought to be safe until we learned how
  long it stays in the envi, and the effect it has
  on bird eggs.

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The paradox

• GMO depend on the plasmids ability to take
  genes across species.
• The envi safety of the tech depends on the
  integrity of species in nature and their ability
  to reject alien genes.

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• Could cross pollination happen between NewLeaf
  potatoes and local relatives?
• Superweeds? Self-replicating pollution?
• Weve seen the evolution of resistance to
  man-made chemicals but what will happen if nature
  becomes resistant to a natural pesticide like bt?

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Monsantos solution

• By the time resistance arises well have new
  GMOs
• This is an underlying faith in the advancement of
  technology that underlies a lot of P.O.V.
• The national debt, baby-boomers use of social
  security, global warming, oil.
• All issues that some feel well come up with a
  solution for when things get too bad.
• We pretty much always have before.
• Except we sill dont know what to do with Nuclear
  waste.

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We do have mouths to feed

• Current pesticides kill everything but
• Farmers would like to spray less chemicals.
• NewLeafs have less poison in them than a Russet
• But why spend to get a profit that will mostly
  go to buying more expensive seeds?
• Is that basically laundering money for Monsanto?

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• A farmer in ID pays 1950 per acre in chemcials
  electricity and water to grow 2000 worth of
  potatoes
• NewLeaf might save the farmer some
• A big time farmer might have 10K acres of
  computer monitored spuds. 500K profit?
• An organic farmer is going to hate Monsanto the
  big farms.
• And customers might not want GMO
• Other customers might want whatever is cheap.

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Organic farming tactics

• Rotate crops to confuse pests
• Plant strips of peas along potatoes, peas attract
  beneficial insects that feed on pests
• Introduce predatory ladybugs
• Plant a variety of potatoes so if one fails there
  are fall backs
• You can eat organic potatoes right from the
  field, no poisons. People will pay for that
• Similar to Peruvians

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Industrial vs. Organic

• Bigger
• Monoculture, McDs wants Russets you grow
  russets.
• for Pesticides
• Higher Yield, except during droughts
• Centralized
• Simple
• Capital and E input intensive
• Use more water

• Smaller
• Biodiversity
• Screw McDs other people will pay me
• Knowledge and Labor intensive
• More time because of crop rotation
• Localized
• Intricate
• 10-15 less yield, except during droughts.
• People pay a lot more for organic
• Some countries subsidize it

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Other issues

• The technology exists to put terminator genes
  in crops so that seeds from crops will be sterile
• You will have to buy new seeds every year.
• traitor genes keep genetic extras turned off
  until you spray a chemical onto the plant.
• A control on the spread of genes, but also
  something you have to pay for every year.

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Beautiful big picture

• You can talk with anyone in America about TV and
  we all have that in common. We are unified.
• You know what to expect from a McDs in Tokyo
  because those fries will come from ID.
• We all have similar desires regarding mates,
  money, entertainment. So we like monoculture.

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Greenwashing
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• Farmers didnt want to pay the for New Leaf
• In 99 there were 55K acres of NewLeaf out there,
  a small fraction of that now.
• McDonalds said it wouldnt buy any New Leaf
  potatoes

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Monsanto vs. McDonalds
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