In a remarkably brief period of time, we have become accustomed to mind-staggering developments in many areas of science and technology. Some of these, such as treatments for cancer, are very encouraging. Others fill us with hesitation. Perhaps for many of us the cloning of a sheep ("Dolly") became a kind of focal point for all our hesitations about genetic engineering: What are the risks? Do they really know what they are doing? How can the technology be abused? How will it be used? What are the ethics of patenting and owning the very processes of life? A recent patent for a biotechnological process granted to a US seed company, while it has not received the same media attention as Dolly, may be a more significant development in terms of its impact on future human society and on the environment, and may also be more effective than the question of cloning as a means of bringing into focus the issues involved in contemporary biotechnology.

On March 3 of this year, Delta and Pine Land Company, a US cotton seed company, announced that, jointly with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), it had received a patent on a technique that genetically disables the capacity of plants to produce seeds that will germinate. The patent, US Patent No. 5,723,765, is entitled Control of Plant Gene Expression. The news report describes this patent in the following way:

The patent broadly covers plants and seed, both transgenic and conventional, of all species for a system designed to allow control of progeny seed viability without harming the crop. The principal application of the technology will be to control unauthorized planting of seed of proprietary varieties (sometimes called "brown bagging"') by making such practice non-economic since unauthorized saved seed will not germinate, and would be useless for planting. The patent has the prospect of opening significant worldwide seed markets to the sale of transgenic technology in varietal crops in which crop seed currently is saved and used in subsequent seasons as planting seed. Delta and Pine Land Company intends that licensing of this technology will be made widely available to other seed companies.

In other words, it is a patent for a method of biogenetic engineering that turns off the reproductive processes of plants so that the seed produced by the plant is sterile. Farmers who use this seed would not be able to collect seed from their own crop for the following years planting. They would have to buy new seed every season.

The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), a civil organization that pays particular attention to the patenting of biogenetic resources, has nicknamed this new seed the "terminator" seed. This is quite a dramatic title, and calls to mind an Arnold Schwarznegger movie of destruction and mayhem. So far, RAFI reports, the method has only proved effective for tobacco and cotton, but, as indicated above, the patent is for all crops, and the company plans to have this technology available for a wider range of crops shortly after the year 2000.

Ecological and Agricultural Implications

The first and most important thing to say is that Biogenetic technology tinkers with the most intrinsic elements of life and nobody can predict all its ecological and agricultural consequences. There are some ecological consequences that are fairly predictable, but there is no reason to believe that these are the only ones nor even the most important.

One point that defenders of the seed could bring forward would be that it can reduce the risk of genetically altered seeds getting out of hand. In other words, since each generation of seed has to be produced anew from scratch, the risk of some genetic alteration in a plant developing into a species that could be harmful and difficult to control is taken away. This technology could be a way of guaranteeing that any unforeseen problems emerging from genetic engineering would only last one generation. This argument, however, may imply the admission that genetic engineering is risky business more than its proponents would want to admit.

The most predictable negative consequence would be genetic transfer (and consequently the transfer of sterility), through natural cross-pollination, to other crops and to the wild relatives of cultivated crops . All crops belong to genuses of plants of which other family members exist in the wild. Whenever these wild relatives grow in the vicinity of cultivated crops, there is always a degree of genetic transfer through cross-pollination between the cultivated crops and their wild relatives. This cross-pollination has had an important role in the development of agriculture. From the beginnings of agriculture, farmers have saved the seed from their best plants for planting the next season. This process of selection has meant that when cross-pollination from wild species has introduced genes that improve the quality of the cultivated crops, these improvements have been conserved. In other words, the interaction between cultivated crops and their wild relatives has been part of the process through which the food we eat has evolved.

This process continues today. RAFI points out that half the world's farmers are poor and can't afford to buy seed every growing season. These poor farmers grow 15% to 20% of the world's food and they directly feed at least 1.4 billion people - 100 million in Latin America, 300 million in Africa, and 1 billion in Asia. These farmers, by far the majority of them women, continue to produce food in this way, saving the seed from their best plants every year to plant the following season. This creates a process of selection in which the plants become continually more adapted to the local ecosystem.

The introduction of crops grown from seeds with "terminator" technology is likely to result in a transfer of this sterility to the wild relatives of the cultivated crops, seriously affecting this interaction and stopping the continuing evolution that is taking place. It may be unlikely that cross-pollination would be extensive enough to make the wild relatives extinct, but it would drive them out of cross-pollinating distance (cross-pollination has been identified at distances of up to about two kilometres from cultivated crops).

A similar transfer is also likely to the crops of farmers growing crops of the same genus, but not using "terminator" seeds. The consequence of cross-pollination for these farmers would be that substantial portions of their seed may not germinate the following season. Poor farmers cannot take the risk of crop failures. The very threat of it would leave them with a choice of abandoning agriculture or buying seed every year, which they cannot afford. These farmers, as noted above, directly feed 1.4 billion people. RAFI argues that "terminator" technology places at risk the food supply of all these people.

It is also likely to seriously reduce genetic diversity. Seed companies are interested in producing for larger markets. They are not interested in developing seeds adapted to very specific local ecosystems (unlike the kind of seed saving described above which is extremely well suited to developing seeds adapted to specific local ecosystems).

Economic Implications

Predictably, the arguments presented in favour of the seed are (a) that it will give farmers more choice (i.e. the choice between the terminator seed and traditional regenerative seeds) and (b), more importantly, that by increasing the possibility of profit, the technology will increase investment in the main food crops (rice, wheat and soybeans), thereby improving yields and increasing genetic diversity.

While some crops (such as maize) have already been made non-reproductive by hybridization, the main food crops (wheat, rice and soybeans) have not been so susceptible to this. Consequently, less has been invested in them. The increased profitability, it is argued, will change this. While even the proponents of the technology admit that it will increase the price of seed to farmers, they argue that farmers will still have the choice not to buy these seeds, and that the prospects of profit will motivate companies to produce seeds that are worth the extra cost. RAFI quotes one agricultural economist as saying: "For the first time, private companies will be encouraged to invest in the world's most vital food crops. We can look forward to a new flow of investment into crops whose yields have stagnated or even declined in the Nineties. Now such poor people's crops as rice and wheat will get the research support they so desperately need."

Opponents argue against both the idea that farmers will have choice, and the idea that it will improve food production or genetic diversity. First, seed companies seeking profit and public research institutes seeking corporate funding will obviously prefer to include this technology in their seeds, and consequently there is likely to be little invested in developing seeds that do not include the technology. Therefore, even apart from the risk associated with the genetic transfer of sterility through cross-pollination, it will reduce farmers' choices. The availability of regenerative seed will be limited. The "terminator" seed, produced by companies responding to market forces, will aim at bigger markets and therefore at large-scale agriculture with, in fact, a reduction in genetic diversity, especially with regard to varieties suited to small scale production and to specific local ecosystems. As RAFI argues, while the technology may increase the number of brand names, it will not increase real genetic diversity.

Perhaps the most important point to note in regard to this technology is what it says about the direction of bio-technological research. To date, developments in biotechnology have at least had the pretense of seeking to improve production, or provide some other benefit. Even when companies have used biotechnology to develop hybrid varieties that do not reproduce efficiently or varieties that have resistance to that company's own herbicides, there has been the implicit idea that improved hybrids and more effective weed control will increase, or at least facilitate, production. The sole purpose of this "terminator" technology is market control. It adds nothing of value to the seed. Its sole purpose is to make farmers ever more dependent on the seed companies. In fact it is a biological form of built-in obsolescence.

This development comes at a time when groups monitoring biotechnology are expressing serious concern about the consolidation of the world seed industry in the hands of a few agrochemical companies. RAFI points out that ten companies control 40% of the world seed market, and that most of these are agrochemical corporations. In recent months, for example, agrochemical companies such as Novartis, Monsanto, AgroEvo, DuPont, and Dow Chemical (respectively the first, second, fourth, fifth and eighth ranking agrochemical companies in the world), have been moving aggressively into the seed industry by either buying whole companies or at least substantial shares in them. In fact, Monsanto has recently bought Delta and Pine Land Company, and with it, obviously the patent for the "terminator" technology. This acquisition is quite recent and is not included in RAFI's statistics, so the figure of 40% may already be too low. Delta and Pine Land Company is the largest producer of cotton seeds in the US, produces substantial quantities of soybeans, and has sales offices in Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America and Europe. The reasons that an agrochemical company would be interested in producing seed are clear. By controlling seed production, they can develop seed and agrochemicals that are mutually compatible. Monsanto, for example, sells a herbicide called Roundup, and has developed soybean and cotton plants (called Roundup Ready) that are resistant to it. Farmers can use this herbicide to control weeds without hurting their crop.

As indicated in the quotation at the beginning of this paper, Delta Pine and Land Company has indicated its willingness to licence the "terminator" technology even to its competitors. There is no reason why it wouldn't. The competitiveness of its own seeds depends on other factors, and in fact if other companies do not use the terminator technology, it may even make Delta Pine Land Company's seed less competitive.

Seed companies see the saving and re-use of patented seed as a theft of their intellectual property rights. They have long sought ways to stop it. In the U.S., for example Monsanto, requires farmers to sign a licencing agreement which strictly prohibits them from saving and re-using patented seed. The company has employed private investigators to search out farmers who breach this agreement, and has recently taken action against 100 farmers who have violated the licencing agreement. The terminator technology gives the companies a biological means to achieve this long-cherished goal.

Reflections

There are an enormous number of issues that come together here, and there is not space to go into them in any kind of detail.

Firstly, there is the question of ecology, and in relation to it, questions of technology and of food security. The example of cross-pollination in the description above gives an example of how complexly interrelated the world is. Our technological interventions into nature are always goal- oriented. We see a situation, set a goal to be achieved, carry out an intervention that should achieve that goal, and hopefully achieve it. But this kind of linear thinking does not relate sufficiently to the intricate web of relationships that is nature. Even when we do achieve it, the intended goal is never the only consequence. Every intervention is like a stone dropped into a pond. It sends out ripples in every direction. The deeper our intervention into nature, the more serious the ripples, or unintended side-effects. The more in harmony with nature our intervention, the more benign the side-effects. Can we develop a holistic technology? What would it be its characteristics? And can biotechnology be holistic or is it inherently risk-ridden?

At the same time, there is the question of food security. The world is called on to feed a greater number of people than it ever has before, and in a very short time (not much more than one hundred years) it will be called on to feed double its present number. There is much debate about whether scientific agriculture is helping or harming. But can the world feed its population without some form of advanced scientific agriculture? And will it still be able to in 100 years? There is no space for a discussion of this here, but I believe that the answer to the first of these two questions is "yes", but I suspect that the answer to the second is "no."

The above two paragraphs indicate that the human race is in a very tricky position. Probably within the next fifteeen or twenty years, the human race, with all its numbers and ambitions, will have to learn to live in harmony with nature, or will have to abandon the idea of living at all. If the human race is to make the adjustments it needs to make, science and technology will have to have a role. But science, while it can tell us how to do many things, cannot tell us what to do. If science and technology are to contribute to human well-being in harmony with nature, by what are they to be guided? Perhaps the most fundamental question of our age is: Can market forces and the profit motive provide an adequate guide for science and technology? I suspect that those who read this article will respond to that question with a resounding "No!" A few may respond with a very qualified "Yes."

But the paradigm that guides the decision making levels of human society is precisely "faith" that the market and self-interest can achieve precisely this. So strong is this faith that there is a clear attempt to incorporate every dimension of human development into the market economy. To achieve this, more and more dimensions of existence are gradually being subjected to the possibility of private ownership: life processes, the genes of indigenous peoples, the cultural heritage of peoples, etc. The patenting of the "terminator" technology is an example of this process.

We see also that just as more and more of human society is coming under the dominance of economic powers, economic power itself is is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of a few. An associated trend, equally as apparent in the patenting of the "terminator" technology, is the dominance of the economic over the political. The alliance between the US Department of Agriculture with a private company (which implies the use of public funds for private research) is symptomatic of this trend. The increasing dependence of farmers on seed companies is another example of the same dominance. Today, it is economic forces rather than political ones that dominate individuals and local communities, and deprive them of their autonomy,

Our Response

It would be good if we religious would keep in touch with the "terminator" seed. Necessary resources and home pages are listed at the end of this paper. It would be good if, as much as possible, we participate in lobbying to have this "terminator" technology banned. But I think that we need to go beyond that, for it is only one instance of a far more deep-rooted trend. We need to be aware of, and able to critically evaluate the processes and structures that are giving rise to these trends. Clearly, no one of us can do this alone. We need to be able to collaborate with one another, apportioning out tasks, and pooling ideas, information, and insights. We need to do this not only with each other but with other groups, movements and institutions.

Let us be reminded that we are called to "the reconciliation of all things in heaven and all things on earth." This clearly means reconciliation with God, reconciliation among human beings, and reconciliation between humanity an nature. As the second millennium draws to a close, these relationships are moving into an extremely critical stage. We must remain aware of real, concrete reconciliation in real, concrete relationships as an integral dimension of our reconciliation with God and our ultimate salvation.

For Further Information

NGOs Responding to the "Terminator" Technology:
RAFI-USA: 110 Osborne St., Suite 202, Winnipeg MB R3L 1Y5, CANADA
Home page: www.rafi.ca

SEARICE: 83 Madasalin Street, Sikatuna Village, 1101 Quezon City, PHILIPPINES
E-mail: searice@philonline.com.ph

CET (Centro de Educacion Y Tecnologia): Casilla 16557, Correo 9, Santiago, CHILE
e-mail: cettco@entelchile.net