Why is Sweden growing GM Potatoes?
For starch for industry, not for food, not now.
‘Development began in the mid-1980s, at the beginning of the revolution in biotech foods. A Swedish farmers’ cooperative, Lyckeby, one of Europe’s biggest starch producers, was searching for potatoes with high starch content to supply the starches it sells for manufacturing paper, textile finishes, glues and other products. “Genetic engineering was first emerging,” said Kristofer Vamling, 51, managing director of Plant Science Sweden, a company that grew out of the original research efforts. “We thought this could perhaps be something for the new engineering.”
Interesting story for a couple of reasons.
First, this (and the introduction of GM papaya in Hawaii) suggests that in Europe and the US, GM’s way in may well be via crops with small markets or crops with non-food markets.
Second, it’s a useful reminder that many crops, even ones we usually associate with food, and much farming is for non-food uses. Starch was much sought after for all kinds of technologies from at least the time of the Han and Roman Empires, and cereals and roots were grown to provide it. Olive oil was Europe’s best industrial lubricant for thousands of years until displaced by modern lubricants. Interesting to speculate on how this affected plant breeding and processing methods.
More on the GM potato in the NY Times. More on GM papaya here. More on olive oil history here.
And who knew that Sweden was such an important producer of starch? Certainly not me.
The NYT article speaks of “GM” and “organic” as if they were nearly the same thing. My understanding is that “GM” has to do with the ancestry and changes in cell structure and that “organic” is a method of rearing. So, you could have organically grown GM plants. Until about 100 years ago ALL farming was what we now call “organic” and nobody seems now to remember or mention the reasons for introducing new methods. Can’t we balance the traditional and the progressive?
Thanks Kay. There are people arguing strongly for GM plants grown organically, Pamela Roland of UC Davis for one. For her it’s the best reason for GM. It will be interesting to see what happens.