“So, you’re researching in Banaue?” He asked. “I hear they have a rat problem there.” He leaned back in his chair. “What they need is a really good rodenticide.”
I only had a short amount of time with him, so I let the comment slide. I didn’t want to get into an ideological debate—I wanted to understand his point of view without arguing mine. That said, I’ve always been a big proponent of organic agriculture, and very against current farming methodologies that have destroyed top soil and required pesticides and fertilizers which result in human poisoning (both to consumers and farm laborers), water toxicity, and the destruction of plants, insects, and the life that depends on them. In my opinion, rodenticide was not what they needed in Banaue.
Dr. Barry continued to speak. “You know people out there ludicrously believe that weeds are part of agriculture? You’re having this problem up there in Banaue where the place has become a tourist destination, but the farmers are starving. You can’t eat the scenery, right? But people think the poor should always pay the burden of maintaining the aesthetics.”
In contrast to Dr. Barry, I was taught and believe that weeds are indeed a part of agriculture. A Canadian study suggests that if farmers leave 30 percent of their land fallow (uncultivated—which would include “weeds”), they will increase their yields. The wild land provides habitat for native pollinators which improve pollination and increase the number of seeds. But perhaps Monsanto would argue that pollinators are not part of agriculture either.
He continued. “You know, the organic movement is a marketing scam. There is no actual benefit to organic food. Organic is not even pesticide free. Farmers use copper sulfate, which is a fungicide. There’s a huge amount of hypocrisy here—it doesn’t matter what pesticide you use, it’ll wash off when you rinse it.” (Read my response to this comment here: )
He continued. “The problem with organic farming is that the premium is creamed off by the supermarket. The organic industry can’t make money in Europe, so they want to get subsidized by the government. Well, that will bring the price down for the other farmers. That will get rid of whatever premium farmers are making in Africa and give it to the Europeans.
“I have nothing against organic food, if people want to pay the price for it. What I am against is closing options for others.”
I asked Dr. Barry how Monsanto differed from I.R.R.I. “They’re really no different, aside from the fact that one’s a business and the other a nonprofit. We (at I.R.R.I.) work on products that a company would not be paid for, while Monsanto would work on products that they’d be paid for. Essentially, the private sector (companies like Monsanto) develops a product and takes it to delivery. I.R.R.I. hands off to a national organization like PhilRice who cultivates enough to plant a crop and then sell it to farmers.”
Dr. Barry is also intimately involved with Golden Rice—a highly controversial rice variety originally invented by two scientists in the private sector. The rice, according the Golden Rice website (www.goldenrice.org) “has been genetically engineered to contain beta-carotene and other carotenoids in the endosperm (the edible part of the grain). This gives the grains a golden color, as opposed to regular white rice, which is practically devoid of carotenoids. When the rice is consumed, some carotenoids are converted in the body into vitamin A.”
White Rice vs. Golden Rice
Golden rice is produced by splicing three foreign genes, two from the daffodil and one from a bacterium, into japonica rice, a variety adapted for temperate climates. This kind of engineering is not interspecies genetic engineering—which is more like an accelerated breeding process—but cross species, or transgenic, engineering that would never happen naturally. A few years ago, the inventors of Golden Rice released the news onto the market that they’d created rice for the impoverished. However, it got so tied up in patent laws that any country that wanted to use it would have had to pay a hefty sum, which defeated the purpose. Faced with a lot of bad press, the inventors handed it over to the public commons—I.R.R.I.—so that the rice could be developed and distributed by the nonprofit sector.
Critics have been very upset about the rice getting out into the ecosystem on a large scale, as the consequences of transgenic species on the eco-system are not currently known. Proponents of the rice argue that the nutrients may help alleviate life threatening diseases among the desperately impoverished who can’t afford to get the nutrients from their natural sources.
It’s also been argued that a woman would have to eat 16 lbs of cooked rice, a child would have to eat 12lbs., in order to meet their daily Vitamin A requirements because the rice actually contains so little Vitamin A. In contrast, they could get those requirements from two tablespoons of yellow potatoes, half a cup of green leafy vegetables, or two thirds of a mango. They argue that money should be channeled into programs that teach locals to grow small-scale farms and public education programs. Unfortunately, there’s so much propaganda everywhere it’s hard to know who to trust, and what will actually be successful.
Dr. Barry has been a huge proponent, organizer, and spokesperson for the transgenic rice.
Now Dr. Barry and his associates face the challenge of testing the rice in the field and getting it accepted by the public. He doesn’t understand the public’s resistance to the rice testing. “Golden Rice is not a private sector product and you can’t make money on it,” Dr. Barry says, “It’s agriculture in the service of human health and nutrition. Our question is: How many deaths or days of sickness can we relieve?”
“Critics argue that people should get the Vitamin A from sweet potatoes or carrots, or that they should get them from canned goods even. But we’re trying to serve the people who can only afford a handful of rice a day, the people for whom that’s not even an option. It’s not the only option, and there are other options, but this is one of them.”
Dr. Barry also shared with me that he co-created Roundup Ready, the leading herbicide on the market today. Monsanto not only created Roundup Ready, but also Roundup Ready genetically modified plants which are resistant to glyphosate—the active ingredient. Roundup ready, like many Monsanto products, has been controversial; there are some concerns about weed resistance (since many insects and weeds evolve resistance to chemicals over time), but the main concern is its affect on mammalian fertility—including humans. Knowing this, and having long encouraged gardeners to use alternatives to Roundup ready since little is known about how it affects groundwater and the ecosystem in general, I continued to feel uncertain how to respond to Dr. Barry.
I asked him how working at I.R.R.I. differed from Monsanto—since he went from a high profile executive position to working for a nonprofit. This fact has also stirred up quite a bit of controversy—many people question his role at I.R.R.I.—especially his involvement with the Golden Rice.
Listening to Dr. Barry though, his motives seem clear. “Now I work with people who feed someone or save someone’s life, rather than their own budget,” he says. “You have an amazing set of allies when you’re not trying to sell a pesticide or herbicide. I deal with people whose goals are to reduce the amount of sick kids in the world. Now that’s someone you work with easily.”
I left Dr. Barry’s after a little over a half hour, totally confused. I walked in against transgenic species and walked out feeling like if I was against transgenics, I somehow condemned millions of people to starvation. It took me a few weeks to sort through my thoughts and feelings on what is an intensely complex issue. It’s too easy to just say: we shouldn’t mess with rice, leave it alone. It’s also too easy to discount all the critics of GMO foods and their ecological concerns. I wasn’t sure what to think about Dr. Barry—a man who stands for many things that I’m against ecologically, but who, like me, wants to feed the starving masses.
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