Benefits of Agriculture Biotechnology

Part I: Addressing Water Scarcity with Drought-tolerant Crops

Droughts have been a major problem in agriculture for centuries. Today, they affect large swaths of the United States – including some of the country’s most productive farmland – every year.  Between 1980 and 2005, the United States experienced nine "drought events," each of which cost the economy an estimated $1 billion or more, primarily in agricultural productivity.  According to some estimates, the 1988-1989 drought may have cost the country as much as $40 billion.1 

Several regions in the United States currently suffer from persistent drought conditions, particularly the Southwest and some portions of the Southeast, and many other parts of the country have recently experienced droughts as well. The West is expected to suffer historic drought conditions in the coming decades, and climate change may alter a significant portion of winter precipitation in some regions from snow to rain. Warmer temperatures could also result in earlier spring thaws, which would mean longer droughts in the peak growing of the summer months, potentially affecting the cost and availability of food.2 It is no wonder water scarcity is expected to be the single most significant constraint on crop production over the next 50 years.3 

Droughts can appear suddenly during critical points in the growing season, significantly reducing crop yields. Although there is no magic bullet that will end the increasing problem of water scarcity, agricultural biotechnology researchers are currently developing and field-testing drought-tolerant strains of many important crops – including corn, cotton, and canola – that can stabilize yields in areas where water availability is highly variable, such as the central and west corn belts. 

Research is ongoing to develop new plant varieties that exhibit one or more of these capabilities:  to use water more efficiently; to recover and produce food following a prolonged lack of water; and/or to produce the same yield under drought conditions as they do under normal conditions.

• More efficient use of water. Biotech crops subjected to a two-week induced drought (70 percent less water than normal) in California were able to use water two to three times more efficiently than the control group of non-biotech crops. Moreover, their water content dropped only slightly, from 92 percent to 86 percent.4 
• Ability to recover from drought. Following the two-week induced drought, the same biotech and non-biotech crops were then watered. In contrast with the non-biotech plants, all of which died in spite of being watered, the biotech plants recovered, regained their pre-drought water content, and continued growing.
• Same yield under drought conditions.  In the same study in California, biotech crops subjected to drought conditions survived, with virtually no loss in yield.   In Illinois, one strain of biotech corn not only survived drought conditions, but actually produced a 10 percent higher yield than non-biotech corn did under non-drought conditions.5

 Part II: Addressing Water Scarcity with No-till Agriculture

Water scarcity is expected to be the single most significant constraint on crop production over the next 50 years.6 The depletion of surface and groundwater is already forcing California farmers to import water from other parts of the country, and experts predict similar situations in parts of our Midwestern "bread basket" within less than a decade. 

The need for American farmers to conserve water and to use it more effectively is clear. The question is, "How?"

Answering that question effectively will require a number of interrelated solutions. Many approaches to the water-scarcity challenges are being addressed by agricultural biotechnology; some are available today, and others will be in the relatively near future. One such solution is a conservation practice known as no-till agriculture.

Farmers have used tillage – more commonly called plowing – for centuries to control weeds, so their crops would not have to compete for sunlight, water, or nutrients in the soil. Unfortunately, tillage has undesirable side effects, including soil erosion due to wind and rain, as well as significant water runoff. 

The practice known as conservation tillage – leaving much or all of the crop residue in the field after the harvest and either reducing tilling or eliminating it altogether – both conserves water and also protects the soil from erosion and compaction. It does virtually nothing to control weeds, however, and therefore has historically not been widely adopted. 

The advent of crop plants that have been engineered to tolerate the new class of lower-impact herbicides, however, has enabled farmers to switch to no-till agriculture – the most soil- and water-conserving form of conservation tillage. Herbicide-tolerance also enables farmers to apply less herbicide, and more selectively. Rather than spreading it broadly over their fields before planting, they can wait until after crop plants emerge and use herbicide only where – and only in the quantities – needed. 

Since these crops were introduced in 1996, the use of no-till agriculture has increased by 35 percent.7 So far, herbicide-tolerant strains of soybean, corn and canola plants have been developed, and research on other crop plants is ongoing. In 2005, nearly 67 million acres – 89 percent – of U.S. soybean acreage was planted with herbicide-tolerant varieties.8 No-till agriculture not only makes possible better absorption and conservation of water from both rainfall and irrigation; it also reduces soil erosion and enriches soil – all of which help maximize yield while also conserving water.

There is still another benefit to no-till cultivation. It reduces the use of agricultural machinery in fields, which in turn, leads to a reduction in harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since 1996, farmers worldwide have saved 441 million gallons of fuel and kept 10.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere – the equivalent of removing four million cars from the road for an entire year.9 

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