The iconic green cornfields of the US Midwest are about to shrink — not in size, but in stature. A new genetically modified (GMO) corn varietal stands on fatter stalks and grows less than 2m tall, about one-third of the height of conventional corn. Dubbed “Smart Corn” by its developer, the German pharmaceutical company Bayer, this well-timed mutant has been designed to withstand the increasingly costly pressures of climate change.
The implications are as harrowing as they are inspiring — and not because stubbier corn is genetically modified.
I have said before that GMO crop breeding, which inserts bits of DNA from one species of plant into the genome of another, can be judiciously applied in ways that benefit human health and the environment.
Illustration: Constance Chou
Short-stature corn is harrowing because it is yet another recent example of an ingenious adaptation that makes it easier for policymakers, investors and voters to avoid solving the far bigger challenge at hand: climate change. The most promising new methods of acclimating to the climate crisis are worth celebrating, but they should also be considered a clarion call to solve the problem at its root.
Bayer’s Smart Corn was recently determined by the US Department of Agriculture to be safe for farmers to grow in the US. It still requires the US Environmental Protection Agency to sign off on it, pending reviews of the crop’s ecological effects. Approval is likely because many other GMO crops have already been deemed environmentally benign.
Moreover, Smart Corn is one of the first crops designed for the very purpose of addressing environmental factors.
Damage to corn and soy crops is becoming more costly as high-wind storms intensify in the climate change era. In the US these phenomena, known as derechos, have been devastating farms throughout the Midwest with 160kph winds, causing billions of dollars of damage across millions of hectares of crops in 2020 alone. Last month brought storms nearly as severe.
Understandably, demand is growing for a crop with shorter, fatter stalks that stands a better chance against high-wind storms. Previous types of corn developed through traditional hybrid breeding methods have had success reducing stalk height to about 2.7m, and these crops have fared better in storms. The new GMO varietal is stronger still: Bayer scientists modified the corn plant with a foreign gene that inhibits the production of the plant growth hormone gibberellic acid, enabling the corn to produce the same amount of fruit on much shorter, superstrength stalks.
The introduction of short corn comes on the heels of other notable crops designed for climate adaption. At this time last year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved HB4, a new wheat varietal engineered for drought tolerance with a gene borrowed from a sunflower. Pioneered by the Argentine company Bioceres, it was recognized as an early milestone among crops designed to survive in climate-stressed conditions.
Earlier this month, the fertilizer giant Nutrien Ltd announced plans to distribute a new GMO soybean created by the San Diego-based start-up ZeaKal Inc. The soybean is engineered with a foreign gene that accelerates photosynthesis, allowing the crop to soak up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while also producing more abundant yields.
Let us be clear that the innovations cannot, on their own, entirely solve farmers’ climate woes. Bayer’s Short Corn, for example, is engineered like traditional corn to be tended and harvested by heavy machinery, yet derechos can bring so much rain that machinery often sinks in the fields.
Moreover, heavy rainfall can cause plant roots to become sodden and die, no matter how tall or short the corn is. There is also the pressure of unprecedented heat, which has been scorching farms this summer throughout the US Midwest — and from Honduras to Malawi.
It does not take much to see what agriculture in the climate change era are likely look like down the line: plants engineered not just for wind resistance but also for drought and heat resilience and flood tolerance. Plants that can endure shifting seasons, temperature swings and invasive insects. Crops of the future do not just need one foreign gene to survive the manifold pressures of climate change, they would need dozens. This is a hard reality to swallow.
In just the past few years, the GMO debate has shifted from skirmishes about labeling corn chips to a matter of survival. Bayer’s Smart Corn product has helped usher in a major and fairly sudden plot twist in the story of US agriculture almost overnight. The once-vitriolic conflict between the agriculture industry and environmentalists over GMOs has been replaced instead by serious discussions about how genetic engineering can help humanity endure a hotter world.
GMOs, like so many other new agricultural tools in our midst, are a testament to our human capacity to solve complex problems.
However, the more ingenious our methods, the more likely we are to avoid fixing the core issues driving the crisis. As the effects of climate change intensify, humans would be stuck in an endless cycle of increasingly frantic adaptions if we do not focus on the source of the problem and its ultimate solutions: decarbonizing our economy and preserving the delicate balance of the ecosystems we depend on.
Amanda Little is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering agriculture and climate. She is a professor of journalism and science writing at Vanderbilt University. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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