Professor questions bioengineered crops

At first, growing bioengineered corn to produce special proteins for the pharmaceutical industry sounds like a great idea.

After all, a spoonful of these proteins can be worth thousands of dollars. With the right setup and a little know-how, long-struggling farmers could be millionaires.

Sound too good to be true?

“I think it might be good for a handful of people,” said Allan Fritz, an associate professor in the agronomy department at Kansas State University. “But I doubt that it’ll benefit a broad number of producers.”

The challenges posed by bioengineered crops, Fritz said, appear to outweigh the benefits.

And if there’s big money to be made, he asked, why would the giants in the pharmaceutical industry share their wealth? Why wouldn’t they grow the crops themselves? Why would they take on the risk of encountering a Kansas tornado?

“If I’m a pharmaceutical company, I want the most control over the situation I can get,” Fritz said. “But once you stick that crop outside – outdoors, outside the laboratory – there’s a level of control you lose.”

Late last year, the Kansas Department of Agriculture solicited comments from farmers and agribusiness lobbyists on how the state should respond to federal survey for regulating bio-agriculture.

Lawrence-area organic farmers were less than enthusiastic.

“I do not believe that in corn country we can keep a genetically-engineered crop segregated from a commercially-grown crop. There will be cross-pollination,” said Paul Johnson, an organic farmer who lives and farms near Perry. “So the question becomes: Do you really want heart medicine in your morning corn flakes?”

Dan Nagengast, who farms organically south of Clinton Lake, said he feared that a storm could carry pollen from an experimental crop and contaminate other crops and get into the food supply.

“We’re in tornado alley,” Nagengast said. He and others criticized federal policies that keep the so-called “pharm crop” locations secret.

“I would feel a lot better off if several people at the Department of Agriculture knew where some of these sites were,” he said.

The agribusiness lobbyists predicted the risk of cross-pollination would be minimal.

“It’s not this sci-fi stuff,” said Jere White, executive director of the Kansas Corn Growers Assn. and Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Assn. “These aren’t, for the most part, some bizarre new creatures out there.”

Regulations already require bio-engineered crops to be surrounded by buffer zones, and the fields must either be destroyed before pollination or contain sterile plants.

After the meeting, state Department of Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky said he was confident Kansas was safe from any kind of cross-pollination contamination.

He later wrote the U.S. Department of Agriculture a letter in support of bio-agriculture as long as it’s regulated and the federal government sets aside enough resources to keep a close eye on the experimental crops.