From my work studying agricultural land use and the adoption plan of genetically engineered products in the U.S. from 2000–2019 (GMO_US), I’ve come to question the idea of sustainability in contemporary agriculture. That is, I backed out of believing that sustainability in contemporary farming and agriculture is achievable. “Sustainable agriculture” (1) is loosely defined as a balanced system of relationships between organisms and their environment, which implies support and dependency on each other. We, as a part of the system, can try any kind of agriculture, whether it’s organic or conventional. The problem is that neither is sustainable.

Let’s take, for example, the genetic modification of a cow. We can make a cow bigger, with more meat. It possibly helps to feed the population. That’s the idea.

Now, let’s assume that human population will continue to grow. Then, what about in 20 years? How big should the new cow be to feed even more people? Is there a limit of where to stop modifying organisms once we started? Is there a warranty this Frankencow would be able to live in and reproduce under increasing heat stress, or adapt to new viruses? (2) In a case of total failure of the modified cow, we can try again to genetically compose another beast, but there’s no guarantee this method would be sustainable.

There is, however, the other side of the field, and it is always greener. The objectives of “green” sustainable agriculture are to design practices of harming the environment with precisely measured, systematic “punches.” (Sustainable doesn’t necessarily mean harmless.) It’s impossible to have any agriculture without harming the existing system of relationships between already existing organisms and the environment. So the approach of “green” sustainable agriculture is to hurt our environment in a way that won’t kill it. That’s good, but the admired “green” methods (3, 4) don’t seem to provide an answer about how to feed a steadily growing population. (5)

Gloomy projections (that might be not-so-accurate) about overpopulation made by UN (6), WHO, and other reputable organizations promise we will carry a burden of unbearable guilt (in a form of carbon footprint) attributed to each of us, and each of our children. This guilt is going to expand together with other expansions — like developing new lands for agriculture.

We try to reduce the number of species we kill directly, but we haven’t stopped the destruction of their natural habitats in order to create more farmland for the growing human population. (7) But why bother about extinction if we can’t stop it? Can’t we “pamper” those organisms that are not going to die and, with the aid of genetic engineering, create those who can live in constantly changing conditions? In other words, there are two hypothetical future scenarios of handling the degeneration of biodiversity on Earth.

One: we don’t change our course of action, and the current genetic diversity will shrink even more, leaving only the “super-adaptors.” Generally, super-adaptors are creatures with high levels of tolerance to survive and reproduce under extreme conditions, like super-hardy water bears. (8)(It takes a lot to kill a water bear; it can survive open space vacuum and solar radiation for at least 10 days, Antarctic cold, and 150 °C heat. The offspring from those astronaut water bears are still alive and multiply. When there is no food or water, they just curl up, dry out, and go to sleep. Then, when environmental conditions improve, they come back to life.)

Conversely, the second scenario is that genetically-engineered (GE) organisms can be genetically “adjusted” to the new ecological conditions (assuming that ecological conditions will stabilize), and will compensate for the loss in genetic diversity we witness today

Yet the misconception here is that we can solve the problem of adaptation to the environment by creating one, or two, or even a hundred of genetically-engineered organisms. But no, organisms don’t evolve and/or survive individually, only as groups of species. “Adjustment” or “assimilation” is not the same, in the evolutionary sense, as adaptation. To adapt usually means a long process of figuring out which (out of many) genetic traits are beneficial for survival in conditions that happened prior appearance of the trait.

How many times can we come back to the lab to work out a newest batch of mutants for another set of conditions? Indefinite. Go biotech! (Until it’s banned.)

But what if we give up on genetically engineered organisms and just wait for mutants to appear the old-fashioned way? Well, remember that according to projections, we need food production to sustainably increase together with the rates of human aging and reproduction. So that won’t work either.

There’s another option. Forget both the natural adaptation that has taken so much time and quick genetic modifications, and let’s just “adjust” existing animals with a few cutting-edge gadgets. For instance, in order to protect the environment and get the bigger cow to function the way we want, we can control the behavior of the cow. Behavioral adaptations — unlike physiological and genetic adaptations — are the quickest that happen in the long story of evolution. For example, with the help of implants, we can manipulate the cow’s behavior to adjust to changing thermal conditions. This cow can carry light-weight solar panels implanted in its back and connected to a fan on its forehead — so the fan helps to handle the heat stress better. (9) Furthermore, this cow’s food intake can be dynamically controlled through implanted electrodes and then, through the implanted microchips, all data can be streamed to a distant server in Switzerland. Efficiency and profitability. (Sure, the luxury cow model can also carry a minibar, and, with enough training, provide rum-milk punch.)

But like in any successful story, there is always a tiny blood-sucking fly (that one that evolved alongside it and carries tons of parasites in its saliva) and which causes the upgraded cow a lot of stress. The cow goes nuts due to conflict of interests between humans, who control its behavior, and the fly, which only lives to survive and reproduce. Then, after the cow collapses, the cow and all its equipment become useless and finally phased out. There’s a similar situation in conventional agriculture: we have to keep making new chemicals (assuming we make new chemicals) that work against organisms that have built up resistance to the previous chemicals. What a carousel of absurdity we are on! And we pay double each time as we go around.

Today, with the help of conventional farming, we create a new habitat, one where changes happen faster than we can learn from them. In a sense, we humans did change many times to match the habitat we created — from hunter-gatherers into a population of farmers tied to the terra that looked suitable to live on. Full of hopes and aims to dominate this terra, we delved into exploiting secrets of Nature. Gradually, by farming plants and animals, we accidentally “farmed” ourselves into separate tribes, where certain, favorable human traits were enhanced and maintained over generations, together with the traits of whom we farmed. As a tribe, we wanted prosperity and guarantees that this abundance will go on forever. But the track to have prosperity, abundance, and guarantees for the demands of our increasing population isn’t leading to stability and balance. Ironically, it imbalances the system. Rephrasing Le Chatelier’s principle, “If a system at equilibrium is exposed to a stress, the system will shift so as to relieve that stress.”

Again, the total number of currently living people is a continuously increasing value. (Or so they say.) Unlike how Jesus miraculously fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fishes, we do not have a fixed number of people we need to supply food for. (It makes us to finally realize that we are not gods, otherwise it would be easy.) So, we need to think ahead to (over)produce enough for everyone in five, ten, twenty, or one hundred years.

Changing animal nutrition, using new plant fertilizers and chemicals, creating climate-ready transgenic organisms, transforming animal fertility rates and creating more-productive livestock — you name it, we’ve tried it. Even so, food production is not even close to the maximum of its efficiency.

So where does this lead us? To a new understanding of sustainability. The concept of sustainability is often a starting point in talks about taking responsibility for the harmful developments in agriculture. Dealing with the current issues in global ecology, we chant the words “sustainability” and “sustainable development” as if they will put the genie of conventional farming back inside the “green” organic bottle. The hot topic of “sustainable agriculture” promises perfect harmony in achieving ecological and economic goals. It promises new approaches to protect the environment while allowing us to enjoy a continuous abundancy of food products.

At the end, however, I think the goals of “sustainable development” and “positive impact of sustainable agriculture” for future farming are impossible to achieve. This theory is based on vague wishful projections about future social, economic, and environmental conditions that are constantly changing and impossible to predict.

Ultimately, both methods, conventional and organic agriculture, are flawed, and neither will be sustainable on its own. (10) Moreover, because “environmentally-friendly agriculture” is a myth, both types of agricultures, conventional and organic, harm our environment. Therefore, sustainability in agriculture refers to one idea: being able to feed the population without killing it later. That is, sustainable agriculture is not necessarily about caring for the environment, but a method of feeding ourselves in a way that doesn’t kill the environment, because we need it to sustain our needs. I don’t think we’re capable of sustainability at the moment, but I hope — and believe — we’ll be capable of it soon.

References:

1. Sustainable Agriculture: Definitions and Terms | Alternative Farming Systems Information Center| NAL | USDA. https://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/sustainable-agriculture-definitions-and-terms#toc2. Accessed May 3, 2019.

2. may2018.pdf. http://www.engineeringbiologycenter.org/press/may2018.pdf. Accessed May 3, 2019.

3. We don’t have enough organic farms. Why not? Environment. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/future-of-food/organic-farming-crops-consumers/. Published November 20, 2018. Accessed February 28, 2019.

4. Severson K. From Apples to Popcorn, Climate Change Is Altering the Foods America Grows. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/dining/farming-climate-change.html. Published May 1, 2019. Accessed May 2, 2019.

5. Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf. https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf. Accessed May 3, 2019.

6. World Population Prospects — Population Division — United Nations. https://population.un.org/wpp/. Accessed May 31, 2019.

7. Aleksandra Dolezal. Protected areas need to be more than just location leftovers of the world. envirobites. April 2019. https://envirobites.org/2019/04/24/protected-areas-need-to-be-more-than-just-location-leftovers-of-the-world/. Accessed May 3, 2019.

8. Tiny “water bears” can teach us about survival. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-tiny-survival.html. Accessed May 4, 2019.

9. Berihulay H, Abied A, He X, Jiang L, Ma Y. Adaptation Mechanisms of Small Ruminants to Environmental Heat Stress. Animals. 2019;9(3):75. doi:10.3390/ani9030075

10. Guide to Transitional Farming FINAL RGK V2.pdf. https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/10%20Guide%20to%20Transitional%20Farming%20FINAL%20RGK%20V2.pdf. Accessed May 10, 2019.