RURAL ROUTES/Margot Ford McMillen
Of Bt and Butterflies
Tired of the flash and boom, we're seeking another way to
celebrate July 4. We still love the pyrotechnics, but
nobody's fooled any more when stories of violence in local
schools appear on the same page with pictures of refugees
in faraway places. It's time to reconsider how we celebrate
our national holidays.
As I was mulling this over, a flurry of news came out on
the subject of the monarch butterfly, in Nature, Wall
Street Journal and Time, and your local newspaper. The
monarch is in unexpected danger, because of a new
genetically altered corn plant.
Question: Why would anybody genetically alter corn?
First of all, remember that farmers come in all sizes. Ask
your farmer's market producer if he or she plants
genetically altered plants. I bet they don't. Farmers that
grow food to sell directly to you are leery of genetically
altered plants because nobody really knows what the effects
of the alterations will be in the long run. In fact,
farmers raising food organically are worried about
genetically altered plants because there is no guarantee
the plants won't mix with tried-and-true varieties and make
something else.
On the other hand, the highly indebted corporate farmer who
sells corn to the feed lots and chicken or hog factories
are the ones planting Bt crops. Corporate farmers want
maximum yields from their fields; they buy seed that they
think will maximize yields. Incidentally, the crops they
grow are available in all your fast foods and groceries.
In the effort to maximize yields, the seed scientists look
for ways to make the plants resistant to pests, which eat
crops. The newest way is called by a variety of names,
including genetic engineering, genetic modification,
genetic alteration or gene splicing. When one term gets
known and understood, they change it. The resulting plant
or animal is often called a "genetically modified organism"
or "GMO."
It may seem that all this is just an advanced level of the
kind of selection breeders have been doing for years,
saving seed from the best plants to put in the ground next
year. Or purposely breeding plants and animals with certain
characteristics so they would have offspring that displayed
those qualities.
That kind of selective breeding has given us corn plants
that withstand drought, or that have more ears on a stalk.
It has also given us Angus cattle that yield more beef and
holstein cattle that give more milk. And, selective
breeding is what makes cocker spaniel dogs look different
than poodles or pointers.
This new technology isn't selective breeding. The new
technology involves putting DNA from one species into
another. Petunia genes are spliced into soybeans, or fish
genes are spliced into tomatoes. The result is a kind of
soybean -- or tomato -- that could never be bred naturally.
The larva-killing corn resulted when scientists spliced
bacteria DNA into a corn kernel. The new plant is sometimes
nicknamed "Bt," after the bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis.
Bt is poisonous to many insects that feast on crops.
Eating Bt corn kills pests. And, Bt corn produces pollen
which carries the Bt DNA. Like all pollens, this one blows
all over the place. Some of it lands on other corn,
fertilizing it, and some of it might lodge in your very own
sinuses, making you sneeze if you are allergic.
As my sister says, someone needs to invent corn condoms.
Inevitably, some pollen lands on milkweed, the only food
eaten by monarchs in their caterpillar stage. And this Bt
pollen, scientists proved in a Cornell University
laboratory and in Iowa State University field tests, killed
44% of the monarch caterpillars exposed to it.
Monarchs are the first butterflies the scientists have
tested, because the orange and black beauties have a fan
club. I visited a Kansas City school district that had
built a curriculum around the monarch. The children -- and
kids from dozens of other "Monarchwatch" schools on the
hemisphere -- bring eggs into the classrooms to watch them
hatch, tag the butterflies, released them gently into the
sky with the hope that they'd make it to hibernation
grounds in Mexico.
Big kids read monarch fact sheets to kindergartners. Big
kids are cool, so the little ones pay attention. At recess,
I saw play stop when a butterfly passed overhead. The
school neighborhood is in transition from rural pastures to
suburban lawns, and children teach their parents not to mow
away all the milkweed habitat. In just this little way, the
kids are learning how very wonderful and mysterious our
world is and how they can be responsible for some of it.
I asked the kids why they studied monarchs. After all,
nobody has ever proven that monarchs are good for anything.
The kids answered that monarchs are part of nature,
something that belongs here, beautiful, and interesting.
Without monarch butterflies, the kids said, the world would
be sadder.
The study of monarchs is surprising. It opens up more
questions than answers. Each generation of the butterflies
picks up one leg of a migration from Mexico to Canada and
back. It takes three generations to make a year's round,
and nobody knows how the information on navigation is
passed from generation to generation. Read one article
about monarchs, or look up the monarchwatch web page on the
internet and you'll be hooked.
But monarchs are only one of the dozens of species of
butterflies that live in our neighborhoods. What about
fritillary? Swallowtail? painted lady? Nobody knows. Nobody
knows. Nobody knows.
As I write this, I'm munching on a bowl of cherries from my
neighbor's tree. They're delicious -- much better than the
crow I have to eat with them, because I declared last year
that we could never grow cherries here. Never have and
never will. I'd never plant cherry trees again, I said.
She was too polite to remind me of my brash declaration.
"It's the bees," she said. Two years ago, three of us women
got bee hives. Caring for our bees has given us more than
we ever dreamed. We work in the hives together, collect
swarms together, build and paint hives together, share
books and information, compare notes, develop recipes, and
worry each other to distraction.
We've also noticed the contribution the bees make to our
environment. Our hayfields have more clover; our fruit
trees have more fruit. The cherries are the most recent
surprise. So what will happen when the bees bring Bt pollen
back to the hives to feed their young? The answer, of
course, is that nobody knows.
Maybe it's too late, this year, to make plans to celebrate
peace on Independence Day. But take a minute to enjoy the
butterflies, the bees, the cherries. Maybe it's our last
chance.
Maybe we can celebrate our own independence wherever we
find it. Celebrate our independent food system by eating
foods grown locally and not brought by trucks from faraway
places. Celebrate our independent transportation systems by
walking or biking to the park. Celebrate our independent
entertainment systems by playing cards with the neighbors.
But maybe it's too late, because we've already promised
flash and boom.
Margot Ford McMillen farms and teaches English at a college
in Fulton, Mo. Email: mcmillm@jaynet.wcmo.edu
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