The Potato

Canada’s favorite vegetable–the potato–can be an environmental hazard. But it needn’t be so. For several years, Pirmin Kummer has been growing 200 acres of potatoes with no synthetic pesticides near Port Elgin, New Brunswick. He’s one of the Canadian farmers who is trying to break the rules of cheap food economics.

Chip and french fry processors often price potatoes below farmers’ costs to produce them. Farmers grow potatoes too many times on the same land. The frequent result is significant soil erosion and major insect and disease problems that require lots of pesticide applications to control. After heavy rains, soil and pesticides are often flushed off the land into rivers, causing major fish kills.

Since last year, Kummer has participated in World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Canada’s Field to Table project, a collaboration between growers, packers and retailers to bring reduced-spray food products to market.

Kummer has redesigned his crop rotation so that potatoes are only grown two years in every six on any piece of land. Good rotation minimizes damage by the Colorado Potato Beetle (CPB), a multi-million dollar pest problem for potato growers. Traditional chemicals are increasingly ineffective due to a significant increase in the bug’s resistance to pesticides. Many are nasty products, very persistent in the environment, frequently contaminating groundwater and showing up at elevated levels in food residue tests.

He also avoids spraying the usual suite of chemicals for late blight–a significant fungus problem for potato growers and the biological cause of the Irish potato famine–by using a host of preventative measures. Kummer uses sprouted whole potatoes for planting, rather than cut potatoes, because it minimizes infection possibilities. He chooses his planting dates carefully to optimize both dry planting conditions and the potential for an early harvest. He grows potato varieties that mature a bit earlier to avoid wetter conditions in the fall that are conducive to late blight. This puts him at odds with the french fry industry, which prefers a late season variety for its shape, size and appearance when deep-fried. Finally, his harvesting strategy is designed to help the potatoes cure in the sun so that they are less prone to fungal infection during storage. Potatoes that can’t be stored are fed to beef cattle so they don’t sit around in garbage piles attracting disease.

Not-So-Hot-Potato

Unfortunately, Kummer’s approach gets little support from government and agribusiness. Rather than help farmers make the transit to ecological potato production, they embrace genetically engineered potatoes. Kummer’s approach increases the farmer’s reliance on management and knowledge and reduces expenditure. The agricultural sector doesn’t make much money off him. Policy makers and businesses believe that the best solutions are those that can be bought and sold, so genetic engineering is the perfect solution. It’s marketed as a solution to environmental problems and makes farmers dependent on a technology they can’t produce themselves, just as they are now dependent on chemicals.

For over a decade a naturally-occurring soil bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), one of the most benign pest control products available, has been used in sprays to control the invasive beetle. Genetic engineers have taken gene sequences from Bt and inserted them in the potato so the potato produces proteins toxic to the potato beetle. By doing so, they believe farmers will then have to use less pesticide.

Genetic engineers, highly knowledgeable about some of the workings of gene sequences, know virtually nothing about ecology and how organisms behave in the environment. Critics believe GE crops will actually increase pesticide use because they don’t require that farmers change existing farm designs-including their rotation–that create pest problems in the first place.

With Bt genes inserted in all these crops, The bacillus is being exposed to pests at unprecedented levels. Unavoidably, widespread pest resistance to this bacteria will result. Experts estimate that Bt, whether in sprays or in plants, will be useless for pest management within three to 10 years. Resistance management, the latest buzzword of industry and government, can only slightly slow the process. Once resistance occurs, the genetically engineered crop will lose its value and the expensive infrastructure required to create it will be wasted, imposing an opportunity cost for less expensive management strategies. Organic farmers are particularly worried.

Jim Gerritsen, an organic potato farmer from Bridgewater, Maine, has summarized the implications.

"Should we ever lose Bt our ability as organic farmers to grow quality produce will be in serious question," he says.

Potato eaters are voting with their mouths. GE potatoes are a market- failure. Interest in ecological food has never been higher. The nutrient-packed spud deserves an honored place at the table rather than a listing as a major polluter. Farmers like Pirmin Kummer, participating in WWF’s Field to Table project, are working hard to make that happen.