FCGMOs Introduction Part 1

Robert Vavala Author

03/09/2018 Added

168 Plays

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Part one of the introduction for the Farmers, Consumers, and GMOs learning environment.

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[00:00:00.750]Farmers, Consumers, and GMOs.
[00:00:03.960]This is the introduction to our learning environment
[00:00:06.650]and we'll make the theme of this introduction,
[00:00:08.940]Living in a Changing World.
[00:00:10.920]So let's start our story with this fact.
[00:00:15.220]U.S. farmers are growing more soybean all the time
[00:00:19.120]and there's several reasons for that.
[00:00:20.870]But the most important reason is consumer demand.
[00:00:24.095]The seeds that soybean farmers harvest from their plants
[00:00:29.560]are high in protein or high in oil
[00:00:32.170]and therefore, make excellent food sources
[00:00:35.630]to be directly consumed by people.
[00:00:38.450]They also are excellent feed sources for livestock,
[00:00:42.520]which are also consumed by people.
[00:00:44.830]So they are an important part of the human food chain
[00:00:48.056]and the demand for soybeans continues to increase
[00:00:51.999]as the world's population increases.
[00:00:55.210]There's high demand in the United States.
[00:00:56.754]There's high demand globally.
[00:00:59.810]So as a result, farmers are growing more soybeans.
[00:01:03.250]The other reason why farmers are growing more soybeans
[00:01:07.210]is not only because the world is changing in terms of
[00:01:10.151]demand for the soybean seeds.
[00:01:14.860]There's also changes occurring in the varieties that
[00:01:18.950]farmers can choose to grow and some changes
[00:01:23.200]in the growing seasons that they encounter on their farms.
[00:01:26.960]At one time, soybeans was strictly a southern crop.
[00:01:31.368]The varieties that were available to farmers
[00:01:34.210]when it was first introduced into this country
[00:01:36.920]to be grown by farmers needed long growing seasons that were
[00:01:40.820]only found in the southern part of the United States.
[00:01:44.090]However, because of genetic differences amongst
[00:01:47.760]different soybean plants that influence their growth rate
[00:01:52.450]and their development, it's been possible to,
[00:01:56.870]for breeders to identify varieties that can complete
[00:02:01.138]their life cycle in a shorter growing season
[00:02:03.840]and therefore, provide farmers in the northern parts of the
[00:02:08.390]United States the opportunity to grow soybeans
[00:02:11.330]and meet this growing demand.
[00:02:13.730]In addition, farmers are finding that in many seasons,
[00:02:18.514]they have a little bit longer growing season
[00:02:21.690]that they can take advantage of, so as a consequence,
[00:02:24.920]farmers are growing more soybeans.
[00:02:26.770]There's a high demand and more soybean farmers
[00:02:30.520]around the United States can take advantage of this crop.
[00:02:34.400]But soybean farmers, like any other occupation,
[00:02:37.720]encounter problems and one of the problems that they will
[00:02:40.520]encounter when growing their crop is the occurrence
[00:02:43.460]of disease in their fields, okay.
[00:02:45.550]So sometimes, the disease is not very severe,
[00:02:48.417]doesn't have an effect on productivity.
[00:02:50.780]Sometimes, they see a highly severe infestation of some
[00:02:56.170]disease in their fields, so it's critical for them to work
[00:02:59.650]with plant disease experts, plant pathologists.
[00:03:02.860]Identify the disease
[00:03:06.372]and think about the choices that they have
[00:03:09.696]in overcoming this disease.
[00:03:12.430]In the case of SDS disease
[00:03:14.475]and that's the disease that's shown here.
[00:03:17.200]SDS is short for Sudden Death Syndrome.
[00:03:20.870]This is a disease that farmers are paying more attention to
[00:03:24.930]and there's several reasons why.
[00:03:26.910]Let's take a look at the history of SDS disease.
[00:03:31.160]It's not a new disease, it's been around for decades.
[00:03:34.490]It was first discovered in the 1970s
[00:03:38.151]in some farmers' fields in Arkansas.
[00:03:41.820]And since that time, what's happened
[00:03:45.330]is as soybeans are being grown in more parts
[00:03:48.890]of the United States, the disease has spread.
[00:03:52.950]So the organism that's causing the disease is becoming
[00:03:56.850]more prevalent in these different soybean growing areas.
[00:04:00.360]So while the severity of the disease from year to year
[00:04:04.380]is unpredictable, what seems to be a predictable trend
[00:04:08.530]is that farmers who grow soybeans, no matter where they are,
[00:04:12.120]are likely to encounter problems with this disease
[00:04:15.496]in the future.
[00:04:16.940]So what are the choices farmers have in
[00:04:21.150]overcoming this problem when they know it's something
[00:04:24.850]that they're likely to deal with it.
[00:04:26.560]Well, the primary choice that they have is
[00:04:29.690]selecting varieties of soybeans that are
[00:04:32.460]genetically programmed to be resistant to the disease.
[00:04:36.680]And currently, all the varieties available to farmers
[00:04:39.280]would fall into the category of non-GMO.
[00:04:42.150]These are developed by traditional breeding,
[00:04:44.260]where the breeders have identified parent lines that
[00:04:47.890]have naturally occurring genetic variation that gives them
[00:04:53.570]slightly higher levels of tolerance to the disease
[00:04:57.230]compared to those susceptible varieties.
[00:04:59.670]However, it is possible that in the future,
[00:05:03.020]we could develop GMO varieties.
[00:05:05.440]It's been recently discovered that
[00:05:07.990]you can identify and transfer single genes
[00:05:10.993]into the soybean genome that will provide for
[00:05:14.220]these plants' resistance to this SDS disease.
[00:05:17.370]And when you combine that genetic engineering technology
[00:05:21.825]with traditional breeding, you could develop new varieties
[00:05:25.300]that you would classify as GMO varieties,
[00:05:28.250]because of that additional gene insertion
[00:05:31.210]with transformation.
[00:05:33.330]All right, so farmers currently
[00:05:35.900]have only non-GMO varieties to choose from.
[00:05:39.430]It might be possible in the future to use GMOs
[00:05:44.860]in order to battle this disease problem.
[00:05:48.834]Given the severity of the disease and its growing
[00:05:53.830]problem for more soybean farmers,
[00:05:56.030]given the demand for soybeans,
[00:05:58.030]this becomes then a very important question.
[00:06:00.640]Should we use GMO technology to solve this problem?
[00:06:04.780]This is a question that farmers have to answer.
[00:06:08.200]But farmers also have to be aware
[00:06:10.680]of the answer that consumers would have.
[00:06:13.310]So to give us a better understanding of a good answer,
[00:06:17.380]a potential answer to this question,
[00:06:19.380]we need to have a better understanding of GMOs.
[00:06:22.570]So let's extend this introduction
[00:06:25.056]in thinking about a changing world and consider situations
[00:06:29.990]where humans might be challenged with dealing with
[00:06:34.460]particular diseases and
[00:06:37.070]a situation where the use of GMO technology
[00:06:40.400]has provided some
[00:06:44.180]potential positive choices for consumers.
[00:06:47.120]So we'll make this a second part of our introduction.

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