‘Organic GMOs’: Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak on how genetic engineering can reduce pesticide use and protect the environment

[Genetic engineering] is a powerful tool that can help us farm responsibly and sustainably by minimizing damage to the environment and prioritizing the health of both people and animals — the precise goals of organic farming. Type the terms ‘GMO’ and ‘organic’ into Google and you’ll get a barrage of links framing the two as diametrically opposed. The truth is that, when well-designed and used responsibly, the products of genetic engineering are often perfectly aligned with the goals of organic farming.

One testament to this compatibility is the marriage of Pamela Ronald, a plant geneticist, and Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, who live and work in Davis, California

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In Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food, Ronald and Adamchak argue that genetic engineering can help “develop biologically-oriented, sophisticated, and elegant approaches to address agricultural problems” and that “to maximize the benefit of GE [genetically engineered] plants, they would best be integrated into an organic farming system.”

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There are already many examples of what we might call “organic GMOs”: those that promote the same values as organic farming by reducing the use of synthetic chemicals, delivering more nutrition, and even restoring ecosystems. In the late 1990s, GMO papaya saved Hawaii’s entire papaya industry from viral eradication

Read full, original post: Organic GMOs could be the future of food — if we let them