GE Crops to Produce Energy Crops: A Very Bad Idea

[nosmokes]

original

Genetically Engineered Crops to Produce Energy Crops:
A Very Bad Idea

Web Note:
Along with the potential contamination of "pharm" crops, crops that have been genetically engineered to contain medicines, are this new series of ideas of enhancing crops to provide alternative fuels. Though I find this an intriguing idea, I can't help but think of the potential for contamination with the scale this kind of planting would require. In fact I can see this as a further reason that dangerous technologies such as the so called "terminator plants" will be pursued once more. - Thomas Wittman
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"Energy crop" research reaps financing

By John CookSeattle Post-Intelligencer, April 21, 2006
Can bigger canola seeds help solve the world's energy crisis?
Thomas Todaro believes they can.

And the 37-year-old chief operating officer at Seattle- based Targeted Growth Inc. just pulled in $10 million in venture capital financing to help make the idea a reality.

The 7-year-old Seattle bioagricultural company plans to use some of the money to continue field tests on a gene enhancement technology -- licensed from the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center -- that increases the yields of canola, sugar cane and other "energy crops" by more than 20 percent, Todaro said.

Boosting the amount of oil produced by each plant could have wide-ranging implications for the rapidly expanding biofuel industry, potentially allowing farmers to more economically grow crops on fallow or underutilized land. Eventually, that could lead to lower prices at the pump for biodiesel and ethanol -- derived from corn, sugar cane and other crops.

"We think we can literally improve alternative energy supplies within five years," boasted Todaro, a former general manager at Canadian dairy Alamar Farms and former senior vice president at PayPal.

If that occurs, Todaro believes, Targeted Growth could be a very big player in alternative fuels.

"Whoever controls the best plant, controls the kingdom," he said. "Building a better ethanol-producing factory is not as defensible as having a crop that can produce the highest yield. It is the equivalent of having the land underneath where the petroleum sits."

That claim won over plenty of fans in the most recent funding round, with Targeted Growth turning away potential investors and capping the amount at $10 million. Total financing is at more than $15 million, with Canadian venture capital firms Investment Saskatchewan and GrowthWorks taking stakes.

Initially, Targeted Growth was formed to create better crop yields for the food supply. Some of the science originated from cancer researchers at the Hutch, who were trying to figure out ways to diminish the division of cancer cells. Todaro and his scientists flipped the idea on its head for crops, trying to get the cells to divide more.

"It was honestly that simple," Todaro said, adding that it took about four years to prove the theory.
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complete article here
edited to add this :
related post How Green are Bio-fuels Made From GE Crops

[skids]

1. Just grow damn hemp already...

...not that you'll have much of it left over for energy until you've satisfied the more lucrative construction materials markets, that is until there are many, many fields.

[MadHound]

2. Not just hemp,

But there are algae strains out there that yield up immense quantities of fuel oil, and you don't have to sacrifice crop lands.

I'm all for hemp also, but if we're going to get off the oil tit, we have to have the quantity to replace it, and that is going to require algae.

[SoCalDem]

3. Perhaps this was the long-range plan all along

..the reason for buying out all the independent farmers.. Maybe it wasn't about the food..maybe it was in anticipation of when the oil ran out..They would be perfectly positioned to grow crops to turn into the "new fuel"..

Will we have to choose between food or fuel? or will they make the choice for us:(

[Odin2005]

4. I support GM crops for fuel, just not from megacorporations

Repeat after me:

GM crops = good

abuse of GM crops by megacorporations = bad

Anything that can increase the yields of crops/acre is a good thing.

[nosmokes]

5. can't control where pollen goes

sounds good, but you can't control pollen, and i haven't seen any empirical studies that show me GM crops increase yield per acre. i've seen some financed and published by monsanto and gentech and the like that end up not holding water and not being able to have the results replicated (or even anything near the claims made) but
the data doesn't support higher yields from GM crops. the so called advantage of GM crops at this stage is it's tolerance to glyphophateherbicides, but that has made it's own problems as new strains of * super weeds* are now emerging that are also resistant to glyphosphates and are proving very difficult for *conventional* farmers to control. (and again i ask, what the hell is conventional about dumping poisons all over the food i'm gonna put on my plate and the food i'm gonna feed my family?) and all those poisons and fertilisers are petroleum based and require machinery to apply it, whether you're burning part of the crop you're growing to make biodiesel or using petrodiesel, it's a net loss.

the only way to really get out of this mess is gonna require a fundamental shift in our thinking, in our economy which must become localised economies that will meld into larger cooperatives so that you can have the power of size, but we really hafta shift to a local economy. right now on average our food travels 1800 miles on average before it gets to our plate. that's untenable.
buy local
buy organic
buy fair trade