In the current climate of deforestation, pollution and habitat destruction at least 30,000 species are facing extinction every year (1). The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that we have lost 75% of the genetic diversity that we had in agriculture at the beginning of this century (2). The use of genetic engineering in agriculture goes hand in hand with the globalisation of monoculture farming practices which has been a major factor in the erosion of species diversity.

"Although biotechnology has the capacity to create a greater variety of commercial plants, the trend set forth by Trans National Corporations is to create broad international markets for a single product, thus creating the conditions for genetic uniformity in rural landscapes."

Genetic uniformity leads to vulnerability because pressure from animal pests, diseases and weeds is higher in areas where the same crop is grown all year round (4). One cause of the Irish potato famine last century was genetic uniformity in the potato crop which meant that all the potatoes were susceptible to a single disease.

Biodiversity is traditionally understood to be the very basis of food security. The more genetic diversity there is within an agricultural system, the more that system is able to accommodate challenges from pests, disease or climatic conditions which tend only to affect certain varieties (5).

Mexico's Huastec Indian communities have a highly sophisticated form of forest management in which they cultivate over 300 different plants in a mixture of small gardens, agricultural fields and forest plots (6).
One village in north-east India grows up to 70 different varieties of rice (7). In West Bengal, 124 'weed' species collected from rice fields have economic importance for farmers (8).
In the Expana region of Mexico, farmers make use of 435 wild plant and animal species of which 229 are eaten (9).

Parallels can be drawn between the 'gene revolution' and the 'Green Revolution'. The 'Green Revolution' was a massive government and corporate campaign that persuaded farmers in the Third World to replace a multitude of indigenous crops with a few high yielding varieties dependent on expensive inputs of chemicals and fertilisers. This led to huge losses in genetic diversity. Many of the indigenous varieties that farmers used to grow have now been lost for ever (10).

There are plans to genetically engineer major crops such as rice and wheat with new traits such as increased salt tolerance. This may enable them to be grown in areas which would previously have been regarded as unsuitable and reserved for indigenous crop plants more suited to local conditions. These traits could give GE crops the ability to compete with plants native to these ecosystems. The introduction of foreign species is a major cause of ecological disruption and erosion of biodiversity. In the United States 42% of the species on the threatened or endangered species list are at risk primarily because of non-indigenous species (11) costing the US economy an estimated $123 billion a year (12).

1. Myers N. (1993) Biodiversity and the precautionary principle, Ambio 22(2-3), 74-79.
Wilson, E. 'The Diversity of Life', Penguin books, 1994, p.268.
2. FAO (1998) Crop Genetic Resources, In: Special: Biodiversity for food and agriculture. Rom.
3. Altieri M. The Environmental Risks of Transgenic Crops: an Agroecological Assessment, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley.
4. Alexandratos N. (1988) World Agriculture: Toward 2000 An FAO Study, FAO/Belhaven, Rome and London.
5. Farmers around the world have been using organic farming techniques for millennia to protect crops from pests, fungal and viral infections. One of these is a highly sophisticated system of multiple-cropping which combines up to 20 crops in the same plot. "The combined crop yields from multiple-cropping systems are often higher than those from monocultures. Research In West Africa, where 80 per cent of all farmland is intercropped, research has shown that "in many cases yields from intercropping surpass those from sole cropping systems". Baker, E.F. I. and Yusuf, Y., "Mixed cropping research at the Institute for Agricultural Research, Samaru, Nigeria" in Monyo, J.H., Ker, A.D.R. and Cambell, M., (eds), Intercropping in semi-arid areas, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, 1976, cited in Richards P., Indigenous Agricultural Revolution, Hutchinson, London, 1985, p.66.
6. RAFI (1995) The potato blight is back, Seedling .
7. Panos (1998) Greed or need? Genetically modified crops. Panos media briefing No. 30.
8. Shiva V. "Monocultures, Monopolies, Myths and the Masculinisation of Agriculture", Aisling Quarterly.
9. Tripp R. (1996) Biodiversity and Modern Crop Varieties: sharpening the debate. Agriculture and Human Values 13: 48-62.
10. "A few decades ago, Indian farmers were growing some 50,000 different rices; just over ten years ago, this number had dropped to 17,000; and today, the majority grow just a few dozen. In Indonesia, 1,500 local varieties have become extinct in the last 15 years. If different varieties, each of which have different traits, are not grown out constantly, they are very quickly lost." The Corner House, Oct. 1998, Briefing 10: Genetic Engineering and World Hunger. See also CGIAR, Agricultural research for whom? Article edited by The Ecologist from research material provided by GRAIN and RAFI, The Ecologist, Vol. 26, No.6, November/December 1996.
11. USDA Press release "President Clinton Expands Federal effort to Combat Invasive Species", February 3rd 1999.
12. Pimentel, D. Lach, L. Zuniga, R., Morrison, D., Environmental and Economic Costs Associated with Non-indigenous Species in the United States" Cornell University, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.