Ed Schehl, “A Silent Forest: the Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees” (2011)
Narrated by Canadian geneticist David Suzuki, this documentary warns of the dangers genetically engineered trees pose to other trees, animal life, ecosystems and ultimately humans. The film uses a mix of live action, interviews, computer-generated animation and title cards to drive home the message that research into developing genetically modified trees is dangerous as it gives rise to unforeseen and unintended phenomena such as the loss of natural forests, contaminated soil and water, increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and the collapse of entire ecosystems. Very often the agenda behind genetically modified plants generally has nothing to do with increasing food supply or the nutrition of foods and everything to do with increasing a company’s output and profits, and enabling the company to drive out competing interests and obtain monopoly power in its industry.
Suzuki gives a brief description of genetic modification and how it differs from traditional methods of selecting plants for particular characteristics and breeding them for those traits, in the process creating new and more specialised strains of plants. He focuses on the aims of genetic engineering of trees: to resist herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup; to produce pesticides themselves; to produce less lignin in their cells; and to be sterile. One by one Suzuki explains the consequences that come about as a result and some of these can be horrific. Insects and other pests targeted by Roundup and pesticides produced by trees gradually adapt to these toxins, requiring farmers to buy ever more pesticides to spray on plants; this in turn makes farming a more unprofitable and unsustainable occupation if farmers rely more heavily on such chemicals. The chemicals are dangerous to human health as well and often kill helpful insects such as bees. Trees producing less lignin (which is hard to remove during the paper-manufacturing process) are less stable, blow over easily and are vulnerable to pests and disease, so (surprise!) more pesticides are needed. Sterility enables trees to grow very fast and as a result they use up a great deal of water, leading to a situation where water supplies run low or dry up, and then soils become dry and may blow away. The land becomes barren, animals must move away and farmers can be financially ruined. Many will be forced to sell their farms and these will be bought by (surprise!) agribusiness.
The program appears to be aimed at scientists because Suzuki is a scientist but the general public should be able to follow the program. The pace is steady and graphics and animation help to illustrate Suzuki’s narration. The only downside is the computer music which is annoying and intrusive.
Although the documentary offers very laudable solutions and urges viewers to become more educated about the problems, dangers and issues of genetically modified plants and animals and to help one another if and when people are threatened by GE plants or the companies that create them, it fails to address the very significant problem of politicians, bureaucrats and owners and managers of companies like Monsanto being very intimately linked: agribusiness lobbies politicians for funding and support in return for financing their election campaigns, and politicians create and enact legislation accordingly. The legal system might then favour agribusiness and punish small farmers. Very often companies in agribusiness have links with other areas of industry and major economic and financial institutions which increase their power and influence. All too often, politicians themselves come from agribusiness and go back to it when their term of office ends. The capitalist system we have and the nature of global finance extol continuous economic growth, the concentration of economic and political power in large corporations, and standardisation of production and output with an emphasis on efficiency and profit. Until we can reform a system that divides us, our institutions and our structures into a small privileged elite with power and a large, disenfranchised and powerless majority, the solutions recommended by the documentary can only go so far. Every generation will have to fight the same war over and over again.
The fallacies behind genetic engineering and the nature of scientific enquiry are addressed and explained by David Suzuki in some detail. I wish he had gone into similar detail about how effective individual and group actions against GE plants and foods can be and what their limits are, and how economic ideologies and their assumptions also influence the debate about genetic engineering.