Lords Of The Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, And The Future Of Food

Daniel Charles' "Lords of the Harvest" succeeds in bringing perspective to the biotech industry and the contentious issue of genetically modified food. The author does this by personalizing the protaganists at the heart of the story: the scientists who were driven mainly by the quest for knowledge and discovery; the businesspeople who sought dollar returns from their laboratory investments; and the environmentalists who felt that genetic engineering was simply the latest ugly manifestation of an out-of-control agribusiness industry. The result is a highly entertaining and readable book that should interest a wide audience.The scientists who invented and nurtured the industry tend to get much better treatment from Charles than either the businesspeople or the environmentalists. As a former science reporter for NPR, Charles seems most comfortable painting psychological portraits of the researchers at Monsanto and elsewhere. Charles lovingly details the innovative and pioneering work that these scientists undertook and the intriguing problems they solved. Charles shows how these early projects gave shape to the modern biotech industry, and his writing in these sections is vivid and interesting. And in the chapter "Infinite Horizons", Charles enthuses about the potential of biotechnology to help solve the world's problems. Throughout, Charles' enthusiasm for science and biotechnology is unmistakable.On the other hand, the businesspeople of biotech get beat up pretty badly in the book. You get the feeling that Charles seems slightly upset that big business can't figure out how to bring the benefits of painstaking scientific discovery to the people. Specifically, Charles relates the numerous and sometimes humorous mistakes made by executives at Monsanto and Calgene (the inventor of the ill-fated "Flavr Savr" tomato) in their quests to dominate their respective markets. Charles successfully uses these case studies to add color and context to the larger story that he is telling (for example, the author's profile of Monsanto CEO Robert Shapiro and his messianic-like appeal to the company's scientists to help save the world with biotechnology). Charles does an excellent job describing the corporate cultures and the motivations of key individuals, rendering his descriptions of the business wheeling-and-dealing that went on behind the scenes that much more interesting. However, I think that Charles is correct in concluding that it was the arrogance of Monsanto's top executives, more than any other single factor, that ultimately led to the company's demise and the public backlash against biotechnology.Unfortunately, the environmentalists don't get treated much better. Although Charles appears to have abundantly interviewed scientists and businesspeople to gather original material for the book, it doesn't seem that he had much success contacting environmentalists; the profiles of well-known biotech opponents such as Jeremy Rifkin and Benny Sharlin appear to have been drawn from secondary sources. Consequently we don't enjoy the same level of insight regarding their motivations compared with the scientists. So although Charles does a respectable job of reporting why the environmentalists opposed biotech products and the actions that they took, the author's sympathies do not appear to lie with the environmentalists. Instead, Charles deftly swats aside several of the well-known studies that purport to show risks associated with genetically modified crops (such as Dr. Pusztai's rat and John Losey's Monarch butterfly studies). In fact, a certain level of hostility arises when the author makes the charge that environmentalists nevertheless publicized such "murky and ill-defined" (p. 208) studies purporting risk merely as a way to further their own agendas. But it does not seem to occur to Charles that many environmentalists might have organized the challenge to genetically modified food out of genuine concern for the welfare of consumers.I also take slight issue with Charles on two other issues. First is his silence concerning regulation of the biotech industry. His techno-utopian bias leads him to claim that biotech is not substantially different compared with traditional plant and animal breeding practices, with the implication that the public should not be overly concerned about regulation of the industry. But the scientists' tools to recombine DNA in novel ways are so powerful and the effects are so little understood that it is not unreasonable to suggest that a greater level of corporate accountability should be required to ensure that the public interest is protected.Second, Charles should have addressed the recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) controversy more adequately, given that this was a major Monsanto initiative (the heart of the book was about Monsanto and its scientists). His relative silence on this issue is defeaning: could it be that the environmentalists' charges about the risks of rBGH have at least some merit?Still, I believe that Charles has done a good job of navigating some very tricky ideological terrain. "Lords of the Harvest" is probably as balanced a book on the subject of biotechnology as any other you'll likely find, and I highly recommend it.

In the epilogue of Lords of the Harvest, Daniel Charles talks about the power of stories to illuminate, and also to obscure. He talks about the mythologies that drive agribusiness and other competing mythologies that drive it's opponents. He can stand at a distance from both kinds of stories, and reflect on how well they are illuminating and obscuring.On the other hand, Daniel Charles is himself a great storyteller.I appreciated the way Daniel Charles helped me to think about both these kinds of stories, and what they have to do with food and science, religious faith and moral values in the 21st century. Mostly, Charles stays very close to the "everyday stories of ordinary people," end of the spectrum. How he managed to get so close to the lives of these people is something I wonder about! People on both sides of this issue obviously trust him a great deal, or he would never have been able to write this book.The "grand myths" he talks about in the epilogue, this was a very nice way to wrap it all up. Part of the difficulty of these issues is that there is no overarching spiritual/ ethical framework that can encompass this conversation. Just competing ideologies, and very little common ground. (Where common ground does exist, Charles is good at finding it.)It irritates me when scientists who write about agribusiness and genetic engineering castigate others who don't have their scientific credentials for being "sentimental" or ignorant. They do this in a way that intimidates ordinary people who do not have Ph.Ds, as if you have to have a particular diploma to discuss these issues. We need to fight this kind of arrogance and parochialism. Science may be an elite field, but food belongs to everyone.Daniel Charles makes the discussion accessible to everyday people who want to know what is happening to our food, and who are trying to understand why it is happening.

I'm an (unemplyed) agronomist and I live in Brazil.I bought this good book by Amazon.This boook is good and full of informations.The problem of this book is that, it sometimes makes some mistakes.To example, in prologue is writed that:"Soybeans came from China, corn from Central America and wheat probably originated somewhere in sothwestern Asia."The soybeans and corn informatios are correct, but the author couldn't tells us, that wheat was originated in Middle East.I can understand that an american hate Islam, but I can't understand why an american author make this mistake such as this.He must remeber that wheat wasn't domesticated by islamics, but was originated thousands of years before the islamism be created.Again, on page 41, the author claims that Alexander Graham Bell was a genius.Not correct.Graham Bell, didn't invented the telephone, who was in fact invented by an italian called Antonio Meucci.Even the american congress realized this fact some years ago.In fact, Graham Bell (a jew) was deeply linked to eugenics movement such as to example: The Wright Brothers,Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, John P. Morgan(jew as Bell), Lenin(jew), Trotsky (jew), Dr. Morris Fishbein (AMA's president and also a jew),etc.Even with this mistakes, this book is good and informative about this subject.

北海道では遺伝子組み換え食品の栽培を罰則付きで規制する条例を制定しようとしています。「安全・安心」な食の提供と言うけれど、バイオ立国北海道などと言っていたこともあるのに。遺伝子組み換え食品のイメージがなぜ悪くなったのかを知りたくて、この本を買いました。でも、綿密な取材の内容を正確に記述したいと思ったのでしょうが、「誰々はこう言った」という証言部分が多くて、どうもテンポが悪い。時間軸も前後するし、モンサント社の戦略とその波紋といったものの流れが分かりにくい。思ったほどのものではありませんでした。ジェームス・D・ワトソンの「DNA」を先に読んでいたのですが、そこでもこの問題は扱っていて、こちらの方がずっと分かり易かった。「DNA」で興味を持った部分の補足として読む程度でしょうか。

両極端に分かれているＧＭＯの見方だが、こうしてあらゆる角度から見ると、実体がよく把握でき、かつディテールの一つ一つが、小説のようなストーリー性をもって読ませる。どちらにも与していないが、関係者はもとより、われわれ消費者も読んで、きちんとした認識を作りたいと思った。