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Food FightThe four barriers to the genetically modified–food revolution—and why no one is talking about them.

By Paul RobertsPosted Friday, Aug. 8, 2008, at 1:04 PM ET

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Mira Kamdar filed dispatches from the front lines of the global food crisis. Brendan I. Koerner explained how much of our food is bioengineered. Daniel Gross examined the alleged conspiracy by Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto to fix prices on genetically engineered corn and soybean seeds. William Saletan noted that the United States approved incorporating human genes into rice crops.

In fact, many critics believe the GM industry's objections to seed saving have less to do with lost profits in the developing world than with the industry's long-term goal of owning, literally, the seed sector. When seeds are conventionally bred, breeders don't own them—anyone can use or improve the seeds. But genetic modification allows a company to claim property rights over a particular DNA blueprint and to charge a licensing fee for each and every copy—much as Microsoft now claims an interest in each and every copy of Windows. By relaxing its proprietary zeal and allowing seeds in the developing world to be "open source," the GM industry could do much to bolster claims that it is really trying to help poor farmers.

Finally, if the industry wants public support, it can no longer dismiss public concerns about the risks of GM crops—health risks for humans but also the ecological risk that GM crops will escape farms and contaminate the wilderness. True, some concerns are overblown. Ecological contamination, or "gene flow," is a real threat only when pollen from a GM crop in a farm field finds a nearby wild relative; in the United States, most commercial crops such as corn or soybeans don't have any wild relatives. But gene flow is a possible concern in places like Chile, where commercial potatoes do have wild relatives. Human health risks are even less clear-cut. Though we've yet to see credible reports of GM foods causing human health problems, we've also not had the benefit of credible long-term health studies.

Until such studies have been completed, the GM industry needs to stop regarding a skeptical public as a nuisance. And even if GM technology is shown to be safe, the industry needs to accept that many consumers may still choose not to eat genetically modified foods. That means no more lawsuits against food companies that market their food as "GM free." That also means no more lobbying against laws requiring that foods with GM ingredients be labeled as such. Consumers have a right to know what's in their food.

What would the industry get in return for such good behavior? Money, for one. Whatever one thinks of the GM industry, it's hardly fair to force private companies to make products for farmers so poor they can't pay. Once upon a time, breeding new crops for poor farmers was inseparable from the West's larger food-aid strategy and was managed—and financed—largely by governments. (Indeed, most of the green revolution miracle crops from the 1960s were bred by government- and foundation-backed researchers.) Since then, much of the public-sector breeding enterprise has been dismantled (partly at the behest of the seed industry, which was tired of competing with public agencies), leaving a massive gap in our system for developing critical new crops.

GM companies say they (and their technologies) offer the best means of closing that gap. But it's hard to see why these companies would invest heavily in regionally appropriate, but potentially unprofitable, crops. Rather, what's more likely is that the industry will use the promise of a solution to the food crisis to press for more regulatory flexibility and more consumer acceptance—and then use that freedom to keep making the same big-money cash crops they always have.

We shouldn't be shocked by such pragmatism. Seed companies, like any company, are in business to make money. But our policy toward GM companies should be no less pragmatic. If we want private companies to take on what is essentially a public job—helping farmers too poor to participate in the market economy—we're going to have to pay them to do it. So let's make a deal: In return for targeting vital regional and local crops, and for making the seeds accessible to poor farmers, GM companies will get hefty subsidies for research and development of these crops.

Would such a deal be enough to ignite a gene revolution? If the main obstacle to GM miracles is lack of financial and political support, as the industry argues, then such a deal could be the catalyst for serious innovation. But if, as many critics believe, the real obstacle here is that GM technology simply isn't all that its proponents claim, that the real challenges of food insecurity—degraded soils, political instability, lack of water, and soaring energy costs—are beyond the reach of a single technology, that, too, would quickly become clear. In either case, by reframing the GM debate as a challenge to do the revolution right, we can encourage a more constructive conversation about the real role that this technology might play in the future of food security.