Who's in the mood for a science smoothie?
With materials you should find around the house, you can isolate...
strawberry DNA.
Or you can do it with bananas, but we'll start with strawberries today.
We wanna prepare an extraction solution.
For that, we need...
some dish soap.
Just squirt.
Then a splash of water.
I like to go about ten-to-one.
Then a pinch of salt.
This is our pinch system.
Pinch. I said "a," but it's a pinch-ish.
We swirl.
And now for the strawberries, we want to take the sepals off.
We remove them at first... with our bare hands.
Gotta keep the bench tidy.
We'll take out this little thing. Yes, yes.
All right.
It's a cooking show.
Only, it's science.
Now, this part is pretty tricky.
We take our extraction solution as we have it so far...
Oh, we gotta swirl.
We gotta swirl.
Don't wanna see those salt crystals in there.
Yeah, peoples...
Now, we very carefully smash them.
Smash. Yeah, smash them.
Hi.
We need a strainer. We need a strainer.
Yes.
A sieve.
Steady. Steady.
Careful.
Now...
we put our extracted strawberry solution...
buffering solution...
through the strainer.
Wha...
Yes, makes a mess.
That's great.
So, this extracted strawberry...
has DNA.
And we want to precipitate that DNA from this solution.
Into a way to grab it, and for that...
we use ordinary alcohol.
I like rubbing alcohol, which I keep on ice.
You...
Huh.
Takes all kinds, I guess.
Clean as you go.
Just a little bit of cold isopropyl.
A, uh, a schmink, as I like to say.
Oh, yes. Yes, it's... It's happening.
The DNA is precipitating from the strawberry pulp.
Ah! It's exciting.
For me.
That is strawberry DNA.
How cool is that?
Hi, I'm Bill Nye, and I'm here to save the world.
And the world needs more food and less hyperbole, less hype.
That's why I want to talk to you about genetically modified organisms,
or GMOs.
The organisms we're talking about are crops on farms.
GMOs are all about that DNA.
When I pulled the goop from the strawberry,
I was pulling out its DNA.
In a GMO, a genetically modified organism,
we take a gene from one organism's DNA,
one species,
and put it in another species.
It happens in nature, by the way.
That's how we got sweet potatoes.
How happy are these?
I know that genetically modified foods make some people uneasy.
People worry they're unsafe to eat.
And if that's you, that's cool.
I was skeptical, too.
I was worried about how these crops would affect the organisms around them.
But I watched a debate about genetically modified crops,
and I had an aha-ish moment.
And I did some more research. You know, the way we do in science.
And I changed my perspective.
I believe the advantages of genetically modified crops outweigh the downsides.
And I think people are creeped out by genetically modified organisms
because they seem unnatural.
There's this image of mad scientists mixing...
tarantula genes into eggplants.
And then telling us...
But GMOs are way more boring than that.
The most common genetically modified crops
are corn, and soybeans, and cotton and canola.
And some of the first genetically modified plants got a gene
from the very frightening...
petunia.
In the lab, petunia cells can be made to resist a chemical called glyphosate,
an ingredient in many weed killers.
And so, if you're a plant,
glyphosate is freaking scary.
You can put a resistant petunia gene into a soybean plant,
and use the glyphosate to kill the weeds
but not the soybeans, not the crops.
Now we use a bacterial gene that works even better.
Another commonly added gene
comes from a bacteria found in the soil, in the dirt.
Bacillus thuringiensis, Bt for short.
Bt has a gene that makes a protein
that kills crop-devouring caterpillars.
Put a certain Bt gene into your corn,
and you have an insecticide built right into the plant.
And BTW about that Bt...
We have been spraying Bt liquids and powders
on "organic" crops for years.
But are they okay to eat?
Well, researchers have looked into the health risks,
and there's no solid evidence that these foods are unsafe.
Don't take my word for it.
Here in the U.S., the National Research Council
issued this 400-page report.
Don't worry, my back's fine. Don't worry.
We have copies for everyone.
The science shows that GM crops
aren't riskier to eat than other farmed foods.
For example,
I have been eating genetically modified foods for decades.
And look, I'm fine.
But GMOs aren't a cure-all either.
When introduced, there was a lot of hype about them.
Feeding the world. Fighting malnutrition
with nutritified foods.
But as it turns out, that's not so much.
Overall, genetically modified crops have similar yields
compared with conventional crops.
Farmers are facing problems
because weeds are becoming resistant to glyphosate.
And the hope for nutritionally-enhanced crops
haven't panned out yet.
But here's my claim: GM crops are a tool.
Not the only tool.
As we expand our cities, deplete our water supplies,
and cause our planet to warm,
we're losing farmable land.
And that means we need every tool we can get our hands on.
The first step is making sure we have the facts.
To find out how people feel about GMOs,
we sent our correspondent, Derek Muller, into the field.
Get it? The field.
Huh? Huh?
Watch this. Watch this.
This is so cool. Watch this.
I'm here at a farmers' market to find out what people think about GMOs.
- What does GMO stand for? - Genetically modified... O.
What's the O for?
It's organism.
- It's not great for you. I read somewhere. - I actually don't know a lot about it.
I can't tell you exactly why it scares me, it just does.
Do you think there's any potential upside for GMOs?
- I'm not a fan. - Yeah, GMOs suck, man.
It's not that they're a bad thing,
it's that we don't know they're a bad thing yet.
And that is a bad thing.
GMOs came on the scene, we started having problems.
Do we really know what the consequences of genetically altering food are?
They could turn us all into mutant zombies.
They're actually taking, like, a frog gene and putting it into a tomato.
It's not a thing. I don't think that's a thing.
They just play with it a little bit, and whatever happens, happens.
That's what they did with the corn. The corn, now,
bugs bite it and they die, 'cause their stomachs explode.
If it blows the bugs up,
- what does it do to you as a human? - I might have a corn bomb in my stomach.
Once you start thinking about it,
you kind of get scared and you don't wanna leave your house.
Sorry to say, it looks like we still have a ways to go
before people will feel comfortable eating GMOs.
Spider-Man, you know, is genetically modified.
- Very nice, man. - Thank you.
So, my sense is you had no trouble finding people who are concerned about GMOs.
Yeah, you know, I think a lot of people are concerned.
Where do you think it comes from?
Uh...
You know, science, we're messing with things...
and there's a sense when you mess with things you might screw it up.
I think this is behind a lot of our feelings about science.
When we get in there, do things that are not natural...
- Dr. Frankenstein. - Exactly. Very...
- Pitch forks and torches. - I mean, I...
It's not like there's not precedent
for science screwing it up, you know, in the past. Things like DDT.
Or, you know, thalidomide.
Things that we think are safe and then turn out to be not safe.
So, you know, I get a certain amount of distrust.
When you're trying something new...
- how do you know what it's gonna do? - With that said,
people have been eating these crops for decades, right?
Now, when it comes... Do you think there's a difference
between people who are afraid of it being not safe to eat
and being not safe in some other way?
Sure, I think there's varied concerns...
I'm asking about level of sophistication at the farmers' market.
Level of sophistication. Let me tell you about it. There was a range, okay?
Uh, but I would say by far the biggest group
is kind of "I don't know a lot about it",
but it sounds weird,
and if we just have normal food,
"why can't we just stick with what we got? Why do we have to change things?"
The idea being that maybe when you try to change something,
- you're gonna screw it up. - That seems like a reasonable fear.
I was concerned about the ecosystem.
You couldn't know what would happen to...
the bees that were pollenating the corn, or what would happen to the weeds...
I don't think that was a concern of the farmers...
- Didn't get that far. - At the farmers' market.
- Was there anything about monoculture? - No.
No, it was generally... People are worried about themselves and their own families.
They're like, "I don't wanna give something to my family",
or eat something myself that's gonna mess me up."
Now, do you eat genetically modified crops?
I believe that I do, because I eat a lot of corn chips.
And I eat soybeans.
So, I'm pretty sure I do eat...
And look, you're fine.
- So, you tell me, Bill. - Ish, ish.
No, so, what I got out of your piece is the fear is out there.
- Oh, yeah. The fear is real. - Yeah.
There was one woman at the market who was selling these muffins,
and I was saying... Because she didn't wanna eat anything. No GMOs, no soy.
I said, "So, what can we eat? Only these muffins?"
And she said, very seriously:
"I don't eat the muffins."
- Why doesn't she eat the muffins? - The muffins are bad for you, man.
They're packed full of carbohydrates. You don't wanna eat that.
- If you eat bread, you'll die. - Exactly.
Derek, that is pretty cool. I think.
- Thank you, man. - Thank you.
Derek Muller of Veritasium.
Nice piece.
It's clear, GMOs are not so cut-and-dried.
Even some really smart people have concerns.
So, to talk about this,
we have, yet another, panel of experts.
Down here, Dr. Robb Fraley,
executive vice president, chief technology officer of...
Monsanto.
God, they love you, Robb.
Uh, Julie Kenney is a fifth generation farmer from Iowa.
- Grows corn and soybeans on your farm? - Yep.
And Dr. Fred Gould is an expert
on the 2016 National Research Council GMO report
because you're a professor of Agriculture at North Carolina State University.
- Got it. - Welcome, welcome, welcome.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
Oh, just where to begin?
Do we need genetically modified foods to feed the world? Or not?
Well, I'd say we don't.
- We do not? - No, we do not.
- And that's based on your report. - That's based on the report.
But that doesn't mean that
genetically modified crops are not good, and that can't contribute to that.
- They're a tool in the toolbox. - They're a tool in the toolbox.
Now, Robb.
By the way, Dr. Fraley and I are acquainted.
Uh, Robb, you feel that we do need GMOs.
Well, I think that GMOs have been an important tool.
I mean, we've had them for 20 years
in all kinds of our ag and our farmer world.
The first GMO was... 1982, was human insulin.
Um, today, about half of our new drugs are GMOs.
A lot of our crops,
and a lot of every other aspects of our life.
I mean, you know, the enzymes in your detergents to wash your blue jeans
are GMO enzymes.
So, we actually live in a GMO world.
This particular part around agriculture
still has a lot of controversy as we saw in the film.
So, Julie, you really farm actual crops?
We do. Corn and soybeans, yep.
And so, what kind of corn and soybeans do you choose to farm?
Yeah. So, we do use GMO seeds,
especially in our corn, and we have seen a yield increase,
especially in our corn.
We can have some pretty damaging insects that can hurt our crops.
And just this year, we did a small study, 20 acre-study on one of our fields,
where we didn't use one of the traits.
So, for some of the insects that grow underground and can harm
the roots of our corn plants, we didn't use...
- What's the name of the insect? - Corn rootworm.
- God, that's very creative. - Yeah, exactly.
- Corn rootworm. - Very, very creative.
But what we saw is, we did not use it in that 20 acres,
and we did use it in the other 150 acres of that field,
and within those 20 acres, we had a 50-bushel yield deficit
compared to the rest of the field.
So, let me ask you a specific question.
My understanding...
- Fred, back me up on this. That... - Yep. All right.
- If I'm right. - Even if you're wrong.
Yeah... No, no.
That the yields from non-genetically modified crops
and genetically modified crops are about the same.
Okay. We gotta be very careful with that.
So, let me say that in doing this,
we separated out the studies that were done
by companies like Monsanto
and other studies done by independent scientists.
So, if you don't trust the study coming out of Monsanto,
look at the ones coming out from independent scientists.
And you'll still see that...
They're still not causing any health problems.
But when you look at those studies in terms of yield,
if you look at the USDA...
The United States Department of Agriculture.
- For those watching around the world. - And their statistics... Right, right.
You find out that crop yields have been increasing...
- Regardless. - Regardless.
- If you look for the U.S... - Why is that?
Because people have been doing exactly what Julie does,
is increasing the productivity of their land.
And part of that is conventional breeding,
and part of that is better soil management,
and other things like that.
So, just to say that those things have been increasing,
if you look at the U.S. data,
you don't see a bump since 1996, where, all of a sudden,
because we're using genetically modified organisms,
that yields or going up faster than they were before.
This is not something, I don't think, that Robb will hold true now,
but in the beginning was this whole idea that we needed genetic engineering
in order to quick... more quickly increase crop yields.
And in 20 years, that hasn't shown up.
I think Fred is right.
GMOs are a part of what helps us increase yields.
But so is plant breeding, and so is seed treatment.
And so is making sure you have the right product in the right field.
But I do think that GMOs are part of it, but they're not the only solution.
We talk about genetic modification,
you could tell in the video, nobody knows what a GMO is.
But we have been genetically modifying our foods from the beginning of time.
The early cavemen
would pick the best plant, and seeds would fall out,
and the crop would grow, and they'd keep selecting.
And then science got involved, and we had plant breeding.
And we used all kinds of different techniques and plant breeding
to create more genetic modification.
And what GMOs do is let us go in very, very precisely
with the latest tools that we would use for discovering a new drug
or creating a new seed,
and make that precise genetic modification.
I think what's really exciting is, the tools are getting better all the time.
And now... I don't know if you heard of tools like gene editing
- or CRISPR. - We're all about that.
We can be even more precise.
So, in many ways, this is just a long history, a continuum,
of genetically modifying our foods.
- Let me ask you another specific question. - Yeah.
As you know, I don't do a lot of farming.
- Uh... - Yeah.
But there's a difference
between yield and how much it costs to raise the product... The corn.
- Right. - The soybean.
'Cause there's inputs.
Insecticides, irrigation, fertilizer.
- Yeah. - Right?
Is it true or false
that genetically modified crops take less input?
That's pretty interesting.
Because indeed, for the Bt crops, the ones you describe with...
- Bacillus thuringiensis. - Yeah.
There's less insecticide used. Right?
So, there's more biodiversity in those fields...
That's a strange thing.
When you listen to Derek's piece there in the farmers' market.
I think people will be surprised to learn that.
When I was growing up, we didn't have access to this technology.
You talk about the Bt and insect protection.
We would spray insecticides over our crops,
because you have to protect that corn plant against these insects.
Now, it's built into the seed, so, yes, we are not investing.
More importantly for me,
I don't wanna spray anything on my fields I don't have to,
and I love that it's in the seed and in the plant.
I, like many Californians, always wonder about monarch butterflies.
Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed to make their livings, right?
They have these extraordinary migrations,
from Mexico all the way up into the Ohio River valley...
This is all North America.
And their populations went way down, but now their populations are coming back.
You said about ecosystems and how long it takes to know what's going on,
there have been so many studies done on this question
of whether the Roundup Ready crops are decreasing monarch populations.
- By decreasing milkweeds. - By decreasing milkweeds.
- Let's call them milkflowers. - Yeah, milkflowers, okay.
But you know what?
The data are not definitive enough for us to make any statement about that.
- Still don't know. - After 400 pages, we couldn't...
- But really, it's... - Write another 400.
The population is going up. Why does everybody hate Monsanto so much?
I've stayed up more than one or two nights thinking about that, Bill.
You know, to be fair, I mean, to put the blame where it belongs,
we did a lousy job of communicating to consumers.
You know, back in 1996, when we got the USDA, the FDA, and the EPA approval,
we did what companies did back then,
we got the regulatory approval and we sold our products to farmers.
But we didn't spend the time we should have talking to consumers,
and that caused a lot of problems.
And you guys used to make Agent Orange, right? Back in the...
Yeah, that was a... That's a long story.
And we can talk about that.
Agent Orange was used during the Vietnam war,
which doesn't start out on a real popular topic.
How much of this...? We're talking about the United States.
We're in the United States, the USDA and so on.
How much are these crops used around the world?
We plant GMO crops and seeds in 30 countries around the world
and some of the most, you know, smallest farmers in the world,
in India and Africa, are using the technology.
What's really exciting about it, when you think about technology flow globally is...
So, you know, we can talk about genetic engineering,
GMOs, gene editing, molecular breeding...
Aggressive corporations.
And aggressive corporations, I guess.
But, you know, we're a good company.
All that technology goes into the seed and it makes a better seed.
And every farmer in the world knows what to do with the seed.
So, if you give a smallholder farmer a better seed,
you help improve their crop, and we've seen huge transformations
of the cotton crop in India,
or, you know, we're working with the Gates Foundation
to develop better corn for Africa because that's so important to their diet.
So, wait, wait, wait, Fred.
Aren't there places where GMOs are banned?
Yes, there are plenty of places where people are not growing GMOs.
And I wanna bring out the most... The biggest issue is China.
So, think about the people you had
from your farmers' market who are afraid of GMOs, right?
In China, almost 100 percent of the cotton
is genetically engineered. You don't eat cotton, do you?
- No, not much. No. - You don't? No?
But zero percent of their corn or rice is genetically engineered.
People really don't trust that genetically modified corn or rice,
which they will eat directly as opposed to feeding to their animals,
would be safe for them to eat.
So, there are countries that accept some genetically modified crops,
but not others. Mexico is another one.
Their corn is sort of sacred to them.
They're the ones who brought us corn in the first place.
They don't want us messing with their corn.
We worked with peasant farmers in Mexico.
And they don't even have hybrid corn.
So, the questions is, what do we get to them?
So, I just leave it and say
that there are other approaches other than genetic engineering.
One is to just give those farmers better fertilizer.
This is fantastic, you guys.
I really appreciate your time. What a great panel.
Really. Pleasure.
Thank you.
We've got work to do, though. We got a little more to do over here.
People still equate genetically modified food, GMFs, GMOs,
GMEs, genetically engineered organism...
They associate that with big corporations.
And black tar heroin.
But that aside, I changed my mind about them.
I think it's... Really, it's a tool in the tool shed, as we say.
Derek. Derek, you're back.
Did you forget something?
I did, Bill.
And I wanna help you with this GMO image problem.
Wow, are you sure? You know, it's a very touchy subject.
People will take to the Internet to call you a corporate whore.
Yeah. Well, you know, I've been called worse.
Like, "atomic number 67."
- That's good. - Yeah.
That's good. Holmium.
Yeah.
Well, how do we rebrand GMOs?
How do we rebrand GMOs? Let me tell you.
Please raise up this wall.
- How did you do that? - I know.
Well, well, well. I see it. I see the GMOs.
I'm gonna spell it out for you, Bill.
- I got that much. That much, I got. - Nobody likes this.
This is gross, disgusting. Right?
- Now. O... - O...
- M... - Oh, wait, wait, wait.
I bet this... Let me read. Oh, sure enough.
- G... - O-M-G.
- Derek, this is brilliant. - Isn't it?
Now, you can see all people, they love it. They love OMG.
- Yes, so, everybody, - GMOs.
Give it up for Derek Muller.
- And all of our guests tonight. - Thank you.
Go out there and save the world.
Thanks, Derek.