Unveiling Farming Myths: A Deep Dive with Dr. Kevin Folta on Agriculture, GMOs, and Organic Farming

Abhijit: Hey everyone, welcome to Rationable Conversations once again.

And today we have a person who I have been wanting to interview ever since, actually, from the time before I even had a podcast. Everybody please welcome Kevin Folta to the Rationable Conversations. Kevin,

Welcome. Thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, thank you very much for the invitation.

I really appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure.

In fact, I've been delving into a lot of farming techniques and agriculture and trying to understand it. And honestly, it's not in my wheelhouse, so to speak. I would really love to get as much information about it as possible because India especially has a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions about this.

I've got a little video section, which we'll get to a little bit later, which I want to play for you, and then we can analyze what's been said accordingly at that point in time. But first, please tell us and all the viewers and listeners what exactly you do and what exactly you are qualified to do and what it is that you do and what your passion is.

Kevin Folta: Yeah, it's a really complicated question because I do a lot of funny things. So my background is in molecular biology. My PhD is in molecular biology, and I started to apply that to plants, and eventually that would work out in Florida, where we have many outstanding crops that are relevant to the health of the entire nation.

And we can produce them, like in India Andhra Pradesh. They, there's the area that's the horticultural crop production area, the area that makes all the fruits and vegetables that in Florida we're able to grow when no one else can grow and California can't produce; nobody else can produce.

So we have a really open window to provide for the rest of the country, which is great. And I got the job here, and I work in the genomics of small fruit crops. So we study the DNA science of how you make nutritious fruit that's appealing to consumers. Yeah. But that's my science side. But I also am a farmer.

My wife is a farmer. We raise chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys and pigs along with fruits and vegetables outside of Gainesville, Florida, in the rural area of Florida. And that's what she does full time, which means I get to do it full time. And then I also have a background in communication.

So how do we talk to people in ways that make them understand what the science is? And I've spent the last 20 years of my career trying to understand why people believe what they do and how we can be more effective as science communicators to help turn the tide of disinformation so that science can help people shape their decisions, and it's absolutely something I really am very passionate about.

Abhijit: Yeah. And it's, this is a field that really needs a lot of science communication because we have a lot of people and influencers who are talking about nutrition and what kind of food you should be eating and what kind of diet you should be having. But a lot of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories go really deep into how the food is produced, how the food is grown, and where it comes from, and it's absolutely completely all-consuming.

And one of the books actually, that kind of got me into this because I was starting to try to learn more about nutrition and where food came from. Of course, this is from a purely American perspective, but it's from this book called The Om Dilemma. Yeah. Have you heard about that one? Oh, sure. So what do you think of that book?

For people who haven't read the book, it is a really broad view on how food is produced, especially in the US when it comes to corn and soy and a few other of the other major crops. And it's not just about how the crops are grown in an industrial manner, but it's also about how animals are bred for the food, for the kitchen and for the plate.

And the guy even goes out hunting for his own food at one point. So it's a very complex, nuanced book, though. But on the whole, do you think that it hits the right angle and right perspective of how we should be viewing food? Or do you think it gets some things wrong?

Kevin Folta: To some degree, I really agree with it.

It's Michael Pollen. And Michael Pollen has done some wonderful books. I love The Botany of Desire. It's one of my favorite books. And Omnivore's Dilemma gets a couple things right? Eat what is closest to the ground, what's not processed the most. I don't remember all of his key points, but the basic ideas weren't bad if you are an affluent person who can afford it and has access to it, and that's the problem; where it all breaks down is that it fails to realize that not everybody shares his perspective because, like, where I live, 75% of the people within a few kilometers of where I live are on public assistance. I live in rural Florida, and this is a place where we have very limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

Now I have a truck, I'm a professor, and I work for the state. I can drive 20 minutes to the grocery store, but many people here don't even have a vehicle. And they're reliant on the poor quality fruits and vegetables that are at the petrol station, that are at the small grocery store we have that maybe has food that if I buy potatoes there or onions, I bring them home. They're good two or three days, and then they're no good anymore. So they get the, it's just a very cheap store that gets the, fruits and vegetables that are just on the edge of going bad. Maybe they get this from the big stores in town, but rural America is in a real crisis that way. And I think it shares that with much of the world, that there's food insecurity that comes from lack of access. So where's the Omnivores dilemma is what do I pick among all the foods, the real person's dilemma around probably 4 billion people on the planet is I don't get your affluent American choices.

And I really feel that's the dilemma that people are facing.

Abhijit: And I, that's exactly what I noticed. It's okay, this is a really idealized way to prioritize your food choices. But I was like, what do I do in India? Like in India, we have a huge variety of fruits and vegetables that are grown, that are imported, I mean it's very easily available, but at the same time, the nuances of understanding what is organic and what is commercially farmed or industrial farming, if that's the right term, is that the opposite, is the opposite of organic.

What is the opposite of organic food?

Kevin Folta: I think that what we talk about is organic, conventional, and genetically engineered. I think those are the three buckets.

Abhijit: So yeah, so we, so there is a huge drive towards organic food in India, but that is in urban centers.

That is only it's targeting affluent people because this is promoted by influencers on Instagram. And it's just, it's a very unrealistic way, from my perspective to be able to look at food and prioritize your nutrition accordingly. So could you I wanted to understand a little bit more about what exactly is organic farming and what does that entail?

Kevin Folta: Yeah. So the important distinction here is that organic farming is a production technique. What it means is you're not allowed to use synthetic inputs in your farming, so you can't use a synthetic fertilizer. So something made through the Haber-Bosch process of extracting nitrogen from the air or from fuel, you're not allowed to use synthetic pesticides. You're not allowed to use anything that's not natural. Ah, it's a really bad place to draw a line because natural poisons are pretty bad. Whether you're talking about snake venom, whether you're talking about strychnine, you're talking about arsenic, you're talking about lead, you're talking, I cadmium, there are rotenone. There are plenty of naturally occurring poisons, ricin, that are extremely dangerous. So just because it's natural doesn't mean you wanna put it in your body. And so I find that to be a really unfortunate delineation because there are many organic compounds, many organic pesticides, which we use on my wife's farm that are perfectly effective. And they work in many scenarios, but they work as a compliment to the synthetic ones for us. And the synthetic ones work very well too. There's some cases where all you have are synthetic insecticides. In the case of boars peach boars or other tree bore insects, you have to use a synthetic pesticide.

So organic limits what you can use as a farmer and what that means in terms of the organic farmers. And I'm not disparaging them, I think they work harder than I do. Their job is a lot harder because they have to use more space and more inputs that are natural to get the same yield, if they can get it.

And, my hat's off to organic farmers no problem. But the problem is what that they equate. Organic with a halo saying it's safer, it's more natural, it's not more natural, and it's not safer. It is a different way of using compounds to control the threats to plants. And a large grower of watermelons or melons or corn or whatever, may use a quarter ounce of a fungicide per acre or per hectare. Yeah, a quarter ounce. And organic farmers will use 10 pounds or five kilograms of a organic acceptable pesticide. Ah, so it's using a lot less compound because there's much more targeted because they're synthetic and they target a specific aspect of insect or fungal metabolism.

So for me to think about organic I love that people do it. But it's like going into a fight with one hand tied behind your back. I give credit to the people who do it, but I don't want to do it, and it's not any safer.

Abhijit: Okay. But where did organic farming start? What is your origins of it?

Kevin Folta: I wish I had a good answer on that. There's a lot of discussion that the idea of biodynamic farming came from a number of personalities, and his name escapes me at this point. Came from a group of practices that said we need to be working more in concert with nature to be able to grow crops more effectively.

And this goes back to, burying a cow horn that's half full of manure during a full moon pointing the right direction would somehow give your garden more ability to grow. it was a lot of magical thinking and that's what gave rise to this idea of organic farming. I love organic farmers. They work really hard and they do a great job. I sell at farmers' markets and the people around me are organic farmers, but they're spending more time to create less product at a higher price. And I don't know that is going to be a long-term sustainability possibility for feeding a hungry planet.

Abhijit: Yeah, you're right. from my understanding, my very limited understanding of farming, the synthetic pesticides, the synthetic fertilizers, these were developed to solve certain problems. People aren't just developing them willy-nilly as the British would say.

But it's really, it's developed to solve certain problems. And in some cases I've heard that they're even less harmful to the environment because a lot of people are talking about the harms that synthetic fertilizers and pesticides have to the environment, have to butterflies, have to bees.

which ones are safer? Which ones are more harmful? What do you think?

Kevin Folta: Yeah, that's a tough call to make because it depends on the exact application, but I can tell you, let's just look at fungicides for instance. That by targeting a guest or Gasol syntase. So this is a as you and I make cholesterol to make our membranes and our hormones and all that stuff, fungi make Errol.

And so we're able to target that specific metabolism of fungi that doesn't affect us and doesn't affect plants. It only affects the fungi. So it's the targeted nature that makes it so effective. And we can go on all day about this, the idea of neonicotinoid insecticides, target, a specific aspect of insect neurotransmission that doesn't affect us.

And so the targeted nature is what makes it less risk, or it takes away a lot of the risk that's there compared to old school organophosphates. planes would fly over the field and spray everything in India or organic phosphates, organ chlorides. These were all used for years and we have the opportunity to use a much more targeted approach now than we did before.

And so that's what's the good part of it. Organic goes the other way rather than using a specific and targeted approach uses a universal poison. So something like copper sulfate will kill fungi, will kill bacteria, but it does it in a non-specific way. Copper is a heavy metal. It's relatively harmless for us.

It does accumulate in the soil in some packing house. This is the if the runoff, which is blue because of all the copper, has to be treated as a hazardous waste here in the States. And so it really is a question of, what do you really want to use? Is it something very specific and targeted at a quarter of, a few grams per acre?

Or is it something that you wanna put in a kilograms per acre? And for me, that's a really easy calculus.

Abhijit: see what you mean. so I actually wanted to get into the video a little bit later, but I have a feeling that this is exactly the right time to do this. Okay. So I'm gonna share my screen.

All right. have you heard first of all of this lady called Vandana Shiva. Absolutely. Ah, some reason I do this, she doesn't like me. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Folta: She's blocked me on all social media and she's spoken in my state to talk about how bad, pesticides are a few miles away or a few kilometers away from where the trees are dying because of a pest and where citrus production is going out of phase because of a pest.

And I always hoped that she would change because she has been disparaging farmers and farming and modern technology for a long time. And while I agree with a lot of things she says about the environment and about consumption and about immediate gratification and need for, the new stuff or whatever I love that stuff about her.

She's absolutely wrong about agriculture.

Abhijit: Yeah, this is something that I've, I actually, let me see. When I saved this video, I think it was, oh photos has no recollection of when I saved this video, but it's been a few years that I've had this video. So let me share the screen and here we go.

Let's play this.

Kevin Folta: Yeah, I don't have any audio.

Abhijit: Ah, good old vi. I need to figure that out anyway, so we can see what she's saying. So she's talking. Yeah. Yeah. Let's keep on going. A new, now embodied and same logic is destroying the useful, the basis of health.

There's a lot of dramatic music at this point of time. The poison cartel.

Kevin Folta: Yeah. The same groups that invented the chemistry created the Cure, I called that one.

Yeah. Cancer and kidney failure. Yeah,

Abhijit: apparently. '

Kevin Folta: cause they also settled cancer drugs, the poison

Abhijit: So what do you think of basically what she's saying about these companies, which she has mentioned, like Agent Orange, she will mention Agent Orange and other deadly chemicals used during World War II and these companies that are actually driving bees and butterflies to extinction.

are bees and butterflies actually going into extinction at any point?

Kevin Folta: I think the way to think about this is, Dr. Shiva, to her credit, is concerned about the exact same things I'm concerned about. I really do want a better planet. I really do want healthy people.

I'm very interested in all of the aspects that she is, the problem is that she goes about it in a completely incorrect way and she has fallen victim to the propaganda and the misinformation rather than the actual scientific consensus. And That's what's so dangerous. 'cause she's an extremely compelling speaker.

Abhijit: Yes, she's incredibly, incredibly good.

Kevin Folta: And she comes across as this motherly advisor. She gets paid a fortune to go give a talk and first class like me doesn't stand a chance. but being kind, I just say that she does a very nice job. The problem is that she falls into the same trap. She goes ahead and repeats the issue of the same companies are selling the poisons, which we know that at the doses used the insecticide or insect in or weed controls are not poison.

They are selling you a cure for cancer and, almost implying like they're trying to give you a disease so that they can cure it. And I don't know that there's a company out there that does that, where business practice is a good business practice is to kill your customer. And so I really don't like that argument at all.

And just all of her rhetoric about, corporation bad, I'm not a big corporation guy at all, but corporations have the ability to scale up technology and have the R&D background to be able to create the next generation of technology. So she's complaining about technology on the internet, using a chip and a computer and an internet and satellites that are all the same kinds of technology. So this technology good, this technology bad, and I get it. It's about food. It's about the stuff we sit around the table together; it's social, and it's got all kinds of cultural overlays. I get that.

But you can't lie about the science when you use the science to disseminate your anti-science message; I think you get my point.

Abhijit: Yeah. There are a lot of people who use science. When it's convenient for them. And then say that science is crap when it's convenient for them again.

That's right. And it's—this is a practice that has gone across a lot of alternative medicine and a lot of other pseudoscientific practices, which is where they'll always say that, oh yes, science has proven that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the next minute saying, "Oh, science doesn't know everything because ancient wisdom is far more powerful than current modern day science, which is too narrow and doesn't see everything the way it should be seen.”

I totally get that. I see what she's been doing. Okay let's watch a little bit more.

Vandana Shiva: All people. Okay. The freedom from sickness and disease and freedom from slavery of a new kind, a slavery of the poison cartel,

Abhijit: manufactured explosive during the two world wars by IG Farbin.

Kevin Folta: Zyklon B Gas.

Vandana Shiva: The poison cartel is the tiny group of companies that were mobilized during the war to, on the one hand, domestically in Germany, kill people in concentration camps by creating. Gases that were designed to kill. Like the Zyklon B.

NA: That's right.

Vandana Shiva: During the war, there was a company called Mo Bay, Monsanto and Bayer. Bayer has merged with Monsanto, Syngenta has merged with Chem China and Dow has merged with DuPont

Abhijit: and, okay. 60%. So what do you think about this correlation between creating poisons on one hand and now creating beneficial, so to speak, chemicals?

On the other hand, in the modern day.

Kevin Folta: Yeah. But you see how this rhetorically fits where she needs to be for her agenda. Everything she said there is correct Bayer or IG Farbin. They produced Zyklon B, which was used in concentration camps 80 years ago. And Monsanto produced was one of 16 companies that produced Agent Orange because of the government mandate that told 16 companies, you must do this for the war effort.

And Agent Orange was a defoliant. it worked to it was a kind of herbicide we call an oxen, and was contaminated with a dangerous dioxin. They were one of 16 companies that produced it. And they did what the government produced a compound.

She's not wrong. They did produce it. But that was 50 years ago. Okay. So companies that, if you judge me on the things I did when I was two or three years old, I probably wouldn't have a very favorable look on, who I am now. Years ago these were all chemical companies and it was a different world and we didn't pay attention to ecological impact.

And we had I would say looser ethics with how we treated people until we look in America today. And and so things were all different back then. And like a good example is the Monsanto company back then, they did a lot of bad stuff. Their name is all over sites around the country where they polluted or had chemical issues.

But the Monsanto company sold in 19 98 and became a biological company, a seed company, and people felt very suspicious. Here's this company that did all this bad stuff that now is selling us seeds. I understand that the optics on that are horrible, but what Vandana Shiva is doing is she's saying that because these companies did something 50 or 80 years ago, means that now you can't trust them.

And I think that is a real stretch because these are companies which have the technology to do some very good things and are commercializing those technologies and to paint them with, back 80 years ago they did this is not an effective way to evaluate the current slate of products.

Abhijit: And I think, to be honest, I think companies like this, if they have transformed over the years. That is a good sign, to be honest. It doesn't mean that everything that they do is nefarious. There has to be an opportunity to grow and change. companies don't necessarily follow a dogmatic ideology, which will not change over the decades. They will obviously change according to the times, according to the requirements and according to the science that is being developed to understand humans better, nature better plants better. And apparently these companies have been doing that. And I remember Bayer from, of course, one can never trust one's own memory especially mine, but whatever it is, they had beneficial things that they were doing even when I was a kid, which was in the eighties. And I do remember that they've, that actually went to, do good things as well.

So anyway, Ben, I,

Kevin Folta: I think just to your point, you mentioned, you left out one thing. And that is all these companies are out there to make a buck. And they're all making money. They're there for shareholders and I don't agree with that necessarily.

I am a shareholder in Bayer, and I was started that after the glyphosate trials and all the fallout where their's stock price tanked because I knew as a scientist that this can't stay this way. But I'm just doing that as a function of disclosure. They're out to make money. And to make money, you have to produce a product that is able to be sold, that people benefit from and has demand.

And Bayer sells in Bayer, Monsanto, they sell seeds that farmers want to buy because they're superior. And if they're not, they won't buy 'em.

Abhijit: And

Kevin Folta: so that, that's the one really important part of this that we always leave out. They're a company, they're a for-profit company that is there to produce something for farmers, not for you and me.

And they're, I buy Bayer seed, but I buy a tiny little bit of it. Most farmers are growing, hundreds to thousands of acres. Yeah. But that's real. Another really important point. These are for-profit companies and killing your customer or by having problems with your products is, it doesn't

Abhijit: counterproductive.

Kevin Folta: Yeah. Doesn't work.

Abhijit: This quoting who is it? Jim Carrey actually is counterproductive. Alright, let's go on with the video. This is about a minute and a half left. Ah, yes,

Vandana Shiva: Precisely at the time we think we are getting richer because 1% became super billionaires and trillionaires. At that time, the young people are having to rise and say we have to take care of our future. Food is created for all. We are connected to food, and yet a billion people are starving. Food is supposed to be for nourishment and health, and yet the 75% of the disease epidemic, of chronic diseases, of cancers, of neurological problems, of autism, of

Abhijit: autism,

Vandana Shiva: obesity, of diabetes, of endocrine disruption, are all related to the same poison, same chemical, same pesticides that are pushing the bees to extinction and contributing to climate change.

But it's in our hands to heal the earth. It's in our hands. To heal our bodies. It's on our hands to heal our broken democracy by taking power away from the poison cartel. And that's why we've launched a campaign for poison free food and farming that's in our hands to do by creating communities, by not allowing poverty to be defined as lack of money, but poverty to be defined as lack of potential.

Each of us joining hands with others can create communities of solidarity, food communities, so that everyone has good food. Every butterfly has good food and isn't killed. Every child has good food.

Abhijit: Yes, indeed. that's the part of it that I totally agree with.

Kevin Folta: Yeah. But at the same

Abhijit: So we all, yes, everybody does deserve to have good access to food. Even countries that are stricken with poverty, even countries with famines and it's very important that everybody has access to good food. But at the same time, she has completely fallaciously assigned all these chemicals to be responsible for a whole, like a huge wide range of diseases.

Now I say fallaciously because she did mention autism, and I know that autism is a genetic condition and it is definitely not caused by chemicals as far as we know to date. I could be wrong at some point of time, but what do you think of the other conditions that she mentioned and other things?

Kevin Folta: I think she makes a big mistake there because what she basically says is, "I align with Kevin Folta on everything" we want people to be fed. We want people to have productive futures. We want people to be healthy. But she's basically saying her statement there is like saying, I wanna solve the homeless problem and make sure everybody has a place to live, but I don't want them to have lumber.

No trees, no two by fours. No, no lumber to build the house. She's saying that the technology is the problem when really what the problem is much bigger. She starts out talking about billionaires and trillionaires. Our problem isn't a technology poisoning people problem. Our problem is a much more of a stratification because of.

Financial inequity that happens across groups in the us. It's really bad right now. We have young people who don't have any money, who don't have houses, who don't own a home, who are curious about their futures, who can't get paid enough to survive. And a limited class of older folks who are sitting on lots of money, pensions social security, it's more of a question of inequity, but that's a long-term problem that happens at the policy level.

You can't blame it on agricultural chemistry because agricultural chemistry is feeding us during this. And I agree with her a hundred percent in terms of we don't want chronic disease. We don't want dead butterflies, of course, but none of the technologies I discuss do any of that. If anything, they allow more access to more food, to more people.

Abhijit: So we have discussed what are the different aspects of organic farming versus commercial farming.

And of course, commercial farming is it does make use of certain chemicals that are relatively more effective in doing a good job in helping the farmer get more yield. Now there are big downsides to organic farming as well. I'm sure you've heard of what happened in Sri Lanka. So could you just take us through what exactly happened and what went wrong?

Kevin Folta: Yeah, I could talk about that. And I like to talk about this because it's not as, if you listen to people who are really the the attack dogs of the genetic engineering world they'll say it's all because they ban, or people who are anti organic, they'll say it's all because they are banned organic and or they banned conventional farming.

They went all organic and that was the problem. And really what the problem was a multifactorial one that started long before the bands on fertilizers. So back in Sri Lanka, they had what were called the Easter Sunday bombings, and this was in 2019 and it was coordinated bomb bombings that killed a lot of people, including a lot of foreign nationals and Colombo, sri Lanka was a very important tourist destination.

Abhijit: Yeah.

Kevin Folta: And this really turned off the tourism, it turned off this big part of Sri Lanka's economy and later on, so this was kinda setting the stage. Then later on, after you're already seeing a downturn in the economy of Sri Lanka Vandana Shiva and others, there also was a series of scientific reports that were put out about the dangers of glyphosate and other farmer farming inputs that came from tea and rice farming where they said, okay, this is where glyphosate has this effect on chronic kidney disease of undetermined origin and CDKU. And there was a scientist back at the time who received all kinds of accolades for making the hypothesis that glyphosate might be at the co at the core of this.

And in his first paper, he just mentioned it, but said it was something to do with glyphosate. And that grabbed everybody's attention as the causal agent in the Sri Lankan problem, where there never was any data to substantiate that. So anyway, so this background of glyphosate is the problem.

Kind of economic downturn, Vandana Shiva and others, a number of folks, along with the president of the country, they said, you know what? Starting on such and such a date, and this was like in 2001 we're gonna go organic starting today,

Abhijit: and that is 2001 or 2021,

Kevin Folta: 2021. We're gonna go organics, overnight. And this was president Rajapaksa or something along that line. He said, we are gonna ban this overnight. And the problem was, is that when you take farmers who are already conventionally farming, which are using glyphosate probably a little bit to control weeds, but more importantly synthetic fertilizers, Haber-Bosch fertilizers, now all of a sudden their yields just drop through the floor. And there was something like a just Sri Lanka went from a net exporter of tea and rice to become an importer, and the losses were in the millions, like 300, $400 million in in loss. There was a rice was a really important downturn. It was something like they had to import something like 400, like $500 million of rice had to come in rather than go out.

Tea exports fell massively. Vegetable prices were through the roof. There were shortages There was scarcity on store shelves. So there was a lot of problem at that point. The inflation was huge. Farmers were mad. There were farmer protests everywhere. Eventually there was a government collapse because of all this.

You had protestors in the swimming pool of the Sri Lanka president and it was all because of a couple things. One, you're using organic farming, which takes time to learn, which takes time to transition. And you dropped it on farmers overnight with a ban. So you took a less effective way of controlling pests and pathogens less effective fertilizers, and you told them, tomorrow you're going to change. And it just didn't work. And so that was the big fallout and it was very much promoted by Vandana Shiva and others. There're YouTube videos of her saying, and then when we make the organic transition, everything will be perfect. it was really unfortunate and a lot of people suffered for it.

Abhijit: Yeah. And it was actually, all over the world and all the newspapers of course. And it was a really awful time for that country, I'm sure. But on the other hand, you have a country like Bhutan. Who are doing and somehow have succeeded in being an all organic agricultural economy.

How does that work?

Kevin Folta: It's possible to do it right if you have labor. And if you have plenty of hands who are willing to do the tilling and do the weed control. That's the biggest problem is if you don't have chemical weed control or tilling, you gotta go back to old school methods, tilling and then hand weeding and short hose and all the things that we do on organic farms here in the States. It is very challenging to do organic farming. But if you have labor, if you have time to transition into it, it can be done.

Abhijit: And we had talked about genetically modified organisms or plants, and that is something that a lot of people are very scared of. Now, I don't want to move completely away from organic just yet, but I do want to touch on GMOs. Now of course, a lot of us in this skeptical community at least know about golden rice and how that has the potential to alleviate starvation and vitamin aid deficiencies in large swats of populations, especially in poverty stricken countries that have very, hard soil to work on.

But let's just understand as an overview of GMOs and the potential that they have to help us.

Kevin Folta: This is really the irony is that when you look at genetically engineered crops, there is no better place for a genetically engineered crop than an organic production. So organic production is the synthetic versus natural inputs.

The seeds themselves, and at least in the United States we are organic program forbids the use of genetically engineered crops. Now, if you could make a crop that could be resistant to a mild herbicide or a or produce its own insecticide, that's even the better example on organic crops, you can use something called DiPel which is a BT based spore formulation.

So you can put the spores of bacteria on plants, particularly crucifer like broccoli or cabbages, and it kills the little worms that grow on them. So little worms, the little larvae that eat those things are killed by BT with BT Toxin. Now, if I take the same gene that makes the toxic protein and I put it into the plant and let the plant protect itself, they say, Nope, can't do that. So the exact same poison only, instead of me having to apply it and spend the money, the plant makes its own protection. That crop would be the most brilliant thing for organic production because you're using the same toxin. Only the plant makes it, rather than the factory makes it. And this is it, it's such a great example of why organic farms should be the first people embracing genetic engineering.

Abhijit: Yeah, that does make sense because once you modify a plant to create its own toxin against its own pests how does that affect the quality of the food? The produce.

Kevin Folta: It Doesn't affect it at all. It's extra nutrition. It's another protein that's present inside the corn and it, there's 50,000 proteins swimming around in there. And this is just another one. And it's not harmful to humans at all.

It's not harmful outside of a very narrow range of insects. So I can have the compound that we call bt. Is also known as something delta endotoxin or the crystal protein, the cryo proteins. These proteins have a very narrow range of effective use. There are ones that you use against lipid, which moths and butterflies that lay their eggs on the corn husks and eat the end of the corn that kill cotton.

That those are the two major places for bt we can install that gene and the plant protects itself rather than having to apply the protein. And it doesn't affect the plant at all. It does only affects the target organism, which is just amazing to me. Why don't we love this?

Abhijit: Yeah, I know.

Because plants produce their own toxins already. And a lot of those are actually the spices and the flavors that we love. Like I had this amazing conversation with a guy called Kris Ashok. Have you heard of him by any chance? No. I don't know Chris. No. So he is he, his passion is studying food science and history. And he has an a channel on YouTube called Kris Ashok, which I'll share with you and I'll put it in the description. Thank you. And he also has an Instagram handle called underscore masala lab. Okay. So he, and he's written a book, a cookbook called Masala Lab.

Kevin Folta: Okay.

Abhijit: And he was telling me that the flavors that we have from onions and garlic.

Are basically toxins that the plant is producing to get rid of its natural pests, the natural pests that are coming towards the plant. When you have cloves, nutmeg, these flavors that we love are actually pesticides, and basically these are poisons that the plant is creating to get rid of its natural predators, so to speak, But, they're the flavors we love. So if we can actually generate something that may add a little bit of extra flavor, and even if it doesn't add flavor, at least protects itself from its own natural predators, so to speak. I think it's a fantastic thing, but you should definitely check out a lot of Krish's stuff.

I'll put the interview I had with him and I'll send that to you as well because he is absolutely fantastic. Like he's got such a tremendous amount of passion for what he studies and the content that he creates. And by far he is one of the gold mines of information when it comes to Indian food and Indian spices.

NA: Oh, good.

Abhijit: And he talks a lot about farming techniques and especially the influence of our history and culture on the food that we eat and the way it's cooked, so I'm sure you love it. And you should have them on your podcast as well.

Kevin Folta: I absolutely love Indian food, and I'm very blessed to have had many people come through my lab from India who share their recipes.

And I have a recipe book of people who've, I have a big a container of Indian spices and we cook Indian food all the time, and my kids love it. but to expand on your point, the caffeine in your coffee, the nicotine in cigarettes, these are compounds made by plants.

That's a pesticide. that isn't there to give us a buzz. it's there to kill insects. And so these are compounds, plants make to deter insects and fungi.

So you're a hundred percent right and the more interesting the flavors and aromas, the better they are at killing something that would potentially harm the plant.

Abhijit: And that brings me to just the final thing that I really wanted to touch on, and of course I'm like, I have a million questions in my head right now, but I'm like, have to prune them down to consumable bite-sized pieces.

Which brings me to the actual produce that we have in our kitchens and I was wondering that, with a lot of people are talking about not only organic farming, especially in India, that we want to get more food from organic sources. And there is we have shopping apps and stuff like that, which can deliver food to my house within 10 minutes.

Kevin Folta: Yeah.

Abhijit: Where I can get all my fruits and vegetables that I need for cooking for the day, and they'll be delivered to my house in 10 minutes. And they've got organic produce and they've got regular produce and they've got hybrid produce. And so people are definitely pushing for it. People are buying it. It is more expensive, so I don't expect everybody to go for it, but that psychology is all consuming. But the other thing, which a lot of people are now starting to worry about because of, unreliable sources on the internet is that your food is covered with pesticides and herbicides and all of these things, and you have to soak them in something, or you need to get them from a certain place or something of that sort.

What is it that we can do, first of all, is that true? And secondly, what is it that we can do to protect ourselves from consuming these pesticides?

Kevin Folta: Okay, so I'll put on my farmer hat here. As somebody who grows fruit in Florida, which is a very challenging environment, we grow fruits and vegetables here in the state of Florida where it's always warm and always moist, wet.

It is very challenging to grow anything without some degree of crop protection. And so when I say crop protection, I'm talking about insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, antimicrobials, I'm a dad, I got two little kids. We eat this food. I would never do something that would possibly be harmful to them. Not in a million years. My job is to protect them. And so when I go out and spray, I know what I'm spraying. I know the dose I'm spraying it at. I know if I can wash it off, I know what's present. I know what the risks are to humans, and I have absolutely zero reservations about feeding that to my kids because I'm feeding them high quality fruits and vegetables from my space that I raised.

And I take a lot of pride in that. And so what it boils down to is the dose makes the poison. Yeah. If you are, what we are spraying as we spray it is not harmful to humans. That you could inhale it, you could drink it, whatever it would not harm you. It's very harmful to the target because these things are so selective.

We could target a fungus, we could target bacteria, we could target insects, weeds. It's not meant to target animals or mammals especially. And but still, we take tremendous precaution. We have a post harvest interval that if I spray certain things now, we can't consume them for at least 14 days.

And that's because these do have certain amount of risk, but it's gone, upon spraying it. But still, we give it time to make sure it's all gone. And it's really sad that we vilify chemistry so much because so many of the reports will say, and here's how they fake you out, they say, we detected this poison on your carrots. And what they really mean to say is that a chemist if you feed it to rats at a 10th, their body weight for two weeks it causes problems. But at the vanishingly small parts per billion, that this is present, that it's detected it can't harm you. But it's detected, and this is where the disconnect comes from, is that if I tell a mom in the grocery store it's only there at 12 parts per billion. She'll say that's 12 parts per billion, too many. Too much. Yeah. And it's because we don't understand what a par per billion is that we don't understand that this has no effect on us at those levels, and that we're really good as chemists at detecting something that's almost not there.

Abhijit: Yeah.

Kevin Folta: so our problem is. We're very good at detecting very little and not good at explaining how little something really is. And so your food is safe. You need more fruits and vegetables. Don't let people scare you away from them.

Abhijit: Absolutely. The dose makes the poison. That is the most essential thing that people need to understand. You can drink too much water and it'll kill you. you can try and drink a glass of glyphosate, which is not recommended

It might not be toxic to humans, but don't drink a glass of it for Christ sake. Yeah. But it's a very nuanced conversation, I think, and it's something that people need to understand that they are safe. And if you feel. Like you're still having a risk. Just wash your vegetables.

Just do it under running water. In India, of course, our water is very polluted, so you might not want to do it under tap water, but you can definitely do it under other forms, other cleaner forms of water. But I really wanted to touch on so much more actually especially GMOs and really dig into those things.

But I think it's getting a little late for you and we are running a little low on time, but thank you so much. Yeah.

Kevin Folta: But we can always do it again. I appreciate the conversation and I'm available anytime. I would love to talk to you more about any of these things. I just think it's so important that all of us are creating as much media as we can to counter the disinformation that's out there.

And I love your efforts and appreciate what you're doing. And, anytime you want to talk about it, if you got a guest on who wants to cancel, call me up and let's do it again.

Abhijit: Alright, brilliant. Oh, there is one more thing which I wanted to talk about. Ah there's one question which I got on my community group was cold, I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse or not, but cold pressed seed oils versus hot pressed seed oils. Is there any difference in health benefits or anything of that sort? Is that part of your

Kevin Folta: but, at the end of the day, when you look at the composition of the oil that comes out, when you're looking at cold versus hot pressed, you're looking at the process, not the product.

Abhijit: Yeah.

Kevin Folta: And there's nothing that's coming along from either one cold pressed, you're essentially squeezing out the oils as they occur, which I don't think you can do with too many seeds.

I know in India they use a lot of mustard seed oil. I don't know the dynamics of that, but most of the seed oils from brassicas have to be extracted with a number of compounds. First. You do an organic extraction, you make a paste that ends up being going through a couple of iterations before the oil is separated.

And then the oil is just oil. Either way, the oil is oil. And so I don't know. That in terms of the health quality? That there would be a difference between cold and hot, pressed. The flavor quality, you may be able to tell the difference. but it doesn't increase the risk.

Abhijit: Alright. And what about vegetable oils versus seed oils?

Kevin Folta: Yeah, vegetable oils for the most part are seed oils. I think when you're talking about vegetable oils, you're talking about corn, sunflower, safflower, those are all coming from seed. The thing about seed oils is the seed. What is the job of a seed? It is to give a young embryo that's planning to develop enough materials to survive and. Energy. And so you bring proteins, you bring carbohydrates, and you bring oil and oil, fats, oil, lipids. These are excellent long-term storage because you can break these down through beta oxidation in the absence of oxygen to be able to create ATP for metabolism.

And you see this in seeds. If you look in seeds, you look at the oxygen debt across the seed, you see where it starts to change its metabolism to oil metabolism. And so that's why seeds have so much oil. That's that, they're there for the embryo. They're not there for you and me.

we've just learned how to extract it. To be able to use it for cooking and everything else. The poly and monounsaturated fats from seeds are much more safe than the saturated fats from animals.

Abhijit: Yeah. Because in India there's this huge drive to consume more ghee. Everybody loves gh, but it's just, it's becomes an obsession that people think that you can put ghee in everything and you'll actually lose weight. And I'm like, guys, it's just a fat, it's a saturated fat and it should remain within 30% of your total fat caloric intake.

Kevin Folta: Yep.

Abhijit: And there's nothing special about it. Whether you take it as coconut oil or ghee, or lard or tallow or whatever it may be. It is a saturated fat. I don't think there's any difference to that. Is there,

Kevin Folta: Not so much. there all are some slight differences, but in general they're very similar.

We raise grazing pigs and you can tell the difference between that and a commercial hog. Very easily. But in general, these things are all saturated fats and you are safer and better off with plant-based oils. in general.

Abhijit: You heard it

Kevin Folta: from the van himself.

Abhijit: Kevin Folta thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been an Absolutely fantastic conversation.

Kevin Folta: Thank you. It is been a pleasure to talk to you and best wishes in everything you do going forward. I really appreciate that you're out there doing it.

So thank you.

Abhijit: Thank you very much. And guys, if you like this conversation and if you enjoyed it, please give it a like, subscribe for more of this kind of stuff. And of course if you want to support us, you can join the channel on YouTube or you can visit us at Rationable on Patreon and help us out there.

So thank you so much for joining us for Rationable Conversations. Until next time, stay Rationable.