As GlyFloat repercussion in many different brazilian media increased, UFRGS_Brazil was positively surprised with the proportions that project achieved. Hence, we felt the need to talk to the society about the subjects of science and agriculture.
Talking about science is essential for society to grow together. Afterall, everybody has the right to knowledge and education. Sharing knowledge simply, yet clearly, is even more important.
Through an online survey, we collected the opinion of approximately 200 people, among these were students, farmers, professors, agronomists and environmentalists. Questions regarding the use of herbicides and their impacts were addressed, emphasising topics about glyphosate, synthetic biology and the use of genetically modified organisms for bioremediation, beyond the possible impacts to the environment and people’s lives.
To us, it felt that opinions about the use of agrochemicals diverges, and these premises were demonstrated in our results. Graph 1 describes the favorability of different groups - classified by their occupancy - regarding the use of herbicides (where 1 means very unfavorable and 5 very favorable). Visually, the graph shows us the difference between the opinion of environmentalists, who feel very unfavorable about the use of agrochemicals, and the agribusiness group, who tend to feel very favorable towards its use. After performing a Kruskal-Wallis test, accompanied by a Mann-Whitney post-hoc in order to verify if the groups statistically differed between themselves, a significative difference (p<0.05) was obtained between agribusiness and every other group, except for farmers. Furthermore, the most significant result was between environmental/life sciences and farmers, corroborating with what was previously seen in the graph.
Fig. 1: Bar chart of responses distribution by occupation for the question “How favorable are you regarding herbicide use?”.
Although we expect this different, since it is likely that farmers and environmentalists generally have very different points of view, as for productivity and environmental preservation. We also expected that the farmers were not so favorable to the herbicides usage, once other studies show that they notice harmful effects in their health and, even, they would like to cultivate without agrochemicals .
Following the idea previously exposed, there was also a statistically significant difference for the question: “How harmful do you consider the presence of the glyphosate agrotoxic in water?” (where 1 means no harmful, and 5 very harmful) when analyzing the groups: i. agribusiness and environmental/life sciences and ii. farmers and environmental/life sciences.
As stated by the brazilian researcher Natália Pasternak in a TEDx talk, “science is being affected by the Cassandra syndrome” (Cassandra is a character in greek mythology, who was gifted with prophecy, but was cursed by the god Apollo so that no one would believe her prophecies - she could see the future, and tell others about it, but it was effectless. Science predicts the future, in a way, and absolutely tells us a lot about our present and past. But recently, there has been some resistance by many in the society in believing in facts.
When asked about knowing synthetic biology, the answers were quite surprising. We thought the students - a good part of the young population who answered our survey - had at least some knowledge about biotechnology and would know synthetic biology. However, on a first visual analysis of the second graph, most of the students contradicted the expectations, answering negatively the question. This was then confirmed by a chi-squared test, in which the students group had, on average, less knowledge of the term synthetic biology when compared to the agribusiness group.
This may be due to the relatively recent broad use of the term ‘synthetic biology’, in a way that familiarity with the term may be restricted to some groups, more directly involved with the technology related to the subject.
As discussed by Shapira, Kwon e Youtie (2017) “[…] annual worldwide synthetic biology publication output grew from an average of about 170 publications per year from 2000 to 2005 to well over 1200 publications in 2015. […] Synthetic biology publication output noticeably accelerated from 2008.” This corroborates with the idea that the use of the term is still growing, and may not have achieved multiple sectors of society.
Fig. 2: Bar chart of responses distribution by occupation for the question “Do you know what synthetic biology is?”.
We hypothesize that the agribusiness group knowledge about synthetic biology may be due to the acquaintance of biotechnology and genetically modified organisms destined to agriculture, since the majority of this group respondents was somehow related to GM crops cultivation and agricultural consulting. In addition, the knowledge and concordance regarding GMOs and synthetic biology are usually related, as shown in a recent review of publications about public perception of the topics: “[…] public concerns about synthetic biology were expressed in a similar way to those associated with GM.” (JIN et al., 2019)
The use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in diverse situations, like agriculture and even bioremediation, for example, is discussed. When asking about the use of GMOs for the treatment of contaminated environments, an uneven distribution was observed in the answers.
By observing the concordance of the use of OGMs for water treatment with the respondents' occupation area, we notice higher acceptance by the agribusiness respondents group in relation to other groups. This may be explained due to their knowledge regarding commonplace irregularities in the amount of glyphosate applied and the techniques used for its application in the fields, as many of our interviews pointed out.
Glyphosate is necessary for the cultivation of 95% of the area of soybean, corn and cotton produced in Brazil, the three of the main agricultural crops of the country, as stated by the brazilian Agriculture Minister, Blairo Maggi. About its safety in the fields, according to professor José Otávio Menten, senior professor and researcher at Esalq-USP, “If there was any clear evidence that [glyphosate] has any carcinogenic effect, or any other detrimental effect [...], it would not have been registered or its registration would have already been revoked. This, of course, assumes that the product is applied correctly.”
In real life, the scenario involving glyphosate in Brazil is controversial: according to ARPAC CEO, Eduardo da Costa Goerl, brazilian farmers may use up to five times more glyphosate than recommended, as they think this is a way to ensure that they will not be harmed by pest attacks on their crops.
Fig. 3: Bar chart of responses distribution by occupation for the question “How much do you agree with GMOs (Genetic modified organisms) usage for contaminated environmental treatment?” by occupation.
Moreover, according to Lisiane Becker, an expert at the Environmental Department of Canoas and president of the NGO Mira-Serra, glyphosate is not restricted to the area in which it was applied: she cites the case of a farmer she met in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, who lost all his bees due to glyphosate drift from a neighboring plantation to its organic arable lands. Besides, Eliane Dallegrave, a toxicologist from Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre, highlighted the toxicity of the Round Up compound for metazoans: a trial she conducted with a lower dose of RoundUp than the one considered with no effect killed half of the mice tested.
As glyphosate is highly important for Brazil’s agricultural production, in the same way it has been increasingly related to environmental impacts and possible health complications, it is latent that the agribusiness respondants show favorable positions for its degradation from the environment. Due to their answers, we thought that an interesting application for GlyFloat would be in crop drainage systems, also because there is a higher concentration of glyphosate in water leaving the farmland than in the water coming into our homes.
The acceptance of degrading glyphosate with GMOs by life sciences professionals and students in general was statistically positively relevant as well. As a recent survey evaluating public perception of biotechnology shows, “The higher the level of education, the higher the appreciation of synthetic biology, biotechnology or genetic engineering” (PORCAR et al., 2019). A research conducted by Julia S. Guivant, a researcher at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, showed that "the more information, the greater the acceptance [with] transgenic [organisms]": 81% of the Brazilians interviewed said they agreed with the statement that biotechnology in agriculture can improve our quality of life. Thus, taking into account that our team reinforced the seriousness of GlyFloat, which intersects biotechnology and agriculture, regarding its biosecurity - especially our auxotrophic control mechanisms and containment of our bacteria in the filter - the overall result was positive.
Taking into account auxotrophic control mechanisms and containment of our bacteria in the filter, the overall result was positive.
In addition, we assume that the acceptance of GMOs for bioremediation by farmers may be related to their increased familiarity regarding GMOs and their safety, since GM crops have been grown commercially since 1995 (Bagavathiannan, Julier, Barre , Gulden, & Van Acker, 2010), and acceptance of GM crops has been rapid, with the global GM production area growing from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 (International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications [ISAAA], 2015) to 182 million hectares in 2014.
We believe this is may be due to previous knowledge about GMOs and transgenics by this group. Everybody knows we must preserve the environment. There are many different incredible projects and initiatives for bioremediation, but, most of the times, these projects do not receive all the incentives they deserve. Observing problems isn’t an easy task, but even harder is finding solutions.
With this in mind, UFRGS_Brazil found it relevant to seek the opinion of the population on three fundamental issues: how necessary is the removal of glyphosate from rivers; how much can this removal improve water quality; how necessary it is to have a technology capable of degrading glyphosate from water bodies.
In a recent survey evaluating public perception of biotechnology, synthetic engineering and synthetic biology, one of the main conclusions pointed by the authors was that, in the given population “The higher the level of education, the higher the appreciation of synthetic biology, biotechnology or genetic engineering” (PORCAR et al., 2019).
It can be seen in graph 4 that, in general, most respondents believe that glyphosate removal from water bodies is of great value as this may improve water quality. Likewise, they agree that the use of new technologies is a major advance for this purpose.
As stated by the agronomist Bruno Candido Fornarolli, CEO of Fornarolli Agricultural Science in an interview to the team: "Sometimes there's no evidence that any compound is actually doing any damage. But better than speaking out, is preserving. When in doubt, save the planet!"
Over the course of this year, we came across a huge number of people who have somehow shown prejudice against the use of genetically modified organisms. Perhaps our surprise was due to the fact that many times, we get somewhat “immersed” in the academic world, and this surprise was a great advice for us to look more broadly to society. We also realized that some of these people had this prejudice towards GMOs without having much information about them. The scientific community has a role in all of this, since it may not be well connected and the communication to the rest of society is flawed.
Fig. 4: Histogram of responses distribution three questions described on the subtitles.
Thinking about this topic, our team considered it fundamental to reach schools and student events, in order to talk about science, and Synthetic Biology (SynBio). This may not have directly impacted GlyFloat per se, but it sure impacted the perception of youngsters towards biotechnology and SynBio.
As discussed by Porkar et al. (2019): "There are many factors at play that determine how lay people perceive new technologies and a better understanding of these can help to inform debate."
With this insight, we also used this idea to question respondents about how capable projects using bioremediation ogms, such as GlyFloat, are able to change the public's negative opinion of genetically modified organisms. Analyzing the data, 131 people out of 177 who answered the form positively believe that our project can impact the population's negative opinion about the use of ogms.
Betten et al. (2018) shows: "research participants expressed more optimism when applications benefiting human health, energy and environment were presented to them" when compared with agrifood sector use, which corroborates our data.
Fig. 5: Bar chart of responses distribution by occupation for the question “In your opinion, what is the impact of glyphosate on the environment?” by occupation.
