A scary specter has risen among traditional Northern New Mexico family and subsistence farmers about which many are not yet aware - the reality of genetically modified organisms (GMO) and what they mean for the future of New Mexico landrace chile varieties.

Recent articles and news items have indicated that several large agri-businesses have contracted research on modifying chiles so that they can be harvested by machine. Now, all New Mexico chiles are picked by hand.

Juan Estevan Arellano of Embudo - farmer, acequia mayordomo and writer who still practices time honored agricultural methods - is respected and consulted for his farming knowledge among Hispano and Pueblo farmers. Many new residents come to him to learn and practice local agricultural methods.

In a recent interview, Arellano's take on the possibility of GMO chile was frank.

"There is no benefit in that," he said. "The reasoning that somehow chile being genetically modified for mechanical harvesting is good, ignores the reality that it would also would kill the diversity of the New Mexico chile varieties, and not just here in the north."

Centuries of 'natural selection'

Arellano explained that farming families traded seed every five years in order to keep their chile crop healthy, taking seed from pods irrigated from different rivers. That centuries of natural selection, and families saving seed from the best and largest pods year to year and then trading them, helped select out the most hearty and tasty.

"Our grandmothers would encourage us to save the best and biggest pods, calabazas, elotes, (ears of corn), whatever the crop, for next year's seed," Arellano said. "The Pueblo people had their own varieties of small locally developed indigenous chiles, and later the Spanish brought a few other types. Over many generations, and hundreds of years of organic farming practices resulted in the chiles that are still very popular."

What people call Chimayò chile , according to Arellano, is a landrace that is grown all over the north. In each region families took seed with them, which then adapted according to the local climate, soil, and water conditions. The seeding has spread throughout the north.

Some of the New Mexico types hybridized and by natural selection became known by local names.

Arellano warned that if genetically engineered chile contaminates the local landraces, it could mean the end of the New Mexico chile as we know it.

Man or machine?

Arellano explained that it might be easier for harvesting with mechanical means, but asks some hard questions based on a lifetime of growing chile.

"How can a machine tell when it is ready to pick?" he said. "You need to touch the pods, to know if they are firm enough, meaning they are ripe. It has a certain color when it is ready, and how can the machine tell that? When chile is ripe and ready to pick it has a certain luster, and how does the machine know?"

"I can just see them trying to attach something to chile pods like they attach a milking machine to a cow's teats," Arellano said. "The plant's branches can break easily if not picked by hands of harvesters that know what they are doing."

Which brought up the point Arellano wants to make - that for chile to be developed by genetic modification so it could be harvested by machine would result in a plant we wouldn't recognize.

"It would have to be as strong as a tree to withstand mechanical harvesting, and if they continue with plans to GMO it, don't be surprised if we end up with something people would consider a 'Franken Chile ,' that most people, if they knew how little the effects of eating GMO foods has been studied by the experts, would be afraid to eat."

"Then there's something nobody seems to want to talk about. Trying to modify chile for mechanical harvesting also means keeping Mexican farm workers from coming to work the harvests. Not just Mexicans, many American citizens earn a living following seasonal harvests.

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