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Are GM crops the new colonialism?
by Paul Beingessner
(Thursday, Oct. 16, 2003 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- As I discussed in an earlier column, the biotech industry is struggling
mightily to get genetically modified food crops accepted around the
world. For giant agriculture-chemical companies like Monsanto, it is a
win some/lose some kind of battle. Monsanto appeared to win recently
when the Brazilian government announced it would allow the planting of
GM soybeans - an already widespread practice due to seed smuggled from
Argentina. On the other hand, the GM industry took a hit in Britain when
crop trials were declared invalid and will now require another three
years to complete.
Farmers and researchers around the world have questioned many of the
claims made for GM crops. While the propaganda surrounding these crops
often portrays them as magic bullets, and they are sometimes widely
adopted by farmers, the reality is that they have yet to save
agriculture anywhere, and they certainly face consumer resistance in
major importing countries.
The image of companies promoting GM crops has been tarnished in some
eyes in recent years. There are many reasons for this. Heavy-handed
enforcement of plant patents has engendered sympathy for some of the
farmers targeted. GM crops have created some very difficult problems.
Herbicide resistant weeds are one. Contamination of conventional crops
is another. For example, recent research has confirmed that many of
Mexico's traditional corn varieties are contaminated with GM genes.
Since Mexico is the ancestral home of corn, and hence home to the
largest corn gene pool, this could be disastrous.
This bad image is a major concern for companies like Monsanto. The
corporate giant recently declared that income from its patent rights now
exceeds income from chemical sales. Clearly, Monsanto has found the
goose that lays its golden eggs, and is intent on feathering this nest
further.
A clear propaganda wins for GM promoters would occur if they could
convince the public that GM crops (and by implication, the companies
that generate them) were performing the noble task of relieving world
hunger. To further that image, GM companies have gone to that bastion of
hunger, Africa, and come back with spokespersons to trumpet their cause.
One of the latest is Dr. Florence Wambugu, a Kenyan scientist who
recently toured North America promoting GM foods as the answer to the
problem of hunger in Africa. Wambugu wears her credentials as a
once-poor black African proudly. Her main claim to fame is involvement
with a project to genetically engineer a sweet potato to make it
resistant to Sweet Potato Feather Mottle Virus, a common sweet potato
disease. This project originated with Monsanto, and has been largely
funded by the company. Wambugu and Monsanto have made some fantastic
claims about the benefits of resistance to this disease. Massive
production increases, the end to the Kenyan famine and greater food
security for some of Africa's poorest are but a few of these.
But do the claims stand up to the test of reality? Some researchers
think not. In speaking on hunger in Uganda, for instance, the World Bank
said the need was not for new technology, but rather for better
communication between agriculture extension workers and farmers so that
farmers could both drive agriculture research and benefit from the
research already done.
Promoters of the GM sweet potato hyped it by declaring several years ago
that it could "end famine in Kenya". The problem with that grandiose
statement was that the Kenyan famine was not due to sweet potato
disease. The famine was centered among livestock farmers who did not
even grow or eat sweet potatoes. It resulted from cumulative livestock
losses, falling livestock prices and sharply rising cereal prices. In
fact, sweet potatoes are a very minor crop in Kenya, and cannot be
considered a staple.
Sweet potatoes are staples in Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda, but the Food
and Agriculture Organization declared that agricultural production here
has been severely limited not by viral diseases, but rather by war,
massive displacement of farmers, and international struggles over
diamonds and precious metals.
Perhaps most unfortunate of all is the amount of money Monsanto and the
American government have spent producing the single variety of GM sweet
potato. Over $6 million has been consumed to produce a single variety -
from one that the Kenya agency involved in the project admitted was not
very popular. Had the researchers bothered to asked Ugandan and
Tanzanian farmers, they would have found out that 75 percent of them
already had access to non-GM varieties resistant to the Sweet Potato
Feather Mottle Virus. Promoting the farmer-to-farmer exchange of these
resistant varieties would have done much to solve any problems created
by the disease. Of course, this would not have given Monsanto a
propaganda victory.
The World Bank identified Kenya's problems this way: "The Kenyan system
lacks a focus on farmer empowerment. It is based on a traditional
top-down supply-driven approach that provides little or no voice to the
farmer." GM crops will only make this situation worse. Even in Kenya,
and other poor African countries, the solution to hunger does not
necessarily involve producing more food. Rather, it is ensuring that the
ability to obtain food is equally held by all. When transnational
countries decide what the problems of the Third World are and how to
solve them, it is simply another form of colonialism. That didn't save
Africa first time around.
(c) Paul Beingessner (306) 868-4734 phone 868-2009 fax
beingessner@sasktel.net | |
