Do the biotech companies who claim GM crops can ´feed the world´ really care about this imperative?
Answer:
The primary objective of most biotech companies is to maximise the sale of GM crops and GM foods to procure an increasing share of the global food, feed and seed markets. ‘Feeding the world’ became an important marketing strategy for the biotech industry when it sought to increase sales of GM products into the Third World after sales into Europe were halted by a five year EU moratorium.
American farmers have endured some quite serious difficulties in their relations with biotech companies (see: Can GM Pharm & Industrial Crops Benefit Farmers). The biotech industries in America, Canada and Argentina lobbied their governments to impose a law suit against the EU through the World Trade Organisation in an effort to get the five year EU moratorium on GM foods lifted. They are now engaged in another lawsuit through the WTO to have GM Free zones in Europe declared illegal and to reverse the European laws on the labelling of GM food. (See Europe and GM.) These activities do not suggest a corporate interest in ethical matters - nor do recent reports in the news about their business activities in the Third World:
BBC news reported on January the 13th 2005: “Monsanto fined $1.5 million dollars for bribery”. Monsanto was attempting to sell its GM cotton in Indonesia, but the Indonesian government wanted to conduct environmental tests before agreeing to grow the GM cotton. In an attempt to prevent the testing, the biotech company bribed government officials. The BBC release states: “A senior manager at Monsanto directed an Indonesian consulting firm to give a $50,000 bribe to a high-level official in Indonesia´s environmental ministry in 2002.” “Monsanto also has admitted to paying bribes to a number of other high-ranking officials between 1997 and 2002.”
(See www.bbc.co.uk. For a detailed account of Monsanto’s business practices and political agenda read: ‘The Monsanto Files’, in The Ecologist, vol. 28, No. 5 (Sept/Oct. 1998); a more recent account of the biotech industry’s business practices and relations with governments is found in J.E. Smith´s book, Seeds of Deception, (2004) Green Books.)
It is claimed that GM crops can help feed the 840 million starving people around the world. Is not ‘feeding the world’ a moral imperative?
Answer:
Feeding the starving populations of the world is certainly a moral imperative, but hunger is a product of poverty, not food shortages. Approximately 320 million people go to bed hungry every night in India yet 60 million tonnes of food grains are stacked to rot in the open. In neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan food silos are full while their poor people starve. The world produces more food than it needs, but it does not get to the poor because they cannot afford to buy it.
The aid agencies which work all year around in the Third World and who know the problems of the poor at first hand contend poverty must be tackled not by increased food production, but by social and political reforms. Land ownership reforms, improved infrastructure, better trade deals with the western world, and less Third World debt are the issues which must be addressed so that wealth can be created and hunger eradicated. A submission signed by the directors of Oxfam, Christian Aid, Save the Children, Cafod and Action Aid says that claims that GM crops can feed the world were “misleading and fail to address the complexities of poverty reduction”. These charities suggest that GM crops were likely to create more poverty, pointing out that it is only rich farmers who can afford to take up new and expensive technologies like GM technology. (See GM Crops and Developing Countries, UK Food Group Briefing, 11th of July 2003; the website is www.ukfg.org.uk.)
Action Aid is quoted as saying, “farmers will be caught in a vicious circle, increasingly dependent on a small number of giant multinationals”. Prince Charles (of Great Britain) said that the argument that GM food could feed the world was “suspiciously like emotional blackmail”. Even the UN´s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) admits that the poor have not yet felt any benefits from GM crops because the focus has been on big commercial interests like soya, maize, canola (oilseed rape) and cotton instead of staple food crops like potatoes, rice, cassava, and wheat. (See f.e. an article by M. McCarthy, ‘UN backs GM crops despite concerns that benefits do not reach the world´s poor’, in The Independent, 18th of May 2004; the website is www.independent.co.uk.)
Why does the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) support the argument that GM crops can reduce world hunger?
Answer:
Claims made by the FAO that GM food can ‘feed the world’ are based mainly on three suppositions:
- That GM food can raise farmers production and income;
- that by increasing food supplies food prices can be reduced – and –
- that GM food can increase the nutritional value of food.
It is hard to see why the FAO believes these benefits will come to Third World farmers when they have not been realised by the wealthy and experienced farmers of North America. GM food crops grown in the USA and Canada have not on average increased yields, nor is the food produced from them cheaper or more nutritional than conventional food. The FAO recognises the limitations and uncertainties of the GM crops developed to date, but supports biotechnology because it hopes future GM crops will perform better.
Should GM food be sent as food aid to Third World countries?
Answer:
Five African states, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Lesotho, raised this important question when they rejected food aid grown from GM crops because they were fearful about the effects GM food might have on their populations. Most of the GM food aid offered was GM maize from the USA who had large surpluses to dispose of after the European Union imposed a moratorium on GM food. African leaders argued that there was enough non-GM food aid available and that America was seeking to use GM food aid as a means to introduce GM food into Africa. This contention is not far-fetched given that the US Senate and House of Representatives has suggested that overseas funds to fight HIV/Aids and malaria be conditional on the acceptance of GM crops and food. Michael Meacher, the UK minister for the Environment at the time stated that “It’s wicked when there is such an excess of non-GM food aid available, for GM to be forced on countries for reasons of GM politics. We have the means to assist, but we are playing politics over GM”.
(An interview with M. Meacher in The Ecologist, Vol. 33, No. 2 (March 2003), pp. 14-16.)
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