|
|
|
Points to ponder: Biotech revolution losing steam?
Just four countries plant 99 per cent of the world’s genetically engineered (GE) crops, despite more than a decade of hype about the benefits of agricultural biotechnology.
The United States, home of the agricultural biotech giant Monsanto, represents 55 per cent of the world’s GE crops, while Argentina, Canada and Brazil account for the rest.
Long trumpeted as the solution to world hunger, some biotech supporters have scaled back their claims and now say the technology will make a substantial contribution to ending hunger. But just when or if that contribution will ever arrive is not clear.
According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), GE technology has increased the incomes of 7.7 million resource-poor farmers in developing countries.
Clive James, chairman and founder of ISAAA, told IPS that 6.4 million of these were Chinese peasants growing Bt cotton on tiny farms. They used it because it cuts the number of insecticide spraying from 30 times a season to half that.
“Our report shows that while they spend $70 per hectare on the GM (GE) technology, the saving on insecticides and labour nets them $60 per hectare,” he said.
In the ISAAA’s annual global status report issued on Jan 12, it claimed that 90 million hectares of GE crops were planted in 21 countries in 2005. Although labelled an “anti-poverty group” by some media, the ISAAA is in fact a biotech industry-supported lobby organization.
“No one has any idea where they are getting their numbers from,” said David MacDonald of the Polaris Institute, a Canadian NGO. Where there is solid independent government data, such as in the United States, the ISAAA numbers are inflated by five to 10 per cent, he charged.
Biotech industry’s promises of drought-proof crops or the ones that improve yields, made over the last decade, have never been realized. The promises to “improve” sweet potatoes, cassava or other food crops using this technology also remain to be fulfilled. Yet, the hype continues
MacDonald told IPS that the group’s reports did not cite any sources or references, nor did most governments have this kind of information. “We and other NGOs have been trying to get independent confirmation of this data for years, without success,” he said.
James said: “We spent 10 years getting key contacts in business, industry associations and governments to compile our data. We don’t identify sources because our database is proprietary.”
Since no other global figures are available, the ISAAA numbers are widely quoted and referenced — the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization cites them. An international survey on the commercial cultivation of GE crops in the Jan 13 issue of science journal Nature is based on ISAAA data.
However, Nature interprets the data rather differently. “Only a few countries have wholeheartedly embraced a transgenic future,” writes Peter Aldhous, its chief news and features editor.
Despite billions of dollars invested in research by governments and industry over more than 20 years, only three crops — cotton, maize and soy — account for 95 per cent of GE acreage. These three crops are either herbicide-resistant or contain Bt insecticide.
This makes life simpler for large farm operations to spray any amount of a particular herbicide without harming the crop, says MacDonald. Yields are not directly affected, nor are there additional nutritional benefits, improvements to the soil or environmental benefits.
GE cotton accounts for much of the small GE acreage in countries like South Africa, India, China and Mexico. In Argentina and Brazil, GE soy dominates on the large-scale farms, but farmers have so far avoided paying companies like Monsanto for their seed, which amounts to at least $250 million in lost revenue, he says.
“Governments may be forced to impose a Monsanto tax on every bushel of soy sold,” MacDonald added.
More than a decade of biotech industry’s promises of drought-proof crops or the ones that thrive in salty soils or that improve yields have never been realized, nor have the promises to “improve” sweet potatoes, cassava or other local food crops using the technology. And yet the hype continues.
“While American farmers are Monsanto’s main customers, much of their market is also overseas, where they’ve helped develop crops exclusively for Third World countries, including a variety of disease-resistant sweet potato,” wrote Michael Fumento, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a widely published Jan 8 column for the Scripps Howard News Service.
The GE sweet potato was a complete failure when it was planted in Kenya in 2004. It turns out that Fumento had previously received $60,000 from Monsanto, and the company also partially finances the Hudson Institute. Scripps dropped Fumento as a columnist on Jan 13.
“Biotech crops are not a solution to solve hunger in Africa or elsewhere,” said Nnimmo Bassey of Friends of the Earth (FOI) Nigeria. “The reality of the last 10 years shows that the safety of GM (GE) crops cannot be ensured and these crops are neither cheaper nor better quality,” Bassey said in a statement.
In a 100-page report released on Jan 10, FOI International found that neither consumers nor the environment has benefited from the “genetic revolution” in agriculture. The “success” of GE crops is mainly due to aggressive marketing and misrepresentation of the benefits, the report concludes.
“It’s an ongoing struggle to counter the biotech industry’s hype,” said Dick Bell of the FOI US. While FOI is not opposed to biotechnology in itself, none of the GE crops have undergone human health testing and the long-term health effects are still unknown.
Many countries are understandably cautious about growing or allowing their citizens to eat them, Bell said in an interview. “Countries like the US and Argentina are taking a big gamble, especially considering the GE crops grown today offer little if any benefits,” he said.
That is why industry and governments in those countries conspired to prevent labelling of food products made from GE crops, he said: “If they were labelled, no one would buy them.”
While the industry says it is expanding by leaps and bounds and gaining entry into more and more countries, Bell says growth has been incremental and will be an uphill fight over the next five years. Others, including Nature’s Aldhous, agree that the 10-year-old battle is coming to a head but say it is too close to guess at the outcome.
The big three companies that dominate agri-biotech — Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer — have some very powerful allies, the US government and the World Trade Organization among them. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has long been a tool through which companies promote biotech in the developing world, according to Brewster Kneen, an author and food industry critic.
USAID has been particularly busy in Africa providing funding and technical expertise for biotech research and regulation. However, Africa is unlikely to be able to afford to buy large quantities of GE seed, said Kneen.
But James of the ISAAA disagrees. “It’s a fallacy that farmers can’t afford the seeds or are concerned about patents,” he said. “One million Indian farmers grow Bt cotton and that will at least double next year.” — Dawn/IPS News Service
GE crops
Pro-GE groups claim that GE crops can give us healthier food, produced in a more efficient, environmentally-friendly way. They believe that giving the go-ahead to GE crops will boost the economy and encourage biotechnology companies to invest in research and development.
Anti-GE groups argue that only the multinational biotech companies will reap any reward, and claim that few farmers will benefit. The potential risks of GE crops to health and the environment outweigh the risks of going ahead, they claim.
In Britain, the prime minister’s strategy unit was charged not long ago with weighing up the costs and benefits of GE crops. This study concluded that the current generation of GE crops offers no benefits to consumers, and only marginal benefits to farmers.
The study added that, although GE crops could be slightly cheaper and more convenient for farmers to grow, weak consumer demand, at least in the near term, would limit any economic advantages of introducing them.
Only a few GE crops available now are suited to conditions in the UK but, in the future, more beneficial crops could become available. Crops that have been genetically modified to repel common pests and resist domestic diseases, have allergenic proteins removed or produce pharmaceuticals or vaccines, could offer more tangible benefits.
The benefits of growing GE crops have to be weighed up against the advantages of growing non-GE or organic crops, which often sell at a premium. To minimize the risk of contaminating non-GE crops with genes from GE crops, the two have to be separated and measures need to be brought in to check the purity of the GE crops, the study said.
How are plants genetically modified? Well, there are two main ways to do it. The first uses a natural soil bacterium called agrobacteria tumefaciens. In nature, these bacteria infect plants. Once inside the plant’s cells, the bacteria wedge some of their own genes into the plant’s genetic material. In the wild, this makes the plant produce damaging tumours.
But geneticists can extract these tumour-causing genes from the bacteria, rendering them harmless, and replace them with genes for useful traits, such as pest resistance or herbicide tolerance. When plant cells are exposed to these modified bacteria, they transfer the useful genes to the plant instead of the disease genes.
The second method is the gene gun. This fires tiny gold particles coated with genes that produce useful traits directly into a plant’s cells. Both techniques have a high failure rate, so thousands of attempts are needed before the new genes integrate with the plant’s genetic material.
There are two main types of GE crop being grown at the moment. The first can tolerate herbicides that wipe out all other plants. The idea is that farmers can spray their crop with a “broad-spectrum” herbicide that will wipe out every plant in the field except the crop.
Since weeds compete for water, sunlight and soil nutrients, such GE crops might produce higher yields. They may also require less herbicide than conventional crops, so growing them may do less damage to the environment.
The second major type of GE crop is modified to produce a toxin that kills pests that feed on it. So far, the most common crop is known as Bt cotton. — Dawn/The Guardian News Service
|
|
|
|
