“WHATEVER you have eaten here since your arrival, there is every probability that 90 per cent of your food’s ingredients may have been, one way or the other, linked with GM food. Did you feel any change in taste?”

One of my hosts at the American Farm Show in the US state of Iowa posed this question to me only to dispel the general assertion that genetically modified food products are not good for human consumption and taste differently.

He said that in every respect, the GM corn, wheat, rice, tomato, soybean are similar to non-GM food, look same, taste same and are digested the same way as the conventional food.

But this does not mean that the Americans themselves are not sceptic about safe use of GM food. US consumers maintain that the raw, organic farm produce and GM farm products taste differently.

The debate over GM food is now raging in countries where it is being introduced. In Pakistan, there are reservations among the farmers and citizens in terms of human consumption. Prof Dr Muhammad Ashfaq, Dean, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad was reported to have stated last year that the issue is whether GM foods are safe enough to consume because some experts suspect possible hazards to human health and environment in the long run. Hence, there is need for risk assessments, he said and suggested that labelling GM food can offer a choice to the consumers. It is because of such reservations even among the elite class that no GM crop has been approved for commercial cultivation so far in Pakistan. During a briefing session at one of the research centres, Reshami Noir, an India-born scientist at the Monsanto headquarters, observed that the fear of GM is quite widespread and has to be removed to make this technology acceptable to a cross-section of general public in non-GM countries.

She said that the Pope has shown no concern over consumption of GM food and finds it safe enough from health point of view.

Similarly, some Islamic scholars in Indonesia have said in a statement that they have no objection to human consumption of GM food because they find no animal feed in the products.

In 2010, similar fears cropped up in India bringing to a halt the commercial release of the world’s first genetically modified eggplant called Bt brinjal (produced by a Monsanto’s partner company) with the environment minister Jairam Ramesh saying further study was needed to guarantee consumer safety. This happened after the top regulatory body of the country had already cleared it as safe for human consumption.

To many in India, embracing Bt Brinjal also meant saying farewell to their traditional vegetable and its peculiar taste besides surrendering some control of the nation’s food supply to foreign companies. Ramesh pointed out in his report that the public concerns about Bt brinjal were “heavily influenced” by the perception of the biotech companies themselves. In fact, the fate of India’s small farmer was at the centre of the debate.

Reshami Noir who was sent to India by Monsanto to monitor the happenings told Pakistani journalists that the anger against Bt brinjal was whipped up by a group of NGOs and the farmers present in the minister’s public hearing, in fact, did not express any reservations against the GM vegetable. In fact, they favoured growing the controversial product.

Whether India, like China, will ultimately embrace GM food depends on how far the farmers and citizens are willing to look at the problem in terms of long-term needs and in a larger perspective of reducing the number of hungry by raising the farm production with the use of modern technologies. India, the UN says, will surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2030.

The World Health Organisation says that 21 per cent of Indians don’t get enough to eat every day. Many other transgenic food crops are in pipeline including staples like rice. Advocates of GM crops say these new strains will boost yields and stabilise supply by improving drought resistance. Their fate now hangs in balance.

The fact remains that world needs at least 70 per cent more food by 2050. For the developing countries, where 2.5 billion small resource-poor farmers survive, representing some of the poorest people in the world, food production needs to be doubled by that year. Current investments in agriculture in developing countries are woefully inadequate and the production has become stagnant. And current expenditures on agriculture in the developing countries are $142 billion per annum and it is apparent that an additional $57 billion per year will be required annually for a total of $209 billion per year in 2009 dollars from now until 2050.

The current status of biotech crops, and the progress to-date during the last 16 years since these crops were first commercialised, needs to be revisited regarding their potential contribution to feeding the world in the future. About 70 per cent of the world’s poor are dependent on agriculture – some view this as a problem, others as an opportunity, given the enormous potential of both conventional and the new biotechnology applications to make a significant contribution to the alleviation of poverty and hunger and to doubling food, feed and fiber production by 2050.

The five leading biotech developing countries are China, India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. They grew 44 per cent of global biotech crops last year and have 40 per cent of world’s population (of seven billion).

Brazil stood out as an engine of growth globally in 2011, increasing its hectarage of biotech crops more than any other country in the world. It grows 19 per cent of the global hectarage of 160 million hectares and is consolidating its position by consistently closing the gap with the US.

The US continues to be the lead producer with 69 million hectares, (an average adoption rate of 90 per cent across its principal biotech crops) with particularly strong growth in maize (corn) and cotton in 2011 and the resumption of the planting of alfalfa as the fourth largest hectarage crop after maize, soybean and wheat.—Ashfak Bokhari