I’ve been reading a book by Canadian author Margaret Atwood called Oryx and Crake. It’s a dystopic vision of the future, taking the unholy marriage of science and capitalism to a dark conclusion. A particular passage in the book caught my eye, describing the development of a new breed of chicken.

What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.

‘What the hell was it?’ said Jimmy.

‘Those are chickens,’ said Crake. ‘Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.’ …

'No need for added growth hormones,’ said the woman, ‘the high growth rate’s built in. You get chicken breasts in two weeks – that’s a three-week improvement on the most efficient low-light, high-density chicken farming operation so far devised. And the animal freaks won’t be able to say a word, because this thing feels no pain.’

‘Those kids are going to clean up,’ said Crake after they’d left. The students at Watson-Crick got half the royalties from anything they invented there. Crake said it was a fierce incentive. ‘ChickieNobs, they’re thinking of calling the stuff.’

Back in 2000, a news report about KFC feeding an unsuspecting Pakistani public genetically modified organisms – chicken poseurs if you will – that had no beaks, feathers or feet was published in a monthly news magazine in Pakistan. They later retracted the story, its editor telling me that he sees it as the biggest blunder of his editorial career at the magazine. Details of why the story is as fictitious as Atwood’s ChickieNobs are available here.

Fiction, however, may just be taking off from fact. It is true that animals are being tinkered with to maximise meat and minimise cost. So while we ponder the creepiness of eating a piece of meat injected with growth hormones or selectively bred to increase breast meat (Margaret Atwood aptly compares the feeling to breast implants – Pamela Chickenson anyone?), it’s happening to cereals, pulses and vegetables.

Population growth and climate change are raising fears that hunger and malnutrition will increase. Jonathan Foley, director of the new Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota , wrote in a New York Times blog:

First, it now appears that we will have to double world food production in the next 40 years given continued population growth, increasing meat consumption and pressure from biofuels.

Pakistan, however, was quick to the green revolution in the 1960s, outperforming India and Bangladesh in the use of hybrid seeds, mechanisation, and pest control. Wheat production nearly doubled in five years between 1965 and 1970 as a result of funding by international donor agencies like USAID and the collaboration of scientist Dr Norman Borlaug in developing new varieties of seeds. Dr. Borlaug eventually went on to win a Nobel Peace prize, but environmentalists have said the green revolution was really an oxymoron:

These previous Green Revolutions have proved to be unsustainable, having increased dependency on costly inputs such as fertilisers and patent-protected plant varieties.

Unfortunately, over the 20th century, agriculture has been converted from a solar-powered sector to one that depends on fossil fuels. Over time, green revolution farming technologies have led to soil erosion and salination; a dramatic decline in biological diversity (both cultivated and in the surrounding landscapes) and associated traditional knowledge; and a marginalisation of small farmers, who cannot afford the capital investment to buy inputs such as expensive fertilisers.

But given that the country’s agriculture is dependent on the waters of the Indus river system, whose source is the Himalayan glaciers, dependency should be switched to contingency. Thanks to global warming, the glaciers are melting 30 per cent faster than they used to while the last eleven years have been the hottest in the country. We can no longer rely on God and Nature for our bounties.

The question remains whether science is the answer. Pakistan has so far only used GM technology in cotton crops – illegally. While the Pakistani government has been pushing for official trials of transgenic cotton crops in league with US agriculture company Monsanto this year, the results of its use earlier have been patchy.

There had been efforts in the past to cultivate BT cotton in some areas illegally under an assumption that it would give much higher yield. In the year 2001-02, for instance, its cultivation was undertaken in the lower and upper Sindh areas from the seeds smuggled from India. The ministry of agriculture did not take notice of it. Two years’ observation of this transgenic variety, under the climatic conditions of upper Sindh, showed its performance was very erratic.

While the government is keen on BT cotton, others are not too happy.

In August this year, Action Aid Pakistan and thousands of farmers held protests about the government’s decision to allow Monsanto to formally begin BT cotton trials in the country. According to the anti-poverty agency Action Aid:

Many governments and and Transnational corporations (such as Monsato, Cargill, Nestlé, and Wall-Mart) are promoting Genetically Modified (GM) crops as a response to world hunger. However, ActionAid believes this approach seeks only to increase profits for biotech companies and ignores the real causes of hunger.

The real causes of hunger are political and economic: poverty, inequality, and poor access to land, food, markets and resources - GM crops do nothing to address these issues.

I just got a shiver down my spine. ChickieNobs come to life.

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