If biotech crops are not about feeding the world, what is the point?

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Het antwoord schijnt te zijn: per nieuwe eigenschap een prijsverhoging.
Net als MS, elke zoveel maanden (soms jaren;)een nieuwe versie, maar
jaarlijks het abonnement betalen.

Groet / Cees

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-08-11/the-stealth-threat-to-the-worlds-food-supply/
If biotech crops are not about feeding the world, what is the point? The
operative formula is biotechnology = chemicals + seeds.

The Stealth Threat to the World's Food Supply
by Bill Freese
August 11, 2009 | 8:32pm

Genetically engineered crops have been touted as the miracle way to feed
the planet. One food-safety expert argues that a biotech grab of the
world’s seed supply is actually the biggest threat to our dinner table.

Americans expect cutting-edge science to solve every conceivable problem,
and that includes the global food supply, which has been radically altered
in recent years by genetic engineering. This process involves splicing DNA
from bacteria, viruses, and other organisms into plants, and is supposed
to generate miracle crops to feed a hungry world. Promises of increased
yield, extra nutrients, and drought-tolerance are made by the likes of the
U.S. government, and influential donors like the Rockefeller and Gates
Foundations, but after two decades are still unfulfilled. Enthralled by
some highly publicized experiments, many well-meaning agricultural experts
seem blind to the quite different reality in the field.

Far from feeding the world, the biotech “revolution” that began in the
1990s has largely bypassed the world’s poor farmers. Over half of all
genetically engineered crops are grown in the U.S. and Canada, most of the
rest in South America. Biotech soybeans and corn are most prevalent, and
are grown primarily on large farms, for export, to feed livestock or fuel
cars (“biofuels”) in rich nations. In Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay,
food crops and the small farmers who grow them are being displaced by GE
soybean plantations to feed the cows of Europe and Japan. Rural poverty is
rampant in all three countries.

The most widely planted type of biotech crop is engineered to withstand
application of an herbicide to kill nearby weeds. With these
“herbicide-tolerant” crops, weed-killing chemicals reduce labor needs for
weed control, a particular benefit to larger growers. Monsanto has a near
monopoly in this field with its Roundup Ready line of crops. Problems
include an epidemic of Roundup-resistant weeds, and increased use of
Roundup and other herbicides to kill them. Most of the world’s small
farmers can’t afford pricey herbicides, anyway.

What about yield? Nothing to brag about here. The most widely cultivated
biotech crop, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, actually suffers from a
slight “yield drag” compared with conventional varieties. The Union of
Concerned Scientists found that conventional breeding practices are
responsible for yield increases in corn, while insect-resistant GE corn
reduces yield losses only under conditions of heavy pest infestation,
which are infrequent.

If biotech crops are not about feeding the world, what is the point? A
look at the industry is instructive. The operative formula is
biotechnology = chemicals + seeds. The world’s leading agrichemical
companies—Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, and Bayer—have bought up a
substantial chunk of the world’s seed supply. Genetic engineering is used
primarily to develop herbicide-tolerant crops, and so exploit synergies
between the firms’ chemical and seed divisions. On the horizon are biotech
crops engineered to tolerate multiple—up to seven or more – herbicides.

Gene patents are another troubling development. While such patents
normally apply to the foreign genes spliced into seeds, courts have
perversely interpreted these gene patents as granting biotech firms
comprehensive rights to the seeds that contain them. One consequence is
that a farmer can be held liable for patent infringement even if the
patented gene/plant appears in his fields through no fault of his own
(e.g. cross-pollination or seed dispersal). Another consequence is that
farmers can be sued for patent infringement if they save and replant seeds
from their harvest, so-called second-generation seeds. In the U.S.,
Monsanto has pursued thousands of farmers for allegedly saving its
patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds, extracting tens of millions of
dollars in damages from them in the process. Monsanto claims that patents
are necessary to ensure returns on its R&D in biotechnology, but this
merely begs the question of whether the world really needs more GE crops.

Biotech firms also have “Terminator” technology waiting in the wings.
Terminator is a genetic manipulation that renders harvested seeds sterile,
and represents a biological means to achieve the same end as patents:
elimination of seed-saving. While international opposition has thus far
blocked deployment of Terminator, Monsanto recently purchased the seed
company (Delta and Pine Land) that holds several major patents on the
technology (together with the U.S. Department of Agriculture). And while
Monsanto has pledged not to deploy Terminator, the company has stated that
this “pledge” is revocable at any time.

Biotech seeds are also quite expensive, two to over four times as much as
conventional varieties. The price ratchets up with each new “trait” that
is introduced. Seeds with one trait were once the norm, but are rapidly
being replaced with two- and three-trait versions. Monsanto and Dow
recently announced plans to introduce GE corn with eight different traits.
Farmers who want more affordable conventional seed, or even biotech seed
with just one or two traits, may soon be out of luck. As University of
Kentucky agronomist Chad Lee put it: “The cost of corn seed keeps getting
higher and there doesn’t appear to be a stopping point in sight.”
Developing countries that accept biotech crops can count on the same
steeply rising seed prices that American farmers now face.

Last year, an exhaustive three-year appraisal of world agriculture
sponsored by the United Nations and World Bank—the International
Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for
Development—concluded that biotech crops have little potential to
alleviate hunger and poverty. Instead, the IAASTD’s experts recommended
low-input agroecological techniques, empowerment of women, and trade
reform as the way forward for developing countries' agriculture.

Those findings resonated with my experiences in agricultural development.
Back in the early 1980s, when on a college program in India, I studied a
low-tech irrigation project in drought-prone Maharashtra. The keys to
success involved “harvesting” monsoon runoff in catchment zones to
replenish the water table, inexpensive electric motors to pump the stored
water for irrigation, and a firm commitment to grow water-sparing staples
like millet rather than water-intensive cash crops like sugarcane. Such
projects, sadly, were too few to stave off India’s current water crisis,
caused in no small part by massive reliance on high-yielding but
water-intensive “Green Revolution” crops. With world hunger on the rise
despite GE crops, it’s time we look just as skeptically this new “biotech
revolution” in agriculture.

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********