My friends sometimes get mad at me when this subject comes up. Calestous Juma of Harvard passed on a link to a thoughtful editorial in the November 26 issue of Nature, which is one of the premier science journals, respected around the world. The subject is people going hungry, especially in Africa, and the desire for or opposition to using agricultural technology – including genetically modified foods and organisms – to help solve the crisis.
In the editorial, Nature’s editors speak of environmentalists, policy-makers, scientists and industry reps, who have been meeting both formally and informally for some time to find common ground and a way forward. That’s the good news: people of good will are meeting. Specifically, the African Union’s High-Level Panel on Modern Biotechnology – which brought environmental leaders like Tewolde Egziabher, head of Ethiopia’s Environmental Protection Authority, together with scientists like Calestous Juma of Harvard (he is an ardent and active promoter of technology for Africa) and industry leaders like Cheick Modibo Diarra, chairman of Microsoft in Africa. According to Nature: “The group eventually came to a consensus that Africa’s nations cannot afford to do without new technologies in agriculture – but that all new technologies would need appropriate safeguards to protect human health and the environment.”
Sounds reasonable. The Nature editorial also said: “Despite the virulent opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops in some quarters, many believe that progress in areas such as drought-tolerant or nutritionally fortified plants could make a big difference in many of the poorest countries.”
The fact is that hunger and its potential cures are a tough and heartbreaking subject. On the one side of the GM wars – not only in Africa but around the planet – food scientists and biotech companies such as Monsanto believe that genetically modified foods might help reduce food costs, increase yields, bring some barren lands into cultivation and help feed billions as global warming affects agriculture in this century. Our century, after all, will be a century of rapid natural changes – with the climate changing, with helpful species such as bees suffering mysterious ailments and with alien or invasive species moving in. On the other side of the GM wars, however, are well-intentioned environmentalists, who believe just as strongly that GM foods will destroy the natural world and human health.
I have questions. What is hunger exactly? When does hunger become starvation? How many of Earth’s 6.7 billion inhabitants are hungry? How many are starving? Are the world’s citizens hungrier now – starving more – than a century ago or a few decades ago? Which part of the globe has the hungriest people? Is there hunger in the U.S., and what does that mean?
It’s not straightforward to find information about world hunger or GM foods on the Internet. There’s a lot of cyber-shouting going on.
Is there scientific evidence against GM technologies for agriculture? As a science editor who spends her days seeking out science online, I wonder where is that evidence? Are people’s fears are founded in real science, or not? If GM foods are harmful, where are the food scientists – the true experts – speaking out against GM technology?
No one – not scientists, not environmentalists, not policy makers – wants an ecological catastrophe. No one wants to see people hungry, either. People of good will are meeting, and isn’t that what’s needed? Shouldn’t we all just take a breath, listen to the other side a minute, and search for appropriate safeguards to the new technologies that might feed hungry people? Certainly the various sides are needed to balance each other, in what’s become a very very complicated world – a world with billions who will need to eat this evening, and tomorrow – and with scientists telling us that humans and nature are coupled in a profound way.
By the way, a brief Google search also revealed that Sir David King, the former UK government’s chief scientist, in September blamed hunger in Africa in part on western middle class rejection of GM foods. He said: “The problem is that the western world’s move toward organic farming – a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food – and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across the whole of Africa … with devastating consequences.”
Tell me what you think.
The photo above is called There Is No Africa. From Turkairo‘s photostream.
Need more data. How exactly do GM foods harm people and the environment?
Precisely.
One of the best accounts of the debate in Robert Paarlberg’s new book, “Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa” http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/PAASTA.html.
Dear Deborah,
Will you please direct me to resource materials with arguments why African scientists say no to GMOs?
Marta,
The African Centre for Biosafety http://www.biosafetyafrica.net/ is a good starting point.
Calestous
Nice post.
Let’s hope that “people of good will meeting” can cut through the realities of the global economic downturn, as well as the entrenched power of the incumbents who stand to lose market share to the emerging technologies espoused by the proponents of GM solutions.
In order to do so, the GM proponents will need greater support from the media, which is often influenced by incumbents (either directly or indirectly).
John
John,
Now we face a double crisis: food and finance:
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/agm08/jvb/jvbagm2008.pdf
We will need to invest more in creativity and innovation.
Calestous
Thank you all for joining this discussion.
I looked briefly at the African Centre for Biosafety http://www.biosafetyafrica.net/
Calestous … in this press area of this site, I found a November 20 2008 release titled Study Suggests GM Foods Cause Infertility. Here’s the first paragraph of the press release: A GM variety of maize approved for planting and food use in South Africa has been linked to a threat to fertility in an official study published this month. In one of the very few long-term feeding studies ever conducted, the research sponsored by the Austrian government suggests that eating genetically modified food appears to act as a birth control agent, potentially leading to infertility.
And here is more information about the study in a footnote: The Austrian scientists who conducted the study performed several long term feeding trials with laboratory mice over a course of 20 weeks. One of the studies was a so-called reproductive assessment by continuous breeding (RACB) trial, in which the same parent generation gave birth to several litters of baby mice. The parents were fed wither with a diet containing 33% of a GE maize variety (NK 603 x MON 810), or a closely related non-GE variety. A decrease in litter size and weight was found to be statistically significant in the third and fourth litters in the GE-fed mice compared to the control group.
These two paragraphs are very different in tone. The first uses words like “threat,” “birth control” and “infertility.” The second speaks of a “statistically significant” decrease in litter size and weight in some (not all) offspring of mice fed with GE maize.
To me, the difference in this wording sounds like bias – but perhaps I’m looking for bias. What’s your take on the scientific evidence against GM foods?
Deborah
Hello All,
Calestous had trouble posting the following and asked me to post these links for him … he wrote:
I was involved on a committee of the US National Academy of Sciences which generated a series of reports which concluded that GM foods were as safe as their conventional counterparts. Here are the reports:
Genetically Modified Pest-Protected Plants: Science and Regulation
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9795
Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants: The Scope and Adequacy of Regulation
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10258
Ecological Monitoring of Genetically Modified Crops: A Workshop Summary
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10068
Animal Biotechnology: Science Based Concerns
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10418
Biological Confinement of Genetically Engineered Organisms
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10880
Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10977
Global Challenges and Directions for Agricultural Biotechnology: Workshop Report
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12216
These conclusions are similar to those arrived at by European scientific academies and represent the state of knowledge of the field.
Calestous, thank you for this amazing collection of links
why no discussion about seed patents and the corporate control of germ plasm? This seems to me to be the biggest issue with GMO. The quick erosion of agricultural genetic diversity that follows the implementation of GMO technologies is profound, as well as the associated loss of cultural/agricultural knowledge. check out http://www.seedsavers.org
The last report cited above deals with intellectual property issue. The problem of saving seed is not unique to transgenic crops. It also applies to other crops bred usuing conventional means and should be addressed in its own right. The lost of biodiversity is largely a product of the use of monocultures in agriculture. Such farming systems are independent of the methods used to confer traits to crops. The Green Revolution resulted in extensive genetic erosion but did not involve the use GMOs. It is important to maintain biodiversity and I commend the impportant work done by Seed Savers and other organizations. This work needs to be supported on its own merit and not on the basis of misleading information and the sources of genetic erosion. Dealing the world’s food crisis will require the use of all the tools available to humanity. No single approach can offer all the solutions. Even worse, approaches that seek to exclude some methods–wether they involve transgenics or organic farming–would put humanity at even greater risk.
Viewing the “Green Revolution” as a historical movement, an era whose implications have past, may be also misleading. I am of the observation that the policies and technologies of our day are indeed a very obvious continuation of the green revolution monocultures, and “fence row to fence row” agricultural thinking. How else to explain the vast clones of corn and soybeans in the fields here in Nebraska. Are not GMO crops also genetically narrow?
Indeed, no single approach can offer all the solutions to global hunger, although preserving and empowering extant food and food-systems seems at times to be missing from the hunger debate. This a cultural/soft science approach that is too often skipped in our labs and offices, for the more glamourous debate of I know the GMO issue better than you.
This past June, it was reported that a study performed by the Swiss Department of the Environment (Bafu) establishes the ‘safety’ of gm plants – they were NOT ecologically harmful to insect pests. An additional study concluded that bt corn does not harm biodiversity.
See also: http://fbae.org/news_bt-corn-does-not-harm-biodiversity.html
Here are some indicative but not conclusive findings that cast doubt over ecological catastrophism: http://www.agbioforum.org/v9n3/v9n3a02-brookes.htm
There are many good links here. Thank you all for visiting this blog and contributing to this discussion.
Australian cotton growers have have had access to GM cotton for 14 years now with profound results on the environment and society. We have seen an 85 percent reduction in pesticide use. India has seen the same in their cotton, and in just 6 short years have gone from being one of the worlds largets importers to the second largest exporter of cotton in the world- all because of their uptake of GM cotton. They too are under great pressure from foreign NGOs to remain GM free, but the facts have been evident and the farmers have rioted when it was suggested they would be denied the benefits of GM technology.
Australian canola growers were denied access to the technology that their major competitor Canada had when all the states that grew canola banned GM crops (excluding cotton that was already grown) nearly a decade ago.
This year, amidst much anticipation, the eastern states were allowed to grow GM canola and it has been an outstanding success. The so-called “green groups” have been campaigning long and hard against it and still do not stop their rhetoric, but now that Austalian canola growers have been exposed to the benefits of the technology, there will be no turning back. Already we are seeing a change in the air in West Australia, and South Australia will surely be forced to follow.
We have a saying here that “you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time!”
The biggest impact from GM crops is yet to come, but it is just around the corner. Drought, salt, frost and disease resistance will transform those agricultural enterprises and countrys that have access to the traits. And there are many as yet undisclosed traits that the companies and research institutions hold as a close secret due to the commercial realities of a competitiive environment. These traits will transform the world we now know for the betterment of all mankind.
The Indians have not all been fooled, the Australians have not all been fooled, and I hope the South Africans will not all be fooled even for some of the time.
The story of Canadian canola growers isn’t all positive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser
This of course only applies to those farmers who choose not to grow GMO, but the case has obvious implications for organic markets and traditional local ecotype varieties of seed.
Again, if the question for Africa is hunger alleviation, would not a larger discussion about food distribution, grain export, and the commodification of food stuffs also be appropriate to weave into a GM discussion?
Brad, thank you for bringing Percy Schmeiser’s story into this discussion. We can’t ignore the fact that GM seeds are under patent by biotech companies such as Monsanto, and the implications of this fact for small farmers around the globe. I welcome others’ thoughts on this issue.
With so many human beings on Earth, it’s a complicated world.
And, again, I’d like to bring up the notion of people of good will meeting together to resolve differences. If we can’t act toward one another with good will – in a world of 6.7 billion humans, projected to be 9 billion humans by 2050 – how will the century pass for us, and what will it look like for our children?
There is another side to the story of Percy Schmeiser that isnt as widely repeated as the tale he tells.
http://monsanto.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=59&item=164
Contrary to popular belief, Monsanto doesn’t go around suing small farmers because seed has blown into their field.
http://monsanto.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=59&item=137
Thank you Chris. Most stories do have two sides.
There are some 50,000 genes in corn, and other plants have similarly large numbers of genes. Traditional methods for developing new cultivars make wholesale changes in the genome. Genetic modification seeks to make more specific changes in the genome, but then crop breeders typically return to traditional approaches to obtain useful cultivars with the new trait.
Of course it is important to test and be sure that the new varieties are safe. Indeed, I suggest that we should generally be more thoughtful about our food chain. People are already suffering lots of health problems, including in Europe, from eating too much of the wrong foods.
However, you should realize that all crops are genetically modified from their wild precursors, and that different genetic modifications can have different effects. While one genetic modification may be problematic, another may well be safe.
Scientists are discovering new techniques for getting the genetic potential into plants to resist pests and diseases, to resist unfavorable climate or soil conditions, or to improve nutrition. The techniques can radically increase the speed with which new varieties are developed. In many countries it has been possible to utilize such varieties safely.
We have a tendency to fear the unknown more than we fear traditional risks. We should not allow that tendency to blind us to the real risks of hunger, nor to overestimate the risks of GM foods. We should especially not assume that the discovery that one genetic modification has negative impacts implies that all modifications have (the same) negative impacts.
There are also the economic and political dimensions of anti-GMO bias.
In particular, I refer to disguised health & environmental regulatory protectionism being practiced by European governments at the behest of European companies not able to exploit the technologies regionally and by the activist community.
http://www.itssd.org/Publications/Kogan TNI 77FINAL.pdf;
See: http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/27/edkogan_ed3_.php ;
It is also critical, for purposes of crafting a balanced and objectively benchmarked legal framework to evaluate the safety/harmfulness of gm products, that the correct scientific paradigm be employed. Arguably, the paradigm of provable or likely ‘risk’, notwithstanding uncertainty, rather than possible, hypothetical ‘hazard’ should serve as the definitive benchmark as it traditionally has.
This difference in scientific paradigm (evaluation standard) correlates to an analogous legal distinction between the terms ‘precautionary approach’ which is incorporated within the text of the UN Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety and recognized also within Article 5.7 of the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement, and the extra-WTO European precautionary principle, which is NOT. A risk paradigm, by definition, explicitly takes into account economic costs and benefits of use versus nonuse, whereas a hazard paradigm ignores the weighing of economic costs and benefits, and instead focuses on the environmental externalities of use and the environmental benefits of nonuse.
See: http://www.itssd.org/Publications/GTCJ_04-offprints_Kogan2.pdf .
In other words, the issue of science has increasingly become politicized, and as a result, novel technologies like gm, and even novel production processes have been banned or severely restricted because of fears or false pretenses surrounding scientific ‘uncertainties’ (the unknowable unknowables) especially within Europe, and by extension, its trading partners – i.e., former African colonies.
I hope this helps.
Great to see Jeff Bidstrup posting here. Jeff for anyone who doesn’t know received the 2008 Dean Kleckner Trade and Technology Award for all his excellent work promoting GM. Kleckner’s one of our former American Farm Bureau presidents and has also done a great job of promoting US farm interests in the face of trade protectionism.
Great to see all of you posting here. Thank you. Speaking for myself … I learned a lot.
No scientist has ever proven that GM foods are 100% safe. None. Furthermore it will take at least another century to prove that GM foods are not the precusor for increasingly new diseases and drug resistant strains. Until that time please do not inflict extra burdens on Africa. We have suffered enough.
Dear Indagano,
Unfortunately, there is no such thing in life as “100% safe”. Thus far NO scientific proof anywhere in the world has been provided to establish that GM causes harm to human health.
If you continue to embrace the ‘negative’ burden of proof mentality that is the antithesis of ‘Enlightenment era thinking’ as a template for African regulatory systems, then you will see Africa fall further behind the rest of the world.