Food security: feeding the future

Rajni Bakshi is Gandhi Peace Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. 

The war over genetically modified organisms is a part of a larger and increasingly complicated global struggle

A controversy surrounding the World Food Prize (WFP) highlights how the fault-lines of power struggles are no longer essentially between nations. Civil society organizations across the world are taking on corporations and governments over who will secure our food future.

Interestingly, both WFP and its counter, an activist initiative known as the Food Sovereignty Prize, are based in the US. This year’s WFP is being shared by three biotechnology scientists for their work on genetically modified foods—two of them senior executives of agri-industry giants Monsanto and Syngenta. The Food Sovereignty Prize has gone to a peasant organization in Haiti with honourable mentions to a farmers group in Spain, one in Mali and the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective in India.

WFP, which has sometimes been referred to as the Nobel for agriculture, was founded in 1987. It was instituted by Nobel Laureate Norman E. Borlaug, commonly known as the father of the Green Revolution.

The Food Sovereignty Prize, in contrast, is the work of an activist network called the US Food Sovereignty Alliance. Members of this alliance include a wide range of groups working to end poverty, rebuild local food economies, and assert democratic control over the food system.

This tableau easily lends itself to a one-dimensional narrative. Proponents of genetically modified organisms (GMO) dismiss the protesters as being anti-science and anti-growth. The protesters condemn GMO as a Frankenstein technology than endangers both human health and bio-diversity. Both sides accuse each other of endangering future food security.

Over the last decade this polarization has manifested itself in most countries, including India. There is an urgent need to at least look beyond, if not overcome, this stalemate.

There are two dimensions to this dispute. One is over what is good science and how we might make choices about technology. The other has to do with the clash between command-and-control business models versus more equitable models that foster economic democracy.

Interestingly, Borlaug is best known for integrating various streams of agricultural research into viable technologies. Today, a plurality of approaches to agri-technology is the bone of contention. The “GMO war”, which tends to generate the loudest headlines, is one part of a larger and increasingly complicated global struggle.

There is no dispute about the need to accelerate responsible agriculture and lift millions of people out of poverty. But how is this goal to be met?

This is why the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2002 initiated the International Assessment on Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technologies for Development (IAASTD) as an initiative involving scientists, government officials and private sector representatives from 110 countries.

The IAASTD report, released in April 2008, concluded that current models of industrial agriculture cannot ensure future food security. While the report did not reject GMO, it clearly concluded that there is no basis for saying that future food security depends on GMO. The US, Canada and Australia were conspicuous among countries that refused to be signatories to the final report. However, the UK and France joined numerous developing nations in adopting the IAASTD report.

This means that all claims about GMO—for or against—need closer scrutiny. Anyone who suggests that science has settled the matter is not quite telling the truth.

It is, however, concerns about economic democracy that drive much of the opposition to the agri-business tilt of WFP. Entities such as the US Food Sovereignty Alliance are essentially opposed to business models that are privatizing seeds and promoting chemical-dependent agriculture that becomes more and more capital intensive. In particular, they are opposed to patent regimes that ensure that more and more of the surplus generated benefits a handful of firms.

These fears have grown following the US Supreme Court judgement, earlier this year, in the case of Monsanto vs Bowman. In a unanimous ruling, the court said that farmers cannot replant harvest from Monsanto’s patented genetically-altered soybeans without paying the company a fee. Though the legal implications of the ruling are said to be limited, it has nevertheless strengthened the case of those who oppose corporate control of agriculture.

It is not clear how this power struggle between big agri-business and other models of agriculture will be resolved. But the events in Des Moines this week may have a silver lining.

Ghana’s cardinal Peter Turkson, who is also president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, has been invited to speak at WFP ceremony. He also plans to appear at an event hosted by the Occupy the World Food Prize campaign. Turkson has earlier described economic dependence on agri business as a new form of slavery because “…if poor farmers have to buy every seed that they plant then it limits their ability and freedom to plant and grow food.” There is a need for many more leaders who, like Turkson, are keen to find a solution acceptable to both sides. Mint

Washington state sues lobbyists over campaign against GMO labeling

A lobbying group for major U.S. food manufacturers has violated campaign finance laws in its attempt to block a measure that would require labeling of genetically modified foods in Washington state, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the state's attorney general.

State Attorney General Bob Ferguson alleges that the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) illegally collected and spent more than $7 million while shielding the identity of its contributors.

GMA, which represents some of the largest food and beverage companies in the world, has been heavily lobbying against ballot initiative 522, set for a public vote in Washington state on November 5. The measure requires labels of goods containing ingredients made from genetically engineered crops as well as labeling of genetically engineered seeds and seed products sold in the state.

"Truly fair elections demand all sides follow the rules by disclosing who their donors are and how much they are spending to advocate their views," Ferguson said in a statement.

GMA is the largest donor to a "No on I-522" campaign, and the Attorney General's office said that the group set up a "Defense of Brands Strategic Account" within its organization and asked members to pay assessments that would be used to oppose the GMO labeling initiative. GMA then funded opposition efforts while shielding contributors' names from public disclosure, the attorney general alleges.

More than 300 companies are listed as members on GMA's website.

The attorney general's office said it would seek a temporary restraining order asking the court to order the GMA to immediately comply with state disclosure laws. The attorney general's office also said it would request civil penalties.

The group said in a statement that it was surprised by the lawsuit.

"GMA takes great care to understand and comply with all state election and campaign finance laws," the group said. "GMA will review its actions in Washington state and relevant statutes and continue to cooperate with state authorities to fully resolve the issue as promptly as possible."

The Yes on 522 campaign, which is pushing for labeling of GMO foods, said it was heartened by the lawsuit. The proponents of labeling are being heavily outspent in advertising and other campaigning efforts leading up to the election.

The latest campaign finance data reported to the state shows opponents raising more than $17 million and spending more than $13 million, compared to the proponents of labeling, who have raised about $5.5 million and spent about $5.4 million.

"It's clear that they broke the law," said Elizabeth Larter, spokeswoman for the Yes campaign. "They don't want to tell us who is funding the No on 522 campaign just like they don't want Washington consumers to know what is in their food." Reuters

World Food Prize takes on biotech, global warming

The World Food Prize Foundation is confronting both opposition to genetically modified crops and the divisive issue of global warming as experts and national leaders gather this week to talk about feeding a growing global population.

This year's prize was awarded to three biotechnology pioneers, including   scientist who works for Monsanto, which donates to the foundation.

The news infuriated environmental groups and opponents of large-scale farming.

The Occupy World Food Prize organization vows to protest again this year; several members were arrested last year.

The group claims genetically modified crops and large-scale farms supported by corporations are destroying family farms and the environment.

The World Food Prize attracts about 1,000 scientists, policy experts, and political leaders. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to attend this year. AP

New bill would block expansion of GMOs in Costa Rica

New bill would block expansion of GMOs in Costa Rica

Several lawmakers are supporting a bill that would place stringent controls on the growth of GMO crops. Costa Rica is the Central American country that most scrutinizes GMOs, and many Ticos oppose the use of biotech crops.

Costa Rican lawmakers proposed a bill Wednesday that would put a moratorium on the production of GMOs. Biotech companies say the move is "unnecessary." 

Environmentalists spread corn kernels and beat drums 

outside of San José's Legislative Assembly on Wednesday as four lawmakers announced their support for a bill that would place a moratorium on the expansion of genetically modified organisms in Costa Rica.

“This moratorium is urgent,” said José María Villalta, a lawmaker with the Broad Front Party and one of the bill’s sponsors. “GMOs pose risks to life and biodiversity, while only benefitting large corporations.”

The bill would prohibit the creation of new GMO projects or the expansion of those currently in Costa Rica. Companies that already have permission to grow or use GMOs could continue, but any genetically modified material would have to be contained indoors.

While environmental groups applauded the bill, biotechnology firms called a moratorium “unnecessary.”

“It is important to stress that countries resort to moratoriums when there is a reasonable doubt about a new technology,” said Martín Zúñiga, executive director for biotechnology company CropLife Latin America. “Agricultural biotechnology is a science that has been sufficiently investigated and proven to be positive for the world."

EU’s politics blocks biotech pipeline potential

Europe is closed for business when it comes to biotechnology, and its position will not change in the near future, an English farmer said at the recent International Biotechnology Symposium.

Paul Temple, a third-generation tenant farmer from Driffield, East Yorkshire, England, who planted biotech crops for three years before the EU ruled against the practice, spoke of the frustration “because from a distance the biotech business looks closed.”

“Most farmers have actually never seen (genetically modified) crops in the field in Europe. Most farmers don’t even consider growing GM crops because we’re not likely to grow them. It isn’t part of our equation, so it looks closed,” he said.

Temple said EU farmers are unaware of the global acceptance of biotech crops and don’t know of the amount of investments made in research and development.

“There is no government investment in programs on GM crops in Europe. There isn’t any government R and D that’s going to take this onto European fields,” he said.

“It backs up this feeling that Europe is anti-science, so we’re seeing major companies now walking out of Europe. BASF shut their trial facilities down, and recently we heard that Monsanto was not going to register those traits. These are really negative symbols.

“Farmers are as misinformed as the public. We live in the age of sound bites and Twitter, which is very useful for bits of information, but the kind of complicated background information that you need on this subject is sadly missing.”

Most European consumers, politicians and farmers are unaware of the need for protein imports.

“We are major importers. You often hear farmers saying, ‘Why don’t we grow them ourselves?’ Well, we can’t,” Temple said. “We might grow about 3 million tons of vegetable protein, but we import in excess of 30 million tons.

“We are hugely dependent on imports, the majority of which is GM, and it’s an act of hypocrisy that as farmers we see products coming in, but we aren’t allowed the opportunity or the choice of growing them.

“The import authorization is complex, and it’s political. The real risk for me as a European is that we end up with an uncompetitive livestock sector. We are dependent on protein trade, and if we upset the trade, we run the risk of damaging our livestock sector.”

Labeling is a contentious issue in Europe, and there has been a movement in the U.S., including legislation proposed in Illinois, to label GM-derived products.

“I tend to think that if you began to label it, some people wouldn’t understand. Retailers in the United Kingdom have dropped the GM-free feed requirements,” Temple said.

“We have identity-preserved, GM-free soya, but it’s significantly more expensive. The choice exists for the consumer in organic form, but we haven’t seen the public migrating to it. The public doesn’t really care.”

The biotech crops problem in the EU boils down to politics, according to Temple.

“Spain has adopted the use of GM crops. It’s had them for 10 years. It sorted out its supply chain and hasn’t had any problems,” he said.

“France was doing exactly the same until (then-President Nicolas) Sarkozy as an act of politics banned (GM crops) from cultivation. Despite the fact that the court ruled this ban illegal, the moratorium was held, and the currently president has reinforced his desire to maintain the ban. That’s the kind of negative news we have within Europe.

“Romania before it joined Europe was growing GM soya and exporting soya, but on joining the EU, it couldn’t grow it and now imports.”

The Directorate General for Health and Consumer Affairs of the European Commission overseas the GM portfolio.

“Every EU country provides a commissioner and sadly are not proving strong enough to make any form of leadership through this whole process,” Temple said.

Despite the commission’s stand, food safety never has been an issue.

“We have a European Food Standards Agency, and often its advice is ignored when it’s subjected to the political process,” Temple said.

He said there sadly is no hope for a change in the near future.

“We are noticing language changing with our politicians where there is support given strongly within the UK, but it is getting rid of the problems in Europe that will be the problem,” he said.

“We are seeing retailers dropping a visible opposition, but they’re not taking a visible profile of the necessity and possibilities if biotech is available.

“EU will remain import dependant. We are seeing limited trials of GM crops in field situations now. There are wheat trials in the UK. But the cost of policing the trials is actually more than the trial itself, so it has a long way to go.”

Despite the EU stance, biotech crops are recognized as being potentially vital for food security and sustainable intensification, and world-class science continues to be conducted in laboratories across Europe.

“The problem at the moment I don’t see how it will get out of the laboratories and into the fields. Politics is our pipeline blockage,” Temple said.

“Farming constantly needs new science to harness landscapes, new science to deal with and mitigate climate change and the volatility that we’re seeing and new genetics for progress. Farming needs new business models that adapt the technology.”

He said young farmers will need to do things “very differently from the way I’ve been able to do them and the way my parents were able to do them — the challenges they face will be far greater than I could ever imagine.”

Temple defined food security as global production and trade.

“Biotechnology that I’ve seen on my own farm offers the potential to solve problems, and it was with great frustration that after three years of growing it I had to stop because it was solving problems,” he said. “Europe simply fails to offer farmers choice.” agrinews

Tension over GM crops grows in Tanzania

Scientists say they can help, but regulations set strict liability on use

Students receive a lunch of corn and bean porridge at a primary school in the northern Tanzanian village of Engaruka. / Sharon Schmickle/Special to the Register

A typical Tanzanian family will not pass a day without eating ugali — a stiff porridge made from ground corn, somewhat like Italian polenta.

Would Tanzanians eat ugali if the flour came from genetically modified corn?

Tension over that question is tearing at the country, with scientists insisting the answer should be “yes,” while GM foes say, “No way!”

Most of Tanzania’s corn is grown by smallholder farmers who typically plant seeds from traditional varieties and rely on natural rains. But the rains have failed them. The country’s 44 million people suffered severe droughts in 2003, 2005 and 2011. Millions needed food handouts to survive.

Beyond drought, local scientists say this basic crop also is threatened by climate change, disease and pests.

Genetic modification could help overcome those problems, scientists say. The technology has been adopted by more than 17 million farmers in other countries.

Under current government regulations, though, Tanzanian scientists cannot conduct field trials with GM plants. And farmers cannot cultivate any crop developed with the new biotechnology.

Alois Kullaya is one of several local scientists who are urging the government to relax the regulations. He is principal agricultural research officer at Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute and also Tanzanian coordinator of a research consortium called Water Efficient Maize for Africa.

“We have finished confined laboratory trials from genetically modified seeds in 2009, but until now we can’t conduct field trials because of restrictive liability regulations, which means that all this research goes to waste,” Kullaya said.

Drought, disease drive need for modified crops

He said there is no question the technology is needed. Tanzania faces a future where farmers will have more mouths to feed under ever more difficult conditions — due to the double whammy of population growth and climate change.

Another threat comes from plant diseases. Several regions have been hit by viruses that cause maize lethal necrosis disease. Infected plants wither and wilt, with leaves turning from green to yellow. They often die before flowering. The disease can destroy an entire crop.

GM technology offers an eventual solution to that problem too, scientists say.

Under Tanzania’s biosafety regulations, though, developers of GM crops could be held liable for negative effects claimed in connection with them. The regulations, adopted in 2009, set out a “strict liability” principle. Essentially, it holds that anyone associated with importing, transporting, selling or using a GM product faces liability for any perceived harm.

Critics say this is a “guilty until proven innocent” approach.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, whose government has adopted an agricultural development blueprint dubbed Kilimo Kwanza, has said the regulations will be eased, but he has not given a specific time frame for doing so.

Tanzania’s East African neighbors take a different, fault-based, regulatory approach with higher standards for proving harm and negligence. So researchers developing GM crops have shied away from Tanzania and worked instead in Uganda and Kenya.

While Uganda and Kenya have not given final approval for commercial sales of GM crops, farmers in those countries have been able to see field trials demonstrating their effectiveness. In Uganda, for example, scientists are making headway in trials of GM bananas that resist a destructive wilt disease. Tanzanian farmers have lost thousands of acres of the crops to the same disease.

Anti-GMO activists defending regulations

Opponents of genetically modified organisms are urging Kikwete’s government to hold the existing regulations in place. To allow GM crops would be to risk injury to health and the environment, they argue.

“Whoever introduces GM crops should be responsible for whatever happens on the ground,” said Abdallah Mkindi, Coordinator of Tanzania Alliance for Biodiversity, a 19-member organization of environmental and organic farming groups.

He alleges that local scientists are a front for multinational seed companies. Those companies eventually will control Tanzania’s farmers if they are allowed to sell GM products, Mkindi and his allies maintain. Rather than improve food security, that prospect threatens food for the future, they say.

“GMO is not a solution to famine,” Mkindi said.

Farmers want options, technology that works

Cassava is another crop that scientists have targeted for genetic modification, inserting genes intended to help the widely consumed tuber resist diseases and pests.

Cassava farmers at Mapinga village near Dar es Salaam said yields have been poor in recent years because of cassava mosaic disease. Mwajuma Mpanju said her crop was wiped out by the disease three years ago.

Farmers are interested in any technology that works, she said. All tools should be available so that farmers themselves can choose what is best to meet their needs.

What farmers want, she said, is choice — a variety of seeds and tubers on the market.

Indeed, scientists warn that Tanzanian farmers may take to the GM crops on their own if they see remarkable success in Uganda and Kenya.

After Burkina Faso adopted BT cotton, which contains a defense against destructive insects, farmers in neighboring West African countries reportedly obtained the seeds even though they were illegal in those countries.

“In Uganda, BT banana is doing very well,” Kullaya said. “If we don’t allow GMO field trials ... farmers in (Tanzania) will likely adopt the variety.”desmoinesregister