Zambia: Why Zambia Must Reject GM Crops

ACCEPTING genetically modified crops (GMs) in Zambia could be the greatest betrayal to the ideals of the late President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa.

Dr Mwanawasa fought a spirited fight against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) foods being brought into Zambia. He will be remembered for his stand when he rejected the donation of GMO maize from the United States and ordered thousands of yellow maize out of the country in 2002.

The President's order came at a time when Zambians faced the spectre of hunger due to a crippling drought and poor yield. Quickly the US acted to "avert a looming famine" with a seemingly appropriate lifeline donation which did not seem so to Dr Mwanawasa.

The rejection promptly drew a stinging backlash unimaginable from Washington and its allies. Dr Mwanawasa was told to accept responsibility for the impending deaths of Zambians from hunger.

Dr Mwanawasa had put Zambia on the spotlight but fortunately, against the prophecies of doom, not a single Zambian perished as a result of the rejection of yellow maize.

On the contrary, the rejection propelled Zambia to its unprecedented agricultural policy of the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP). Since then Zambia has become a grain basket of Southern Africa recording successive bumper harvests each year.

Amid the controversy, Dr Mwanawasa appointed a team of Zambian scientists that visited countries with GMO programmes, prominent among them US, to meet their fellows, critical or supportive, for their views.

Clearly, the fall in maize production in the receding agricultural season has evidently ignited the current debate, tasting the waters, so they say. They want to psychic Zambians in anticipation of shortage of food next year as a result and lay ground for the importation of GMOs.

Last month two articles in support of the GMOs appeared in the Times of Zambia on November 27 and 30 written by IRIN, soliciting or better still, campaigning for the introduction of GMO foods in Zambia. In editorial etiquette the story must be serialized, dramatic or sponsored to get such attention or else one is a material for the spike.

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