Elsewhere, executives from the Monsanto Corporation have gone as far as to promote themselves as part of the solution to the world's food and environmental problems: 'sustainable agriculture is only possible only with biotechnology and imaginative chemistry', they claim in a 1990 article entitled 'Planetary Patriotism'. Similarly, a recent advertisement from Monsanto depicts maize growing in the desert with the caption: "Will it take a miracle to solve the worlds hunger problems?". Implicit in these messages is that to oppose biotechnology is to reject the best hope for a solution to world hunger and to perpetuate the suffering of starving children.

Despite the evidence that genetically engineered crops may provide higher yields in the short term (it remains to be seen whether they do so in the long term) there are a number of good reasons why these arguments simply do not stand up to analysis. On the contrary there is plenty of evidence to suggest that biotechnology will more than likely reduce food and livelihood security for the worlds poor. Here are six reasons why biotechnology and food security can never be compatible:

1. Biotechnology can never be a cure for hunger - Famines are not caused by lack of food but by lack of access to food and alternative sources of income in times of crisis. There are ample reserves of food in the world today yet the numbers of malnourished run into hundreds of millions. Increasing agricultural production (even assuming that this is possible through biotechnology) whilst leaving the structural causes of poverty and hunger unaddressed is a recipe not for feeding the world but for continuing to starve sizable numbers within it.

2. Biotechnology creates dependency - Biotechnology goes hand in hand with intensive agriculture, with single crops in large fields. The majority of Third World farmers are small-scale, farming a variety of crops. By switching to genetically engineered seeds they have to change their practices and become dependent on the companies which provide the "package" of seeds, herbicides, fertilizers, irrigation systems, etc. In India, farmers using Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds pay an extra $50 - $65 per acre as a 'technical fee' over and above the price of seed. Farmers who do business with Monsanto must sign a contract stating that they will not buy chemicals from any one else.

3. Biotech Companies can not be trusted - There is nothing in the environmental record of Corporations like DuPont or Monsanto, who are leading proponents of biotechnology, to suggest that they should be trusted now. These same companies have always promoted non-sustainable, industrial, socially inequitable agriculture. Monsanto remains one of the largest polluters in the United States. The company was responsible for 5% of the 5.7 billion pounds of toxic chemicals released in to the US environment in 1992

4. Biotechnology reduces diversity - Biotechnology reduces diversity by promoting certain species over others, so reducing the genetic pool even further. We are already massively over-dependent on a handful of food crop varieties. Genuine sustainable agriculture on the other hand promotes multi-cropping and companion planting as the best resistance to pests, viruses and changes in climate. Traditional varieties of subsistence food crops are often more nutritious than the high-yield varieties promoted by the agro-chemical and seed companies.

5. Biotechnology encourages 'Biopiracy' - Business interests and chemical companies use research into unusual genes from plant, animal and even human genes, as a means of getting control over local genetic resources - once they have manipulated that gene they reinforce control, and earn massive profits, by 'patenting'. Many developing countries were opposed to this at GATT/World Trade Organisation negotiations and continue to express concern at the way 'trade related intellectual property rights' (TRIPS) work in favour of the industrialised countries. The creation of monopoly rights to biodiversity utilisation can have serious implications for erosion of national and community rights to biodiversity and devalue indigenous knowledge systems . Sustainable food and livelihood security in the Third World is likely to be weakened rather than strengthened as a result.

6. The world's starving do not make good customers - What evidence is there to show that 20 years of biotechnology research, a billion dollars of expenditure and countless hours of scientific labour has benefited the world's hungry or resource poor farmers in the South? Science-based biotechnology research has so far tended to benefit the high external input agriculture of the North. Most biotech products have been aimed at consumer niche markets in the North - Calgene's $25 million 'Flavr Savr' tomatoes for example, whose only advantage over competitors is three - five days' extra shelf life. A fraction of the money that has been poured into biotechnology research could have a far greater impact if it was invested in strengthening and promoting the huge variety of sustainable and alternative agriculture possibilities that already exist in the world.

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   Last Updated on 2/23/98
   By Karen Lutz
   Email: karen@hillnet.com