Global Hunger and Free Markets

Freedom From Hunger through Technology?

G8 would like to improve agricultural productivity through a technological agricultural revolution, more specifically, the fast-track adoption of genetically modified crops. A genetically modified organism (GMO) is one that has a foreign gene injected into its embryonic cells. Under the articles of agreement of WTO, the food giants have been granted unrestricted freedom to enter the seed markets of developing countries. The GM food have wide ranging implications for the farmer, the health concerns of the consumer and maintaining the rich biodiversity of the environment. Let’s consider a few of them:

• The GMO technology threatens livelihoods of farmers and locks them into bio serfdom. The farmer cannot save the GMO seeds for subsequent replanting without paying royalties to Monsanto or other biotech giants he has bought the seeds from, though this was his traditional practice since thousands of years. And the GMO seeds are expensive. This has been made possible by the acquisition of  exclusive “intellectual property rights” over native plant varieties and pirated centuries of farmers’ innovation in developing several varieties of rice, cotton, mustard, corn, and soy. To ensure that farmers have no option but to return to the seed companies year after year, biotechnology giants like Monsanto have developed ‘suicide seeds’ that produce sterile crops. The major agro biotech companies have also developed ‘traitor technology’, where seeds are engineered to produce negative traits unless treated with the company’s own chemicals.These are newer forms of colonialism that will convert an indigenous farmer into an industrial worker.
• The GM crops destroy the micro-organisms of the soil and the food chain that depend on it – weeds, insects, birds and other wildlife, and replace it with genetically uniform crops that are more susceptible to disease. They require the use of highly toxic ‘broad spectrum’ herbicides designed to wipe out all plants other than the crops that have been genetically engineered to tolerate the herbicide.
• Due to the threat of contamination, it is difficult for normal crops or organic crops to remain free from the impact of GM crops once these have been released. Secondary, unintended gene transfer can take place from GM pollens released into the environment. An example is the famous lawsuit Monsanto Vs Schmeiser: Classic David vs Goliath struggle

• There are evidences of the grave risks GM foods pose for human and animal health and for the environment, including creating new strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria, new viruses from those introduced into the transgenic plants, causing reactivation of dormant viruses and producing harmful effects including cancer.

Genetic engineering has failed to significantly increase crop yields. The marginal increase in growth achieved so far is much less than what has been achieved by conventional breeding and organic farming techniques. International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development reports that low-input, low-cost agro-ecological farming methods that reintegrate natural systems into agriculture can maximize sustainability, ecosystem services, and biodiversity.

So that’s what the Global Security Act sets out to do – expand the markets for agribusiness, destroy the environment as well as the livelihoods of rural farmers and in fact, perpetuate hunger.

Here’s food for thought: What will happen in the even of an unforeseen flood/drought that swipes clean the agricultural lands? Read Doom’s Day Seed Vault

Read: Free Markets and Globalization