John Madeley
St James, Piccadilly, London 15 October 2003
Global
Development Forum
Is GM technology
driven solely by profit?
John
Madeley
The short answer is yes. Look at how the big food companies are using GM to intensify their control of the food chain, look at their record, and I submit that the answer can only be yes.
The food chain - this stretches of course from seeds through to the final customer, and agribusiness corporations already have considerable control over the chain. They are now trying to use GM foods to consolidate that control - through patents and other property rights on seeds, through links with trading corporations, and through perhaps their deadliest weapon of all, the contamination of non-GM crops by GM. The weakest links in their chain are you and I, potential customers the world over, because without us, they are sunk; and at the other end of the chain, are many millions of small scale farmers. Industry hopes to solve that one by contaminating their crops.
I used to think that GM crops could have a play in feeding the world, provided the industry could satisfy us on 3 grounds - safety, the environment, and on whether the companies were willing to let local people have a real say over how the technology was developed and used. I’ve changed my mind, or at least I’ve modified my view. On safety, the jury is still out, but on the other two grounds the game is up, industry cannot satisfy us and the reasons why are because they are driven by profit.
The environment - almost every day that passes bring news of yet more contamination by GM technology. Contamination of non-GM crops by GM crops is now occurring at a serious rate and is irreversible Last week in Mexico, peasant farmers, indigenous communities and civil society organisations released the results of their own tests. They found that GM contamination of native maize in at least nine states is - ‘far more serious and widespread than previously assumed’. It was two years ago, that Mexico's Ministry of Environment reported that extensive GM maize contamination had been found in farmers' maize varieties in two states, with up to 35 per cent of non-GM maize polluted. Now its far worse, from 2 to 9 states in 2 years.
Contamination can happen during breeding, propagation and processing of seeds, but probably more ruinously, it can be spread by the wind. Pollen from GM crops is blown onto the fields of farmers who do not want them. And its now clear that whatever industry claims, there are no safe distances between GM and non-GM crops. The answer to the industry is blowing in the wind. Wheat farmers in North Dakota who live almost 50 miles away from GM canola, (rape seed), say that GM canola is a pest in their wheat. 50 miles away!
What does industry think about this - goodie, goodie. A biotech industry consultant has admitted that the industry's hope 'is that over time the market is so flooded with GM food that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender'.
An official of USAID, the US aid agency which has received some funds from Monsanto, said last August at the Rio+10 summit: 'In four years, enough GM crops will have been planted in South Africa that the pollen will have contaminated the entire continent'.
This is what is at stake. GM genes that contaminate non-GM crops are patented and all crops containing these genes become the property of the corporations which hold these patents. Farmers end up paying for something they did not want and which threatens their crops.
Take the case of Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser. He’s grown canola on his land for 40 years, but when a neighbouring farmer planted Monsanto’s GM canola seed in an adjacent field, his life became a nightmare. Schmeiser - a former major of his town and MP in a regional assembly - wasn’t interested in GM canola as his own seeds suited him fine.
But Schmeiser noticed some stray canola plants in a ditch, which herbicide failed to kill. GM canola had drifted onto his farm and was engineered to be immune to Monsanto’s weedkiller, Roundup. What did Monsanto do? Compensate him? Say sorry? No. They sued Schmeiser for growing their GM canola without a licence.
Under Canadian patent law, it is illegal for farmers to reuse patented seed, or to grow Monsanto’s GM seed without signing a licensing agreement. It seems that, without his consent, Monsanto’s ‘gene police’ had invaded Schmeiser’s farm and taken away seed samples. And Monsanto won their case.
Percy Schmeiser is a victim of the patenting system and of genetic pollution, contamination. from GM crops. The ruling against him has implications for farmers everywhere. It establishes a dangerous precedent that farmers can be forced to pay royalties on GM seeds found on their land, even if they did not buy the seeds or benefit from them.
Today it’s canola, tomorrow it could be the staple food crops of the poor. No farmer is safe. The ‘profit is everything’ nature of the biotech industry is seen in the way that Percy Schmeiser was treated.
As far giving local farmers a say, well that’s not on. Five corporations hold over a thousand biotech patents on food crops, including important staples such as maize, rice, sorghum and soybean - Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Dow and Aventis. And Monsanto and DuPont, the two largest holders of these patents, cooperate closely by sharing their biotechnologies. Monsanto owns all of the patented GM soya seeds planted worldwide and collects royalties from thousands of farmers.
For 10,000 years small farmers have grown and developed their own seeds. If GM seeds spread everywhere, then 10,000 years of tradition will literally be blown away. Small independent farmers would cease to exist in the way we know them. They would have no option but to buy the seeds of the corporations, they would become the serfs of the corporations.
This debate is not ultimately about plant breeding, it’s about profit, it’s about power. If industry gets its way the control it exercises would be a mirror image of state communism; power would reside with the very few, at the expense of the very many.
The industry says that GM will feed a hungry world. No, it’s more to enslave a hungry world. We need to grow more food they tell us. I happen to agree with them, it’s the only thing I do agree with that about. While poverty is the root cause of hunger and while there is enough food in the world to feed everyone it it was distributed fairly, and while using grain inefficiently to fatten livestock does not help, the world will need more to grow more.
But - you don’t need GM to do it. For 15 years I edited a magazine called International Agricultural Development. During that time I visited most of the world’s international agricultural research centres, there are 16 of them, spread over every continent and funded mostly with development aid money. At those centres, I’ve seen some remarkable work. At the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, eg. scientists have developed varieties of wheat and maize capable of coping with very cold and very hot wealthier. At the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria scientists have developed varieties of cassava that are resistant to drought. In Syria at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, I’ve seen durum wheat that can grow in exceptionally high temperatures. All these things are going on, with conventional breeding techniques. Scientific applications are growing more food without GM technology.
In some ways, even more important is that in many parts of the world, farmers are developing their own ways of increasing food output, through organic agriculture, through permaculture and are substantially increasing their yields. Peter will say more about that.
But, I’ve heard biotech industry spokespeople say, we can make a contribution with for example Vitamin A rice. At the WTO meeting in Cancun last month, US Agriculture Secretary Anne Veneman was pushing this at a press conference. Oh dear. A normal serving of Vitamin A rice will provide no more than 4 per cent of a person’s Vitamin A requirements. 4 per cent! You could get that from a carrot. Why invent a wheel when there already is a wheel? Why? Because there ain’t no money in carrots.
Let’s see GM for what it is, the pursuit of profit. Why take the risk of going any further with GM technology, why put 3W farmers under threat? GM foods are not inevitable. I believe they will have no future if there greater awareness of what is going, an awareness that means people over the world saying no to this industry.
John Madeley is a best-selling author, journalist and broadcaster, specialising in economic and social development issues.