Africa/Global: UN FAO report on biotechnology misquoted and exploited

Press Release; Boycotted until 1200 GMT, May 20, 2004.

Selective references from the UN Report on Agricultural Biotechnology,
(Agricultural Biotechnology, Meeting the needs of the poor) misrepresent the
systematic problems facing food security in developing nations.

By Glenn Ashton

18 May 2004.

The UN report entitled "Agricultural Biotechnology, Meeting the needs of the
poor" and supplemented by a press release, "The gene revolution; great
potential for the poor but no panacea" raises some valid issues. However,
due to its inherent ambiguities, it has led to a misplaced emphasis being
placed on the potential of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to provide
a solution to hunger and poverty in developing nations by most commentators,
mainly from the developed world. In fact the report pronounces that GM or
even biotechnology cannot be seen as a panacea.

Most of the initial international mainstream media emphasis has
misrepresented important sections of the UN report. Instead of reporting and
commentating, news copy has clearly been influenced by industry aligned PR
being run on newswires, that is directed to increase the market penetration
of those who already dominate the market in GMO crops.

Central to the misrepresentations made by groups wanting to use the UN
report to support their interests (such as a prominent report from the US
State Department, entitled "GM Crops Could Greatly Benefit Poor, FAO
Reports") is the abuse of the term "modern biotechnology." This is does
not - as most commentators clearly assume - include only GM crops, but also
other far more accessible, affordable and practical methods of biotechnology
that do not present the same levels of risk and needs for extensive
monitoring systems as do GMOs. There has been a clear attempt to muddy the
water by passing off GMOs as a far more relevant option than they are
presented to be in the report and which flies in the face of cautionary
comments contained within the report.

On closer reading, while the report states that GM crops may provide some
solutions, it cautions that they cannot be seen as the panacea they are
widely portrayed to be. It insists that science-based criteria must be
utilised to assess the usefulness of any input from biotechnology, on a case
by case basis, particularly the environmental effects of GMOs. These must
include transparent, representative and democratic oversight of any new GM
crops or agricultural products. Such science-based oversight has, to date,
been made extremely difficult by those who stand most to benefit by the
introduction of GMOs. Hurdles to the transparent regulation or oversight of
their products have been widely erected in practice and the undemocratic
introduction of present GM traits has been insufficiently dealt with in the
report.

The report even hedges its certainty about the safety of food derived from
GMOs. While recognising that scientific consensus deems GM food safe under
various criteria, it also points out clearly that these crops are not
without risk and that a significant degree of uncertainty remains around the
effects of these products over time. It notes that these risks will be
difficult to detect.

The report also says that other aspects of biotechnology, such as tissue
culture and genomics are more relevant and beneficial for the poor than
transgenic technology. It therefore takes an extremely cynical reading of
this report to arrive at some of the conclusions that have been circulated
by both the US State Department and the industry itself immediately after
the release of report.

The UN report highlights cotton as a success story in both China and Africa.
In the Chinese example it cites significant pesticide reductions. However it
must be borne in mind that cotton demands particularly high levels of
chemical inputs to produce a profitable crop. Now, all that has happened is
that some chemicals have been partially replaced by patented GM traits, that
in turn absorb most of the profit from any yield increases. Any reduction in
chemical use in relation to cotton is welcome but the original unacceptably
high level of chemical inputs must be remembered when considering this as a
so-called 'beneficial example' of GM crops. Cotton remains a high input crop
and it is for this reason that it is so attractive to industry.

In the South African case of GM cotton, studies have shown that the data
used in ascertaining the increase of yields have been quoted selectively and
are flawed. Agricultural debts by smallholders in the main smallholder
cotton-growing region have increased by 50% since the adoption of GM cotton.
More worryingly the cotton industry in South Africa as a whole has laid off
over 50, 000 workers since adopting GM cotton. Hence it can be shown that GM
cotton has disadvantaged rather than assisted the most needy sectors of
society. Cotton is also a cash crop and does not address the needs of food
security. This project has also seen significantly increased extension
services, credit availability and other capital intensive inputs that are
effectively ignored. Had these services been made available without GM
crops, the results would have in all likelihood have been far more
impressive, if a proper integrated farming programme was adopted.

African groups generally agree that a more specific research agenda on
diverse biotechnology, without the current emphasis on GMOs, could indeed
benefit developing nations. However, scarce national and regional resources
inhibit such potentially useful programmes.

Extensive pressure from developed nations, especially the US, to accept GMOs
has diverted significant expertise from the research and development of
relevant and effective biotechnology programmes in developing nations. In
East Africa, a multimillion dollar investment in virus resistant sweet
potatoes has failed dismally, despite involving more than a dozen PhDs and
graduate scientists, funded by the World Bank. At the same time a small
breeding programme in Uganda has successfully achieved the same aim of virus
resistance by conventional breeding at a fraction of the human and debt
costs. Instead of building local expertise, poor nations are forced to put
complex biosafety regimes in place in order to deal with the unwelcome
challenges of managing GM food and food aid sourced predominantly from the
USA. This important aspect of the misallocation of resources has been
insufficiently analysed in this report.

The report also largely ignores the negative implications of biotechnology
on developing nations. Crops such as "even ripening" GM coffee, that will
allow mechanised harvesting, menaces the employment of tens of millions of
small coffee farmers and pickers. GM-microbially produced vanilla essences
similarly threatens vanilla farmers throughout the tropics, and most of who
rely on vanilla as a cash crop to supplement subsistence crops.

The extensive planting of GM soy in Argentina has created soy deserts that
have devastated the environment and driven smallholders off the land into
urban shantytowns. These examples show the downside of the socio-economic
consequences of adoption of unsuitable technology for agricultural
development that have not been adequately addressed in the UN FAO report.

Developing nations are similtaneously being instructed to reduce research
programmes, agricultural extension programmes and educational support as
part of financial restructuring programmes insisted on the World Bank and
other multilateral financial organisations. While they are forced to put
management systems in place to deal with the challenges of the
trans-boundary shipment of unwelcome GMO food and food aid, most benefits
accrue to the transnational corporations promoting their products. It has
also been clearly shown that when developing nations reject external
financial constraints they benefit far more than by adopting such
strictures.

A central issue that is not sufficiently dealt with in the UN report, is the
particular importance of dealing with the onerous external pressures to
accept GMOs by their promoters. While the report appears dispassionate, the
extensive reach of industry and public relations experts are evident in its
analysis. This is of real concern as many of the suggestions in the report
primarily promote the interests of GMO producers and their cohorts, the
large international traders in agricultural food products.

It is important that the UN report on Biotechnology not be seen as a paean
for the acceptance of GMOs; it is not presented as such when dispassionately
analysed. It is instead a call for diversification of methods to address
food security in the developing world. This includes a far wider but less
publicly visible and less 'sexy' set of technologies than GMOs, encompassing
the broader discipline of biotechnology. The public at large must not be
misled by misrepresentations and biased analyses of the UN report that
serves mainly to promote GM crops that presently provide livestock feed.

Since the introduction of GM crops into South Africa, for example, there has
been no meaningful alleviation of food shortages amongst the poor. In
Argentina food security has collapsed amongst a glut of animal feed soya,
creating the worlds first "soya republic", in what is a salutary lesson in
the problems inherent to a neo-liberal privatisation not only of farming,
but of the entire agricultural production chain, from the seed to the export
quay. In India hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food sit rotting in
go-downs while people starve because they cannot afford food. GM crops are
not about to allay any of these fundamental problems.

In order to address the real reasons for hunger and food insecurity it is
far more important to deal with fundamental issues like land availability,
agricultural extension integrated farming methodology and proper use of
water resources. These fundamental agricultural support structures are far
more important to provide if food security for those most in need is to be
addressed.

The misplaced emphasis on GMOs in this UN report, offers a cynical
perspective on how little importance the US State Department,
corporate-influenced media and public commentators really do place upon food
security in developing nations. As President Bush said just after taking
office, "We want to feed the world." He should have added, "with our
subsidised and patented crops."

Years of inappropriate agricultural development projects have failed to
teach development agencies and donor nations the follies of their past ways.
Nor, apparently, have these failed agricultural projects provided meaningful
lessons for the future. It is important to analyse this report far more
dispassionately and objectively than has been the case. Instead of proper
analysis we have seen yet more hysterical nonsense that GMOs will save and
feed the world, in a perverse Orwellian twist that the modern PR industry,
abetted by lazy media analysis, has seamlessly perfected.

One has to ask; how many reporters have even bothered to read the executive
analysis of the UN report, let alone the entire study? I would hazard a
guess that very, very few have; most have simply relied on "industry
embedded" newswire analysis, press releases in an exhibition of lazy
journalism.

We cannot allow media outlets from the developed world to abuse the needs of
the poor by promoting a hidden agenda that primarily seeks further control
of agricultural production in developing nations.

*********************************

Glenn Ashton has partaken in most of the UN FAO online discussions around
the adoption of various aspects of Biotechnology over the past three years
that have supposedly played a role in the compilation and publication of
this report. He feels many of the cautionary inputs to these fora have been
ignored and misrepresented to benefit vested interests.

He is co-ordinator and a founder member of SAFeAGE, the SA Freeze Alliance
on Genetic Engineering, a network of over 250, 000 individuals from over 130
organisations in South Africa, calling for a review of GMO policy in SA and
a moratorium until such time as they have been proven necessary, safe and de
sirable.

This article is written in his personal capacity.