1.GM crops? It's business, as usual
2.David Cameron's formula to boost UK's falling GDP: Promote GM crops in the name of fighting hunger
3.The Prince of Wales warns over 'risky’ GM food
EXTRACTS: For the big firms pushing GM crops this is all about patents, seed royalties, and chemical sales. As with the British government's campaign to keep bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides in use, the policy was not about protecting our collective environment but about conserving the private profit of major companies. (item 1)
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1.GM crops? It's business, as usual
The hungry and their planet trail behind profit
TONY JUNIPER
The Independent, 16 June 2013
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/gm-crops-its-business-as-usual-8660310.html
The Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, is expected to set out in a speech this week plans to press the EU to relax restrictions on growing genetically modified crop varieties. But while his move is predictable, it is not rational.
Although GM crops are presented by ministers as a means to achieve more sustainable food production, and as environmentally beneficial, sweeping claims like this have repeatedly been revealed as either massive over-claims or nonsense. Take broad-spectrum herbicides, which kill all plants but the crop varieties modified to resist the chemicals; with all wild plants killed off, animals disappear too. If such crops were planted on a large scale, the countryside would become even more sterile than it is now.
Chemicals that are used to kill wild plants will find their way into watercourses and affect soil organisms. As there really is nothing more fundamental for continued human well-being than water and soil, all means to protect these systems from abuse should be adopted by societies, especially in relation to agricultural systems.
In the face of environmental concerns, GM crop advocates generally come back with their favourite, and most flawed, argument: that GM crops will feed the world. They point to continuing malnutrition, rising population and demand for more land and claim that more technology is the answer. Leaving aside the extent to which GM crops will raise yields (experience tells us that this is often not the case), we need to question the basic premise that we are short of land or food.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that the world wastes about $750bn worth of food each year, a figure that is about six times global development aid. With a third to a half of food lost, it is clear that the world has not yet registered a sense of food or land shortage. The reasons for food waste vary. Consumers are more important in richer countries, while the lack of storage and transportation are key factors in developing countries. The biggest and quickest thing that could be done to help improve food security in developing countries would be to invest in better storage and refrigeration and in the infrastructure to get food to market before it spoils.
As for yields, experts have pointed out that the best way to improve overall output would be to train farmers, provide them with better varieties, help them with market access, and invest in improved soil fertility and rainwater storage. All this would sustain rural jobs and raise farmer incomes, rather than putting them out of work or into debt on the back of expensive seed and chemical sales.
While I am not against GM crops in principle I have concluded that, in most cases, the alternatives are better – for the environment, food security, and farmers. This position is not anti-science, nor is it anti-technology; it is about solving problems in ways that have a chance of working in our complex world.
So why press ahead with this further attempt to promote GM crops? For me the answer lies not in moves to improve food security, environmental quality or consumer benefits, but in the business model of the big agro-chemical companies.
For the big firms pushing GM crops this is all about patents, seed royalties and chemical sales. As with the British government's campaign to keep bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides in use, the policy was not about protecting our collective environment but about conserving the private profit of major companies.
Tony Juniper's new book, "What has Nature Ever Done for Us?", is published by Profile Books; tonyjuniper.com; @tonyjuniper
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2.David Cameron's formula to boost UK's falling GDP: Promote GM crops in the name of fighting hunger
Ground Reality, June 16 2013
http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/david-camerons-formula-to-boost-uks.html
[Image shows Davis Cameron in front of the slogan "Beating hunger through business and science". Image caption: British Prime Minister David Cameron speaking at a pre-G8 event in London. He gave clear hints at the need to embrace GM crops]
It may startle you. But the fact is that the more you destroy the environment (and the planet) the higher is the economic growth. You can bomb a city, and then rebuild it. The GDP soars. Similarly, if you allow the biotechnology companies to contaminate your food and environment, the health costs go up and so does the GDP. The more the spread of superweeds and superbugs, the more is the application of all kinds of deadly pesticides resulting in a higher GDP growth. And so on.
So when I read today in The Telegraph the British Prime Minister David Cameron openly welcoming the GM industry, stating: "I think there are a number of subjects there that we need to take on, I think it is time to look again at the whole issue of GM foods. We need to be open to arguments from science," I wasn't the least surprised. With the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicting that the UK economy will grow by a paltry 1.5 per cent in 2014, David Cameron is certainly bitten by desperation. He wouldn't like to go down as the Prime Minister who failed to prop up the ailing British economy.
We know that extra-ordinary times require extra-ordinary decisions. That holds true for satesmen. But at a time when most political leaders across the globe are no better than corporate lobbyists (Read my earlier analysis: What do you do when Heads of State indulge in lobbying? http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.in/2012/12/the-line-between-lobbying-and-bribery.html) the best they can do is to cling on to desperation. That's exactly what David Cameron has done.
Forgetting the scourge of mad cow disease and the foot-and-mouth disease that resulted in millions of cows being burnt, I wonder whether David Cameron even remotely understands the grave threat GM crops and foods pose to human health and the environment. And this brings me to the central question. If it is not proper for the governments to do what the business can do, why the Heads of State be allowed to do what Corporate lobbyists do? How long can democratic societies keep quiet while the Heads of State unabashedly promote the business interests of Corporations? When will society stand up to put a curb on the abuse of power by the elected governments?
I see the argument. "Last year farmers lost 1.3 billion pound Sterling from poor harvests and higher feed bills for cattle, making the need for new technology even more urgent," said The Telegraph report. While this may be true, the fact remains the poor harvests that were recorded across some of the developed countries were essentially because of climatic change, which is the outcome of the faulty agricultural practices that have been followed over the past few decades. Its intensive agriculture that UK excels in that is causing the problem. Any sensible Head of State would have first tried to resurrect farming in a manner that it becomes truly sustainable and thereby results in less damage to the environment.
David Cameron was speaking on Beating Hunger through Business and Science at a pre-G8 event in London (see the picture above). Business and science can definitely do a lot to defeat hunger. With over 40 per cent of the processed food being wasted in the UK alone, I had thought the Prime Minister would direct the agri-business industry to ensure that not an ounce of processed food goes to waste. This measure alone would have drastically reduced the carbon footprint, saved the British environment from further deterioration as a result of more intensive farming, and at the same time made billions of pounds of food available to meet the needs of the hungry millions.
Instead he took the desperate route that would result in a higher GDP which he can drum around. The more the business and industry were to invest in developing risky and unwanted GM crops, the more will be the GDP. The more the sale of GM crop seeds, plus the increase in sales of chemicals to fight pests and diseases, the more will be the addition to British GDP. The more the resulting damage to the health of British people would mean more dependence on big pharma, which in turn would mean more spending on health. All this adds on to country's GDP growth.
What a remarkable growth formula, isn't it?
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3.The Prince of Wales warns over "risky" GM food
Richard Eden
The Telegraph, June 16 2013
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/10122679/Prince-Charles-warns-over-risky-GM-food.html
*As the Government paves way for relaxing rules on genetically modified crops, Prince Charles says the 'risks' must be considered.
David Heath paved the way for Britain to relax the rules on genetically modified food last week when he said the Liberal Democrats did not have any “theological” opposition to controversial biotech crops. The agriculture minister still has a long way to go, however, if he is to change the mind of the Prince of Wales.
A Clarence House spokesman tells Mandrake that Charles remains implacably opposed to so-called “Frankenstein food”.
“The Prince of Wales has often played his part in encouraging public consideration and debate of important issues, and GM crops very much fall into this category,” the spokesman says.
“Like most people, His Royal Highness’s main concern is that there should be enough food to feed the world’s population. The question that needs to be considered is whether traditional farming methods can meet this demand, or whether GM crops need to be used and, if they do, to weigh the chances of success and the related risks.”