1. Twin themes: sustainable food security and democratic denial - ngin
2. SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY conference - IFPRI
3. ALTERNATIVES TO GM IN WORLD AGRICULTURE - Mark Griffiths
4. Poor nations 'losers' in GM food ban - IFPRI's director's views
5 Peter Rosset and Per Pinstrup-Andersen debate - excerpt
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1. Twin themes: sustainable food security and democratic denial
Last week ngin received an unexpected accolade when Alex Avery of the corporate-funded Hudson Institute declared, "Personally, I distrust everything that comes from NGIN" (AgBioView 18 Jan 2001).
The remark was made in the context of articles and urls we had posted to AgBioView relating to Jules Pretty's contribution to last week's conference on sustainable farming at Kensington Palace.
Sustainable food security is fast emerging as a major theme in the GM debate, as Mark Griffiths has recently commented (see item 3). This, of course, begs the question as to what is sustainable. Alex Avery illustrates the point when he comments, "I consider lots of things sustainable that others don't, such as use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, biotechnology, etc. In fact, I believe that these technologies are even more sustainable than organic considering the organic nutrient limits facing planet earth and humanity."
Jules Pretty in delivering his impressive report on the ability of low-tech sustainable methods to benefit poor farmers around the world, clearly challenged Avery's hi-tech beliefs:
"The conventional wisdom is that to double food supply, we need to redouble efforts to modernise agriculture. After all, it has been successful in the past. But there are real doubts about the capacity of such systems to reduce food poverty. The poor and hungry need low-cost, readily available technologies and practices to increase local food production." http://www.societyguardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,422955,0.html
Pretty's research suggests such approaches can lead to proportional yield increases which are often remarkable (eg in some cases as much as 50-100%) while being environmentally beneficial.
Also represented at the launch of the report was the pro-GM Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Dr Pinstrup-Andersen who, unlike the likes of Alex Avery is willing to concede that "in some cases traditional plant breeding or even organic food may be the best way forward to help feed developing countries" (see item 4) BUT who also sees GM as a very important component in people getting access to enough food.
Pinstrup-Andersen's IFPRI are now organising a major international conference in Bonn in September: "SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY FOR ALL BY 2020: FROM DIALOGUE TO ACTION". The conference will "take stock of the current food situation, consider the issues most likely to affect future food security, and discuss priority actions that can have the greatest impact on improving food security." Given Pinstrup-Andersen's enthsiasm for GMOs and the fact that the conference sponsors include Aventis, Cargill and Syngenta, there can be little doubt as to the conclusions! http://www.ifpri.org/2020conference/sponsors.asp
Similarly the John Innes Centre is organising a big conference this spring on the future of global agriculture whose conclusions are equally predictable given the conference organisers and their sponsors - see: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/biospin.htm and http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/scigag.htm
The good news is that sustainable food security is becoming such a major focus. The saddest aspect is that because of the economic appeal to the political and scientific elite of the hi-tech GMO approach, with its seductive potential for patents and profits, there has been a massive using up of both public and private resources to try and thrust forward the 'biotech revolution'. An unwillingness to explore the alternatives means that policy support has been almost completely lacking for the kind of approaches Prof Pretty has shown can be so effective. As he said in delivering his report:
"Clearly, sustainable agricultural systems can be economically, environmentally and socially viable, and contribute positively to local livelihoods. But without appropriate policy support, they are likely to remain at best localised in extent, and at worst simply wither away. " http://www.societyguardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,422955,0.html
Chuck Benbrook's comment (see item 3 for more Benbrook) is also relevant:
"The failure of GM technologies to deliver on past promises is especially likely when compared to other elegant systems- and management-based solutions. Such solutions will surely emerge when supported by investments of R+D funding and institutional and policy changes on the scale now devoted to GM technologies." http://www.biotech-info.net/sevenNAS.html
Given that there is no track record of success for GM technologies, for Pinstrup-Andersen to declare in supporting them, "Children are dying right now because they don't have access to enough food - that's not a risk, that's a fact", is, to say the least, misleading because there is absolutely no evidence GM technologies can deliver greater food security to the poor right now and it is entirely speculative that such technologies will even be able to do this at any point in the future. Similarly, Pinstrup-Andersen's proclaimed worries about a global GM ban are quite absurd. It is clear who has their hands on the levers of policy power in this debate - it is the sponsors of his conference! Such comments suggest what he actually fears is popular resistance to the global imposition of this uncertain technology.
So perhaps the twin themes of 2001 should be TRULY sustainable food security for all and an end to democratic denial -- north and south.
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2. The International Food Policy Research Institute's 2020 VISION initiative announces a major international conference:
SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY FOR ALL BY 2020: FROM DIALOGUE TO ACTION September 4-6, 2001, Bonn, Germany
From: IFPRI-INFO Sent: Friday, January 19, 2001 2:16 PM
The conference will take stock of the current food situation, consider the issues most likely to affect future food security, and discuss priority actions that can have the greatest impact on improving food security. To sign up for conference information, please visit the conference website at www.ifpri.org/2020conference. IFPRI seeks your opinion on the state of food security and the major obstacles to achieving it. Please share your views with us at the QuickPoll page of the conference website.
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3. from Mark Griffiths: WILL 2001 BECOME THE YEAR OF THE ALTERNATIVES TO GM TECHNOLOGY IN WORLD AGRICULTURE?
There are signs that the GM debate is starting to move onto more interesting and productive territory. The controversy over GMOs is producing an encouraging 'spin off' in that it is causing the whole of our current agricultural systems to re-examined and assessed in the context of their ability to deliver 'sustainability'. What seems to be emerging is that many of the problems that GM technology hopes to solve can in fact be resolved much more cheaply and effectively through alternative systems of management, particularly for farming systems in developing countries. The concept that GM technology (i.e. organisms incorporating recombinant DNA) may after all be unnecessary in world agriculture is starting to gather momentum. It seems, therefore, that the most valuable aspect of the GM controversy has been to create an unexpected platform from where these alternatives to current unsustainable practices are gradually being brought to the attention of otherwise oblivious policy makers and the general public. Without the GM debate these more effective approaches may well have gone unnoticed by all but a few.
The principal reason why these alternative approaches are so powerful relative to GM technology is that the latter almost entirely misses the point. The major issues facing the future sustainability of global food production - such as soil, water and biodiversity conservation - are management rather than genetics related. Positive changes in management practices are already starting to produce dramatic improvements in productivity - particularly in developing countries - by addressing head-on constraints which the use of recombinant DNA in plant and animal genetics can only hope to influence at the margins, if at all. Whilst neither has entirely dismissed a role for GMOs in world agriculture two scientists in particular have drawn attention to the opportunities for rapid improvements in the sustainability and productivity of global agriculture through more direct management based solutions where developments in genetics of any kind play only a limited role.
The first of these scientists is Professor Jules Pretty of the University of Essex. This week's New Scientist provides an interesting report on the work Professor Pretty has done in uncovering systems of agriculture which overcome many of the deficiencies of modern farming practices in developing countries - often to a spectacular degree. This New Scientist report can be viewed at: http://www.newscientist.com/dailynews/news.jsp?id=ns9999325 (for more detailed information see article by Professor Pretty at: http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/article2.htm )
Meanwhile Dr Charles Benbrook, former Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture for the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), has drawn attention to the poor record of GM technology in delivering on its past promises and the extent to which it draws financial resources away from the development of solutions which have far greater cost-benefit potential and lower risk profiles. Some of Dr Benbrook's observations in this area can be found in his highly critical commentary of a report published last year by the US National Academy of Sciences entitled: "Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture". The full text of Dr Benbrook's commentary can be read on-line at http://www.biotech-info.net/sevenNAS.html . However, we quote below some of his more interesting observations for ease of reference:
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"The process of genetic transformation is known to heighten the risk of certain abnormalities in gene expression that can affect the stability of genomes and the performance of transgenic crops. Some of these abnormalities can alter gene expression and protein levels under certain circumstances in ways that impact physiological parameters, crop development, and plant defense mechanisms. Some of these changes, in turn, can lead to food safety risks. Maybe such risks will arise rarely and hopefully only with modest impact, but such optimistic judgements rest upon far too much guesswork and far too little solid, replicated and published risk assessment science. Given the extent of ignorance about how genetically transformed plants will behave and react over time to changes in their environment, it is incumbent on scientists to use all knowledge and available tools to explore potential human health risks..."
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".....if the best GM technology can do is only marginally better than the worst of conventional technology, the biotechnology revolution may go down in history as one of the greatest technological duds of all time.
If GM technology fails, it won't be for lack of effort. In both the public and private sectors, enormous moral and financial support for agricultural biotechnology has been and still is predicated on the promise of a series of near-miraculous benefits this technology is supposed to be uniquely able to deliver..... No space in the report is allotted to the well-known technical and economic constraints that stand in the way of GM technologies. Nor does the report discuss why GM technologies are likely, in the end, to be the most cost-effective and sustainable solution to a given problem. This is a serious shortcoming, given that so many of agriculture's problems arise from the mismanagement of natural resources and plant-pest ecological interactions. Such problems are not largely genetic in origin and rarely will genetic manipulation, however achieved, prove the decisive system innovation".
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"Despite the report's awkward handling of risk issues, much of the report is forceful and on target. It contains the strongest passages yet in any NAS report on intellectual property rights issues. Given current intellectual property right laws, the authors admit that - '....the potential applications of GM technologies described previously are unlikely to benefit the less developed nations of the world for a long time...' The report states that the concentration of control in a few multinational companies over seeds and GM technologies is likely to keep the focus on solving problems of intensive agriculture in the North, not the needs of poor and small farmers in developing countries."
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"But what is missing in this section, and indeed throughout the report, is an honest assessment of what stands between theory and practice. The theoretical benefits of GM technologies are highlighted without mention of the practical reasons why the actual impacts of a given technology might prove to be more limited or short-lived than first imagined. The failure of GM technologies to deliver on past promises is especially likely when compared to other elegant systems- and management-based solutions."
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"Also missing is a candid appraisal of what the real problems actually are. For the most part this report addresses the problem now faced by advocates of GM technology as they try to gain public, farmer, and consumer support. Unlike the typical NAS project committee, this working group did not step back and independently assess whether this is
the real problem that deserves attention. If it had done so, the report would likely provide a more useful -- and focused -- appraisal of the possible contributions of GM technology. It would also highlight more prominently the importance of badly neglected areas of research and technology development and the need for farming system, trade, social and policy changes that do not depend on moving genes across species barriers using GM techniques."
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It seems to us that the evidence is gradually increasing that GM technology comprises an approach to global agricultural problems which offers the least long term progress for the greatest expense and risk. The fact that so many governments have attempted to pursue such a route reflects the increasingly urban culture predominant amongst policy makers and scientific institutions, many of which have little understanding or experience of the integrated nature of agricultural ecology. For further discussion on the myth of genetics as the principal constraint on responsible global agricultural production see:
'Are GMOs essential for effective sustainable agriculture in a hungry world?' at www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/geneticsmyth.htm
For further information on the track record of GM technology in agriculture failing to live up to its promises see:http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/gmagric.htm
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4. Poor nations 'losers' in GM food ban
The Age
By SHANE WRIGHT
CANBERRA
Saturday 20 January 2001
The battle over genetically modified food is threatening to unleash a new form of colonialism between developed and developing countries, a world agriculture expert said yesterday.
Per Pinstrup-Andersen, the director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said the GM policies of the European Union were a form of imperialism.
While many people in the first world worried about unproven risks associated with GM food, millions of people were dying in developing nations because of malnutrition.
"The affluent in Europe and maybe in Australia and North America will decide that it is inappropriate to use biotechnology in food and agriculture, including food and agriculture in developing countries," Dr Pinstrup-Andersen told reporters in Canberra.
"If that happens, it will be very difficult for developing countries who want more research to go into technology in food and agriculture.
"It is new colonialism in place, telling them what they can and cannot do."
Many European countries have banned GM foods until more research is conducted into possible safety risks. This extends to the importation of GM foods.
Dr Pinstrup-Andersen, in Australia to launch a new book on agricultural science policy next week, said first world countries focused on perceived risks associated with food.
He said wealthier people, more worried about their long-term health, ignored the problems that people in developing nations faced.
"The question of (whether) something is too risky for Europe, should not be pushed on to developing countries," he said.
"Children are dying right now because they don't have access to enough food - that's not a risk, that's a fact."
Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said developing countries should have their own GM laws in place before accepting GM foods.
He said GM food, such as rice genetically modified to include iron, would help alleviate iron deficiences, a common health problem for people in developing countries.
Dr Pinstrup-Andersen said in some cases traditional plant breeding or even organic food may be the best way forward to help feed developing countries.
However, by banning GM technology on crop production, first world countries were stopping other nations from securing their own futures, he said. - AAP
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5. Promise And Pitfalls Of Using Genetically Modified Crops In Developing Countries
transcript of an hour long debate featuring Dr. Peter Rosset and Dr. Per Pinstrup-Andersen
Full transcript at: http://www.biotech-info.net/NPR_debate.html
EXCERPT ONLY:
Dr. PINSTRUP-ANDERSEN: [modern biotechnology] is a very important component of the solution to poor people's problems, and without modern science, there is no way that future generations will get access to enough food.
FLATOW [programme presenter]: In fact, Dr. Rosset, you write that--you point out that there really is no food shortage in the whole world. In fact, in total in the whole world there's enough food to give everybody over four pounds of food a day. So...
Dr. ROSSET: That's right. I mean, the terrible crime is really hunger in the midst of plenty. We call it the paradox of plenty. There's more food available today on the planet per person than ever before in human history. Yet, 800 million people go hungry; 36 million of them according to USDA statistics right here in the richest nation on Earth. So the real crime is the crime of distribution and access to food.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen, if there's already enough food to go around, why would developing countries be interested in genetically modified crops? What would they get out of that if they--or they can't get food that's there?
Dr. PINSTRUP-ANDERSEN: Because I think that's the wrong question to ask,Ira. The real question is: How can we help people who are currently unable to obtain enough food, either from their own production or from purchase--how can we help them either produce more food or earn enough income so that they can buy it?
It is correct that the world has enough food so that if it were equally distributed everybody would get access to enough to eat. But that's pure theory. That has absolutely no relevance to the actual problems because the world is not going to redistribute its food. We are not going to redistribute our incomes. We are not going to redistribute a lot of assets that are poorly distributed. So the issue is really not so much whether the world has enough food, but rather whether the 800 million people have access to enough food.
And 70 percent of those people depend on agriculture, directly or indirectly. And if we can help each of those people, each of those households, to reduce the risk of losing the crop due to drought or insect attack or plant diseases, if we can help those people to produce more, to earn more income, then they will be able to feed their children and then the many thousands of children who are going to die today from nutrition illnesses wouldn't have to die.
So the argument that the world has enough food is a wonderful academic argument. It has no practical value whatsoever for the people who don't have access to it.
FLATOW: Mm-hmm. What about the promise of biotechnology of genetically modified foods? I mentioned that we know about this golden rice that has vitamin A in it. Are there other possibilities of other kinds of foods that will help starving people probably cope better?
Dr. ROSSET: I would like to actually address the vitamin A rice, because I think that it's quite misleading. Yes, there is a serious problem of vitamin A deficiency in many rice producing regions of the world, but we have to understand why that deficiency is common, and it's usually associated with other micronutrient and protein deficiencies as well.
First of all, growing poverty has led too many people to depend on rice alone for their diet. And so the problem isn't so much that rice doesn't contain one particular nutrient or another, but the fact that they have insufficient dietary diversity because of poverty. We have regions where the green revolution has changed cropping systems from diverse systems with many green, leafy vegetables in them which supply ample beta carotene and vitamin A to situations which depend largely on rice.
For example, in rural Indonesia, prior to the green revolution, rice provided 43 percent of calories. Today it's 83 percent of calories (reference: http://www.foodfirst.org/media/press/1999/IDR13p.html). So it's not surprising if you're depending that strongly on rice that you will have these deficiencies. And since it's just a symptom of a broader nutritional problem, a magic bullet to insert one single vitamin or vitamin precursor is not going to resolve the larger issue.
I certainly agree that the problem is how the 70 percent of the world's population that Dr. Pinstrup-Andersen describes can better feed themselves. The solution to that is not a magic bullet to insert vitamin A because the dietary problems and the structural reasons for those dietary problems are much broader.
Dr. PINSTRUP-ANDERSEN: I agree that the problems are much broader and we
need to use all of the available solutions to help poor people solve their problems. But how are you going to tell a child in India that has just gone blind from lack of vitamin A that improved vitamin A content of what that child eats is a bad thing? I mean, we got to somehow get down from this global perspective and look at individuals and how they are affected in their daily lives.
Dr. ROSSET: Oh, I'd like to say exactly what I would tell that child in India is what a friend of mine who's a pediatrician in India tells them, which is that their parents should feed them red rice, an indigenous local rice variety that's very high in beta carotene that's already an accepted part of the diet in India, and it's excellent for curing vitamin A deficiency. Or I would suggest that they harvest green, leafy vegetables. According to a study produced by Dr. Vandana Shiva there are 50 to 100 green, leafy vegetables in rice-growing areas, all of which provide ample beta carotene, the precursor for vitamin A. So we don't need this particular technology.