Myth of the day: the 'biotech or starve' food scare

Biotech proponents said our planet was doomed to starve. Now one man says they are wrong.  

On Prof Philip Stott's "Pro-biotech" website, there is a whole page devoted to global population growth: http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/population.html  It first tells you the number of people on the planet Earth in 1999.

It then tells you what that figure is now...  [a steadily increasing number appears in a box]

It then continues:

"Since you have been on this page the number of people on Earth has grown by..."

and you can see the number of births rapidly rising in front of your eyes.

Cut to CS Prakash's AgBioWorld website where the supposed 'Benefits of Biotechnology for Developing Countries' are a major point of focus.

"By 2020," Prakash tells us in one of his many articles promoting the genetic engineering of food crops, "the number of undernourished could well surpass 1 billion."

Multiple other articles endlessly reiterate the point that a hungry world population is spiralling out of control:

"The statistics on population growth and hunger are disturbing. Last year the world's population reached 6 billion." http://www.AgBioWorld.org/biotech_info/topics/agbiotech/frankenfood.html

"Late in 1999, the world's population passed the 6 billion mark, having doubled in only 40 years.... These statistics highlight a reality that has far reaching consequences, and in the opinion of many, constitutes the single most important challenge facing mankind for the coming decades. How can food supplies, health and economic well-being be secured for all the world's citizens...? " http://www.AgBioWorld.org/biotech_info/topics/agbiotech/challenge.html

"The world population has increased by 2.3 billion people in the past 40 years, and by the year 2040, an additional 3.6 billion will be added to it. In fact, about 13,000 new people arrive into... this already burdened earth every hour! ...It is thus a daunting task to feed the ever increasing population" http://www.AgBioWorld.org/biotech_info/topics/agbiotech/worldbank.html

Invariably, there is only one solution seriously promoted to this "single most important challenge facing mankind".

In fact, as other lines of persuasion have failed to convince, often spectacularly, the biotech-or-starve argument has emerged as not just the most frequently cited but, increasingly, the only reason for the rapid global acceptance of GM crops.

Back on the homepage of Stott's "Pro-biotech" website, there is much rejoicing over a soon to be published book by Bjørn Lomborg, or as Prof Stott puts it, "Professor Bjørn Lomborg's forthcoming masterpiece".

"The Skeptical Environmentalist" -- still pre-publication but already the recipient of a massive amount of hype -- claims to demolish what Stott likes to term the "'Green' distortions."

Its approaching publication has been similarly seized upon by other biotech proponents who, like Prof Stott, fondly dream that it may be "the beginning of the end for extreme 'environmentalism' " [http://www.probiotech.fsnet.co.uk/

Even in generally saner parts of the media, the book's pre-release hype has been remarkable. According to the Hollywood-style subheading of an article in the UK's Observer, for example: "Environmentalists said our planet was doomed to die. Now one man says they are wrong." ['Recovering Earth', 10 June 2001]

But that headline could have been written another way, and the rewrite would have been far from encouraging for Prof Stott and co: "Biotech proponents said our planet was doomed to starve. Now one man says they are wrong."

For among the various "green" myths that Prof Lomborg claims to demolish is the following: the world's population, ever-growing, leaves less and less to eat.

Not so, says Lomborg.

Lomborg produces statistics to argue that globally there is actually an increasing amount of food, that fewer people are starving, that agricultural production in the developing world has been dramatically on the increase, and that food prices are lower than ever. Meanwhile, he says, global population-growth has been declining-since the early 1960s.

Of course, much of the analysis in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is open to serious challenge, as a number of commentators have pointed out, but in this case it actually isn't just one man who's saying that while the problem of world hunger remains pressing, we shouldn't get hysterical about quantitative production of food in relation to world population.

As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has reported:  "By 2030 the world's population is expected to top eight billion. Can the world produce enough food to meet global demands? The answer is yes..." ["Food and population: FAO looks ahead"]

This is based on the FAO's forecasting of global trends in food, nutrition and agriculture over the next 30 years in the its Global Perspective Studies Unit  report, "Agriculture: Towards 2015/30", [http://www.fao.org/es/ESD/at2015/toc-e.htm] .

According to the FAO, "The report notes that remarkable progress has been made over the last three decades towards feeding the world. While global population increased by over 70 percent, per capita food consumption is almost 20 percent higher. In developing countries, despite a near doubling in population, the proportion of the population living in a chronic state of undernourishment was cut in half, falling to 18 percent in 1995/97. FAO anticipates that this progress will continue." ["Food and population: FAO looks ahead"]

And, as Mark Griffiths has incisively pointed out, the quantitative analysis on which this is based does NOT allow for any production improvements from genetically engineered crops because GE crops are specifically not factored in because of the uncertainties surrounding their use. In other words, the report reaches its conclusions via projections based exclusively on what is known of existing and established agricultural technologies. [http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/faoreport.htm

And the FAO are far from alone in saying that the world can produce enough food to meet future global demands. Indeed, the FAO report itself emphasises that there is nothing unique or surprising about its conclusions:

"Concerning the future, a number of projection studies have addressed and largely answered in the positive the issue whether the resource base of world agriculture, including its land component, can continue to evolve in a flexible and adaptable manner as it did in the past, and also whether it can continue to exert downward pressure on the real price of food (see for example Pinstrup-Andersen et al., 1999). The largely positive answers mean essentially that for the world as a whole there is enough, or more than enough, food production potential to meet the growth of effective demand, i.e. the demand for food of those who can afford to pay farmers to produce it." (p.109)

That's not to say, of course, that there won't be very real residual hunger problems. The FAO anticipates that these will in fact be hard to deal with, but they will be due largely to poverty, not to lack of production (p.40): just as is the case right now in India where a third of the world's hungry reside despite the country's massive grain surpluses. [http://biotech-info.net/Biotechnology_not_answer.html

So how does CS Prakash assist this terrible problem within his own country by focusing so much attention on the wrong issue? Answer: he doesn't. He does exactly the reverse. He distracts attention from appreciation of the ground realities giving rise to hunger in India, and globally, and encourages instead the continued misdirection of resources that might otherwise be more effectively deployed to meet real needs and real problems. This is why Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, has labeled the promotion of hi-tech approaches to world hunger as possibly "the most commercially malevolent wild goose chase of the new century."

The critical issues are access and distribution. Even where it's useful to focus on increasing productivity, then as Professor Jules Pretty, Director of the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, has repeatedly pointed out, “The poor and hungry need low-cost, readily available technologies and practices to increase food production.” And Pretty has helped provide the evidence that such "low-tech" approaches can push up crop productivity in poorer countries to a very remarkable degree.

Cut back to Prof Stott's 'ProBiotech Web Site... your online guide to biotechnology in agriculture' and its ever changing population page.

Having startled visitors with the rate of current population growth, Stott concludes, "Biotechnology has played, and must always play, a vital role in ensuring that food production continues to outstrip this growth."

Remember, Prof Stott's great claim is that biotech proponents draw on science while the critics just spout "eco-hype". So where is the evidential base for Stott's assetion that, "Biotechnology has played, and must always play, a vital role..."?

Answer: the projections in the FAO report totally undermine Stott's claim about the future, and nor is there any convincing evidence to support the assertion that GM crops are currently playing a vital role in quantative terms. Indeed, thousands of independently conducted controlled varietal trials suggest that when the most commonly grown GE crop, soya, is compared to its conventional equivalents, it actually yields signficantly less. [on this and the many other agronomic problems see: http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/gmagric.htm]

But even if such crops really could deliver even half of what is claimed, accepting the risks and costs of using this experimental technology could still not be justified on the basis of world population growth. As Lomborg shows, it is simply a myth that the world's population is spiralling out of control leaving less and less for us all to eat.

Long, then, may Stott and the biotech brigade promote Bjørn Lomborg's "masterpiece", because by denying the principle plank of the biotech brigade's most cherished argument for the need for a rapid global acceptance of genetic engineering, Lomborg may turn out to be the nemesis not of environmental concern but of a particularly cynical piece of scaremongering.

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"Concerning the future, for the world as a whole there is enough, or more than enough, food production potential to meet the growth of effective demand." Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN

"As compared with the challenge of controlling protein-energy malnutrition, elimination of VAD [Vitamin A Deficiency] can be achieved rapidly. The cost-effectiveness ratio is also highly favourable. It is therefore a test case of political will, and managerial capacity to implement known technologies and known solutions." World Health Organisation, 2000

"I don't think any of us would disagree that, if an alternative exists to a GE solution, it's to be preferred" Mr Hodson QC acting on behalf of the Life Sciences Network at the New Zealand Royal Commission on Genetic Modification February 8, 2001

"We already know today that most of the problems that are to be addressed via Golden Rice and other GMOs can be resolved in matter of days, with the right political will." Hans Herren, Director General, The International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Kenya; winner of the World Food Prize 1995

"Low-tech 'sustainable agriculture,' shunning chemicals in favour of natural pest control and fertiliser, is pushing up crop yields on poor farms across the world, often by 70 per cent or more... The findings will make sobering reading for people convinced that only genetically modified crops can feed the planet's hungry in the 21st century... A new science-based revolution is gaining strength built on real research into what works best on the small farms where a billion or more of the world's hungry live and work... It is time for the major agricultural research centres and their funding agencies to join the revolution." New Scientist editorial, February 3, 2001

"Organic agricultural production based upon cheap, locally available materials and technologies provides an important alternative in the search for an environmentally sound and equitable solution to the problem of food security.'' Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN

"Biotechnology and GM crops are taking us down a dangerous road, creating the classic conditions for hunger, poverty and even famine. Ownership and control concentrated in too few hands and a food supply based on too few varieties of crops planted widely are the worst option for food security." Christian Aid report - Biotechnology and GMOs

"History has many records of crimes against humanity, which were also justified by dominant commercial interests and governments of the day... Today, patenting of life forms and the genetic engineering which it stimulates, is being justified on the grounds that it will benefit society... But in fact, by monopolising the 'raw' biological materials, the development of other options is deliberately blocked. Farmers therefore, become totally dependent on the corporations for seeds". Prof. Wangari Mathai of the Green Belt Movement, Kenya

"Bangladeshi people do not need GM food. GM food means the destruction of farmers and letting the companies take over. We need to preserve a biodiversity-based food production without the application of poisonous chemicals. Bangladeshi farmers are rejecting the idea that GM food can meet the needs of hungry people. This is nonsense. GM can feed the GREED of the companies, not the NEED of the hungry people. People are hungry not because we are not able to produce, but because the food production base is being systematically destroyed by the interventions of the profit-seeking companies. They want to make business out of our hunger!"  Farida Akhtar, UBINIG. Policy Research for Development Alternatives, Bangladesh

"Greater concentration of ownership inherent in the new technologies, and laws drawn up to protect them, is set to repeat and worsen one of the great mistakes of the green revolution. More dependence and marginalisation loom for the poorest. The inability to contain genetic material once released into the environment means that even field trials of new crops are tantamount to uncontrolled, irreversible experiments and invasions of the global commons." Christian Aid report - Selling Suicide: farming, false promises and genetic engineering in developing countries

"It is argued that the Indian peasants in Chiapas, Mexico are backward, they produce only two tons of maize per hectare as against six on modern Mexican plantations. But this is only part of the picture. The modern plantation produces six tons per hectare and that’s it. But the Indian grows a mixed crop. Among his corn stalks, that also serve as support for climbing beans, he grows squash and pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and all sorts of vegetables, fruit and medicinal herbs. From the same hectare he also feeds his cattle and chickens. He easily produces more than 15 tons of food per hectare and all without commercial fertilisers or pesticides and no assistance from banks or governments or transnational corporations." José A. Lutzenberger, former Minister of the Environment for Brazil

"We consider the use of the South's rural poverty to justify the monopoly control and global use of genetically modified food production by the North's transnational corporations, not only an obstructive lie, but a way of derailing the solutions to our Southern rural poverty. It is the height of cynical abuse of the corporations' position of advantage." Joint statement signed by over 40 developing country NGOs