My students know just what kind of food system they want: a food system that isn’t based on industrial scale monoculture. They want instead small farms built around nature imitating polycultures. They don’t want chemical use; they certainly don’t want genetic engineering. They want slow food instead of fast food. They’ve got this image of what would be better than what we have now. And what they probably don’t realize is that Africa is an extreme version of that fantasy. If we were producing our own food that way, 60 percent of us would still be farming and would be earning a dollar a day, and a third of us would be malnourished.
That's Robert Paarlberg, talking about his motivation for writing Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa in an interview with reason's Kerry Howley.
I'm looking forward to some tasty, locally-grown and most likely organic produce flowing into my kitchen when the Durham Farmer's Market re-opens next week, but this is as good a time as any to point out that environmentalism generally and localtarianism specifically are luxuries enabled by the unprecedented affluence we enjoy in 21st century North America and Western Europe.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is no credible scientific evidence that the genetically modified crops (which constitute a HUGE portion of the American market, especially corn and soybeans) have detrimental health or environmental effects. And in fact, most of them are modified for the express purposes of reducing the need for chemical pesticides and maximizing yield (thus minimizing the ammount of arable land used.)
According to Paarlberg, the influence of (primarily) European NGOs has kept these technologies out of Africa, effectively keeping African agriculture decades behind the rest of the world. Exporting anti-GM hysteria to Africa isn't just patronizing and paternalistic, it's deadly.
8 comments:
i've been tempted to respond to the franken food hysteria in writing myself.
thank you for finding the few enough words to make such attempts by me forever futile.
you've said most of what i was thinking.
i prefer the tasty,organic and local fruits. but there was a time when i couldnt afford even enough less-tasty food to feed my young family.
if it wasnt for modern tech, feeding them would have been not just difficult, but dire.
(btw: i just came back from a boutique green grocer. the only place i buy produce anymore, because i can afford to be that way now.)
Hi there!
A-M here, going to be brave and post a comment. What I love most about your blog is that you post very thoughtful articles and on you are not afraid to be snarky ;).
I do think these are important points that you brought up but I disagree with you on several things.
First, that GMOs allow for less pesticide use. Well in theory it's possible but Monsanto (the developer of Roundup) makes soybean seed varieties (others on the way) that are resistant to Roundup so that farmers can plant their seeds and than douse the field in Roundup to clear out all of the other plants. Luckily, Roundup is one of the "nicer" herbicides available and shows little toxicity to animals and biodegrades rapidly(it is a specific photosynthesis enzyme inhibitor). However, this strategy may be used once again when there is widespread Roundup resistance with a much less "nice" pesticide...and I think you see where I am going here.
GMOs, however that may provide the essential nutrient Vit B for the very poor areas of the world where meat and milk products are almost never seen, are a very good idea and would no doubt reduce an enormous amount of human suffering.
Another problem is the government subsidies that reward farmers only for growing the four crops: soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton making everything else much more expensive and harder for farmers to grow. This NYtimes article does a nice job of discussing this. So we definitely could make the "forbidden fruits and vegetables" more affordable to the masses with a change in our agricultural policies/priorities.
And while, 60% of us farmers does seem like a stretch, many of us living in a more suburban area could easily give up a few square feet of yard space to grow something (Tucson IS hard because of it's climate) like lettuce and tomatoes, reducing the price and using less fuel for transport. And in cities there are many more options than one realizes..think roof gardens and community gardens and empty space..there was a nice NYtimes article on this too lately but I can't seem to dig it up.
So I guess I believe that we should meet in the middle. Perhaps keeping the large scale, GMO farming for crops like wheat, corn and beans that are not really feasible for the average Joe to grow and process while changing the farm subsidies to make other fruits and vegetables less expensive to the masses. And perhaps having the choice to meet in the middle is solely a result of our affluence and culture of excess.
It is very ignorant for those of us that have never gone hungry a day in our lives to decide what is best and what isn't for the 3rd world to do when the main objective is to keep their people from starving.
Alright enough food for thought (HA!)
Hope all is well in Durham!
BTW, I wanted to make sure you took my snarky comment in the way I intended...so much is lost in tone of voice with typing. I really admire how you aren't afraid of saying what you feel and am a bit jealous. I am always afraid of offending someone with what I write and I wish that wasn't the case (this follow-up is case in point!).
AM, if that's you being snarky I can't wait to see you be nice!
Thanks for the thoughtful points. You'll find no disagreement with me re: subsidies...actually I'd be for doing away with them altogether.
there's a very good reason why certain crops are subsidized in the first place.
leaving aside for the moment whether or not those subsidies are abused, take the recent dislocations in the hops market as a case study.
No big deal, since hops are almost exclusively grown to flavor beer, and if the price of beer goes up by a buck or two a six-pack, or craft brewers switch from Imperial IPAs to English milds or porters, that's really no big deal in the scheme of things.
But imagine if the amount of rice in production next year were to drop by 50 or 60% or more, just because the price for rice fell below the level at which it could turn a profit, and most growers got out of the business. (There's some story or other floating around the internet this week that precisely this sort of thing is happening to the rice crop in Asia, and prices are expected to rise significantly next year. Whether or not that puts rice out of reach of the world's poorest citizens, i can't say.)
Granted, the amount of land being removed from growing almost anything and being switched to corn (to meet ethanol demand) makes it unlikely that any crops, especially staples, are going to be in excessive supply for the next couple of years. But if you think that NGO policies are a more significant source of hunger in the world than natural (or man made) climate issues, wars and other armed conflicts, or market forces, you're going to have to do a lot more to make that case.
Barry--when I figure out a way to stop wars or climate problems, I'll get right on that. But convincing NGOs that maybe they aren't orienting their priorities towards the very ends they profess to strive for seems worth doing (not to mentio do-able), even if the benefits are only marginal, no?
What I think was lost in my rambling first comment was that what I think the NGOs want from Africa and other developing countries is for them to learn from the mistakes of the developed world. They think that GMOs as a slippery slope to the environmental detriments of industrial scale farming and an obesity epidemic like we see here in the states. That is something that is unimaginable to the people of Africa at this point. I would liken it to a doctor not giving chemo drugs to a cancer patient to spare them the possibility of hair loss.
Secondly, the science illiteracy of the population (and I would go so far as to apply this to some people who work in NGOs) makes it almost impossible to look past the negative connotations of "franken-food" (the hysteria evoked in this term is enough of an example) and until we have better educated folk, there will always be inflammatory rhetoric regarding new technology that is unfounded. Although, from my previous comment you will know I believe in proceeding with caution...I really think the solution for so many of these problems lies with better access to information and education for the general public and the NGOs.
Maybe all of us scientists should get out of the lab and go do something useful :).
You've probably seen this but I thought it was interesting and relevant.
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