GM crops claim to increase yields, but the problem is of access and distribution, not production

Devinder Sharma sent this post on Sunday:

Speaking at the annual Oxford Farming Conference a few weeks back, the rebel environmentalist Mark Lynas, who went over to the all-powerful GM industry, was quoted as saying: “Research published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests the world will require 100% more food to feed the maximum projected population adequately.”

It’s not the first time this argument has been used, but considering the emphasis Lynas laid on the capabilities of controversial genetic engineering technology to meet the growing demand for food, a flurry of articles and editorials appeared. The underlying argument is the same. The world needs to produce more for the year 2050, and therefore we need GM crops.

Well, what population projections are we talking of?

The planet today hosts seven billion people, and all estimates point to population growing to nine billion by 2050. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), more than 870 million people were chronically undernourished in 2012, with almost 250 million of the world’s hungry living in India. These appalling statistics generate an impression of an acute shortfall in food production. At every conference, the same sets of statistics are flashed to justify the commercialisation of GM crops.

But how much food is globally available?

Is the world really witnessing a shortfall in food production?

Or, for that matter, is there a shortage of food in India?.

These are the questions that have been very conveniently overlooked. Let us therefore take a look at the performance of global agriculture in the year 2012:.

• Despite the severe drought in the US and Australia, where wheat production is anticipated to fall by 40%, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the world still harvested 2239.4 million metric tonnes, enough to feed 13 billion people at one pound per day.
• In other words, the food being globally produced today can feed twice the existing population.
• According to the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), against the average requirement of about 2,400 calories per capita, what is presently available is 4,600 calories.

So where is the crisis on the food production front? The crisis is in food (mis)management, which surprisingly is being ignored.

In the US, Canada and Europe, 40% food is wasted. For example, Americans waste $165 billion worth of food every year, which could very well meet the entire requirement of sub-Saharan Africa. Food wasted in Italy, if saved, can feed the entire population of the hungry in Ethiopia. According to the UK Institution of Mechanical Engineers, almost half the food produced globally is allowed to go waste. Studies show that 50% of fruits and vegetables stocked by supermarkets in US actually rot. If all the food wastage was to be appreciably reduced, hunger and malnutrition can easily become history.In India too, it is not a crisis in food production. On Jan 1, India had 66 million tonnes of food stocks. As someone has said, if you were to stack all those bags of grain one over the other, you could climb up to the moon and back. That’s the quantity of food that has been available almost every year since 2001.

The government has been exporting the surplus rather than feeding its hungry millions

While visuals of food rotting in godowns are fresh in the memory, the government has been merrily exporting the surplus rather than feeding its hungry millions. This fiscal, wheat exports are expected to touch 9.5 million tonnes; rice exports have already crossed nine million tonnes in 2011-12. Instead of propping up food procurement and distribution, the food ministry is actually toying with the idea of withdrawing from procurement operations and using surplus stocks in futures trading, leaving the hungry to be fed by the markets..

There is no GM crop in the world that actually increases crop productivity

Meanwhile, GM crops are being promoted as the answer to growing food needs. In reality, there is no GM crop in the world that actually increases crop productivity. In fact, the yields of GM corn and GM soybean, if USDA is to be believed, are actually less than the non-GM varieties.

Nor has the promise of a drastic reduction in the usage of harmful pesticides proved to be correct

Charles Benbrook of Washington State University has conclusively shown that between 1996 and 2011, the overall pesticides use in US has risen by a whopping 144 million kg. In addition, as much as 14.5 million acres is afflicted with ‘super-weeds’ — weeds that are very difficult to control. And such has been the contamination that 23 weeds now fall in the category of ‘super-weeds’.

Risk to health revealed by long-term research

Regarding safety, a few months back the revelations by Giles-Eric Seralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen in France, shocked the world when for the first time he demonstrated long-term studies involving rats fed for two years with Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready GM maize. The rats had developed huge kidney and mammary gland tumours, had problems with their body organs and showed increased mortalities.Against the usual practice of such studies involving feeding rats with GM foods for 90 days, Seralini had for the first time ever experimented with rats for two years, which corresponds to the entire human lifespan. As expected, the shocking results, peer-reviewed and published in a respected scientific journal, have already created quite a furore internationally.

I therefore don’t understand the need to take a huge risk with human health and environment when there is food available in abundance. The greater challenge is to curb wastage, provide adequate access and ensure judicious distribution of food.

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Source: The Times of India, New Delhi; Feb 28, 2013 – http://bit.ly/13Y5Zo7

 

Good news on the GM front from the EEA, BBC and Claire Robinson

Dr N contacted us to say that there is some good news for a change: the European Environment Agency is awake to the fact that technology is causing
problems and is making recommendations. Here are extracts from the
English link:

‘Late lessons from early warnings: science, precaution, innovation’

Topics: Chemicals Environment and health Various other issues – EEA Report No 1/2013

The Late lessons from early warnings report is the second of its type produced by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in collaboration with a broad range of external authors and peer reviewers.

The case studies across both volumes of Late lessons from early warnings cover a diverse range of chemical and technological innovations, and highlight a number of systemic problems. The ‘Late Lessons Project’ illustrates how damaging and costly the misuse or neglect of the precautionary principle can be, using case studies and a synthesis of the lessons to be learned and applied to maximising innovations whilst minimising harms.

Published by EEA (European Environment Agency): Jan 23, 2013. Read more on http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/late-lessons-2 and http://www.eea.europa.eu/pressroom/newsreleases/the-cost-of-ignoring-the. Note that this report was featured in a section: Hold to the Precautionary Principle, which some of you will have seen on http://political-cleanup.org/?p=6502

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Stephen Sackur effectively confronts Mark Lynas on the BBC World Service

Do listen to ‘Hardtalk’: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/ht/ht_20130130-0132b.mp3

In this programme a well-briefed and tenacious Stephen Sackur interviews Mark Lynas about his recent ‘conversion ‘ or as Mark Lynas called it, his abandonment of ‘ideological posturing’ in favour of scientific research.

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Claire Robinson sets up a Seralini-focussed website

This new website set up by scientists and citizens challenges criticisms of a landmark study that found genetically modified (GM) maize damaged the health of rats. One article, which will be introduced and linked on the Political Cleanup site, is Citizens were lied to over GM study

Are wealthy corporates gaining ground with government and farming media?

The Institute of Grocery Distribution has been tracking shoppers’ attitudes to GM foods since the 1990s and revisited the topic last year  (May 2012).

Like the Farmers Guardian, the Scottish Farmer is giving prominent coverage to GM–friendly articles, covering Mark Lynas’ change of mind this week and returning to the May IGD report, asking: Are consumers calming down?

In fact, as the report finds, attitudes have remained fairly constant over the past decade. Though somewhat masked by more favourable answers to minor questions about awareness – which will reinforce the corporate-political persuasion that the ‘stupid’ populace needs even more ‘education’ – the main facts reported in the Scottish Farmer are that in spring 2012:

• 51% of shoppers said in effect – don’t know
• 13% were strongly opposed
• 3% were strongly in favour

Were they being economical with the truth? See the chart from the IGD website:

And why don’t they ask how many would buy the stuff? I guess because they don’t want to hear the answer.

This fear is also behind the time and money spent by the GM industry world-wide to resist labelling, succeeding in California recently, despite nationwide polls indicating a politically bipartisan vote of over 90% in favour of labelling genetically modified food.

The content and stance of the BBC’s Farming Today and the Farmers Guardian has overwhelmingly changed for the worse over the years and the writer did not renew her FG subscription this year. See its tone in 2002:

Labelling GM foods (Farmers Guardian 10.5.02)

The EU is proposing to amend a directive which would make it compulsory to label all food containing GM ingredients or derivatives. It has also applied an informal moratorium on approvals for GM food crops.

Now the US is preparing to demand that the WTO overturns the proposed amendment and is threatening a trade war if Brussels does not back down.

Countries including China, Croatia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and New Zealand have sought to implement restrictions on GM imports or introduce compulsory labelling. In each case they have backed down after the USA threatened action at the WTO.

As Tom Macmillan said at the Oxford Farming Conference: the promotion of GM technology is not driven by any desire to feed the world’s poor or improve the natural environment but by Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer’s desire for ever-increasing profit.

Paterson & Lynas are wrong: GM results to date have been poor: Tom Macmillan, Soil Association

Briefly and imperfectly reported by the ardently pro GM Farmers Guardian, at the Oxford Farming Conference, Tom Macmillan, innovation director at the Soil Association, responded to comments by the former environmentalist Mark Lynas and Defra Secretary of State Owen Paterson.

”Mark Lynas is right that improving productivity across agriculture, including in organic farming, has an important part to play in feeding the world sustainably. Through our Duchy Originals Future Farming programme, the Soil Association is investing in research and innovation to help farmers develop and share novel approaches to help improve productivity in environmentally responsible ways.

”Lynas acknowledged that meeting this challenge globally is in large part about ensuring existing techniques are available to the poorest farmers in the world, and much also depends on directly tackling poverty and on rich countries adopting more sustainable consumption habits”.

Mark Lynas is wrong, ‘seriously mistaken’: “Banging on about GM crops, as Lynas did today, is a red herring.”

This, Macmillan continued, because the results to date have been poor:

• The UK Government’s own farm scale experiment showed that overall the GM crops were worse for British wildlife.
• US Government figures show pesticide use has increased since GM crops have been grown there because superweeds and resistant insects have multiplied.

He warns that “Lynas, Paterson and other GM enthusiasts must beware of opening floodgates to real problems like this.”

After citing the Benbrook study, reported here some time ago, he referred to the situation in this country:

• Most of the British public do not want GM.
• The recent British Science Association survey cited by Owen Paterson shows that public concern over GM food has not lessened – it shows that attitudes have not changed significantly.
• The share saying they agree that GM food “should be encouraged” has actually dropped from 46% in 2002 to 27% in 2012.
• The Government has kept people in the dark by opposing labelling of meat and milk from animals fed on GM.

The Soil Association supports practical innovation that addresses real needs, is genuinely sustainable and puts farmers in control of their livelihoods. Where GM crops have been planted they are doing the opposite, locking farmers into buying herbicides and costly seed, while breeding resistant weeds and insects.

Tom Macmillan stresses that the drive to promote GM technology is not due to any desire to feed the world’s poor or improve the natural environment but by Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer’s desire for ever-increasing profit. He ends:

“Meeting the challenge of providing better nutrition for more people sustainably calls for joined-up research that takes an ecological approach, responds to people’s real needs and respects farmers’ know-how”.

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Soil Association article in full:

http://www.soilassociation.org/news/newsstory/articleid/4780/oxford-farming-conference-soil-association-response-to-owen-paterson-mark-lynas-talks