Sowing feudalism

Commoner is not exaggerating. The hazardous nature and global spread of agricultural biotechnology constitutes another attack against the fragile food security of the world and the integrity of traditional food systems which feed about three billion human beings at the dawn of the 21st century.

In July 2002 Zimbabwe, for example, on the brink of famine, said “no” to thousands of tons of free, gene-altered corn from the United States. Zimbabwe rejected the humanitarian food from the US probably because of the near certainty that such GM corn, if planted, would contaminate its own corn with undesirable traits and which would have long-term dangerous consequences for food security.

On August 8, 2002, the British science journal, Nature, explained that the policy of some nations in Africa, hungry for food and on the verge of famine, to reject international donations of GM food was not as bizarre and irresponsible as one might think. Rather, their decision to go hungry or buy non-GM food goes to the heart of “a chasm of misunderstanding [between them and countries like the United States trying to have them eat GM corn]”. Such misunderstanding “is only exacerbated by exaggerated claims for the benefits of the [GM] technology”.

Yet despite the threat posed by the inoculation of food crops with alien DNA genes, five genetic engineering companies (Pharmacia/Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Syngenta and Dow) and four countries (the United States, Argentina, Canada and China) are moving the genetically modified or “transgenic” crops all over the world - fast.

From 1996 to 2001 the global amount of land growing GM crops increased more than 30-fold, from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 52.6 million hectares in 2001. About 91 per cent of the 52.6 million hectares of GM crops in 2001 came from the GM seeds of Monsanto. More than a fourth of that GM land in 2001, about 13.5 million hectares, was in the Third World growing transgenic crops.

In 2001 soybean was the global king of GM crops, taking up 33.3 million hectares or 63 per cent of the land growing GM crops. In addition, the transgenic soybean of 2001 was providing stiff competition to the “regular”, non-manipulated, soybean. It represented 46 per cent of the 72 million hectares of soybeans planted around the world. In 2001 GM corn grew in 9.8 million hectares (19 per cent), cotton in 6.8 million hectares (13 per cent), and canola in 2.7 million hectares (5 per cen)t of the total GM land in 2001.

In 2001 the herbicide trait in soybeans, cotton, and corn was present in 77 per cent or 40.6 million hectares of the GM crops. This trait made the seeds and mature plants immune to designer weed killers. The Bt gene was used in 7.8 million hectares or 15 per cent of the GM crops. The Bt gene made the seeds and plants toxic to insects. About 8 per cent of the planted area included crops that had both the herbicide and the Bt traits.

These GM crops have had two commercial purposes:

First, to sell farmers seeds of soybeans, cotton, and corn that would be unaffected by weed killers. The farmer would purchase his herbicide from the same company that engineered his seeds.

Second, the farmer would buy more expensive seed corn and cotton inoculated with the Bt gene that makes corn and cotton resistant and lethal to insects.

In both cases, herbicide-resistant seeds and Bt seeds resistant to insects, are matters of convenience to the farmers. The traits of the seeds have nothing to do with feeding the world or making agriculture less toxic.

In fact genetic engineering at the farm is becoming an almost transparent “science fiction” experiment - with straightforward political effects, concentrating a great deal of power into a handful of corporations and, as a consequence, resurrecting feudalism.