While profitable to the few companies producing them, GMO seeds reinforce a model of farming that undermines sustainability of cash-poor farmers, who make up most of the world’s hungry. GMO seeds continue their dependency on purchased seed and chemical inputs. The most dramatic impact of such dependency is in India, where 270, 000 farmers, many trapped in debt for buying seeds and chemicals, committed suicide between 1995 and 2012. GMOs also threaten sustainability because they continue agriculture’s dependence on diminishing and damaging fossil fuels and mined minerals, as well as water. (1) This award not only communicates a false connection between GMOs and solutions to hunger and agricultural degradation, but it also diverts attention from truly “nutritious and sustainable” agroecological approaches already proving effective, especially in the face of extreme weather. The Rodale Institute, for example, found in its 30-year study, that organic methods outperformed chemical farming during drought years by as much as 31 percent. Organic methods can use 45 percent less energy and produce 40 percent less greenhouse gases.(1) Note that the World Food Prize mandate is also to recognize contributors to food “for all people” but GMO seeds make this goal harder to reach. Most GM crops are used for feed, for livestock, processed food, or fuel – products not accessible to hungry people. Moreover, the planet already produces more than enough food for all; yet today 870 million people still suffer from extreme, long-term undernourishment because they lack power to access adequate food [13]. Developed and controlled by a handful of companies, genetically engineered seeds further the concentration of power and the extreme inequality at the root of this crisis of food inaccessibility. Monsanto, for example, controls 90 percent of the U.S. soybean crop and 80 percent of its corn crop and cotton crop.(1)
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 09:28:09 +0000
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