Why GM Crops Will Not Feed the World Last spring marked a tipping point for rising global food prices. Haiti’s prime minister was ousted amid rice riots; Mexican tortillas have quadrupled in price. African countries were hit especially hard. According to the World Bank, global food prices have risen a shocking 83 percent from 2005 to 2008. And for the world’s poor, high prices mean hunger. In fact, the food crisis recently prompted University of Minnesota food experts to double their projection of the number of the world’s hungry by the year 2025—from 625 million to 1.2 billion. Many in the biotechnology industry seem to believe there’s a simple solution to the global food crisis: genetically modified (GM or biotech) crops. Biotech multinationals have been in media blitz mode ever since the food crisis first made headlines, touting miracle crops that will purportedly increase yields, tolerate drought, and cure all manner of ills. Not everyone is convinced. The UN and World Bank recently completed an unprecedentedly broad scientific assessment of world agriculture, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, which concluded that biotech crops have very little potential to alleviate poverty and hunger. This four-year effort, which engaged some 400 experts from multiple disciplines, originally included industry representatives. Just three months before the final report was released, however, agrichemical seed giants Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF pulled out of the process, miffed by the poor marks given their favorite technology. This withdrawal upset even the industry-friendly journal Nature, which chided the companies in an editorial entitled “Deserting the Hungry?” Most revealing, however, is what the biotech companies have engineered these crops for. Hype notwithstanding, there is not a single GM crop on the market engineered for increased yield, drought-tolerance, salt-tolerance, enhanced nutrition or other attractive-sounding traits touted by the industry. Disease-resistant GM crops are practically non-existent. In fact, commercialized GM crops incorporate just two “traits”—herbicide tolerance and/or insect resistance. Insect-resistant or Bt cotton and corn produce their own built-in insecticide(s) derived from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), to protect against certain insect pests. Herbicide-tolerant crops are engineered to withstand direct application of an herbicide to more conveniently kill nearby weeds. Crops with herbicide tolerance predominate, occupying 82 percent of global biotech crop acreage in 2007. Read more: motherearthnews/real-food/gmcrops-will-not-feed-world-ze0z1409zcwil.aspx
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 10:48:14 +0000
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