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By Miguel Altieri, PhD
Myth # 1: Biotechnology will benefit farmers
Reality: Biotechnology seeks to ‘industrialise agriculture' even further, converting agriculture into a branch of industry.
Biotechnology is capital intensive and increases concentration of
agriculture production in the hands of large corporate farms.
As with other labour saving technology, by increasing productivity
biotechnology tends to reduce commodity prices and set in motion a
technology treadmill that forces out of business a significant number
of farmers, especially small scale.
Given that time and labour
saving technology have been substituted for farmers and farm workers
for over 200 years, the most probable outcome is that US farmers will
be displaced by biotechnology.
Removal of constraints to growing the same crop in the same field
every year and eliminating the need for mechanical weed control will
enable a given number of people to farm more acres and thereby
facilitate a system of bigger and fewer farms.
Biotechnology will
further concentrate power in the hands of a few multinational
corporations (MNCs), which in turn will enhance farmers' dependence and
force them to pay inflated prices for seed-chemical packages.
Myth # 2: Biotechnology will benefit Third World farmers
Reality: If green revolution technology bypassed small and
resource-poor farmers, biotechnology will exacerbate marginalisation
even more as such technologies are under corporate control and
protected by patents, are expensive and inappropriate to the needs and
circumstances of indigenous people.
Biotechnology products will undermine exports from Third World countries especially from small-scale producers.
70,000 farmers in Madagascar growing vanilla were ruined when a Texas farm produced vanilla in biotech labs.
Fructose produced by biotechnology captured over 10% of the world sugar
market and caused sugar prices to fall, throwing tens of thousands of
sugar workers in the Third World out of work.
Nearly 10 million sugar farmers in the Third World may face a loss
of livelihood as laboratory-produced sweeteners begin invading world
markets.
Expansion of Unilever cloned oil palms will substantially
increase palm-oil production with dramatic consequences for farmers
producing other vegetable oils (groundnut in Senegal and coconut in the
Philippines)
The Third World should worry that the massive penetration of transgenic
crops will not only pose environmental risks and foreclose rural
employment opportunities, but will doom traditional agriculture and its
native genetic diversity.
Myth # 3: Biotechnology production promises will be a blessing for the poor and hungry of the Third World.
Reality: Biotechnology is profit driven rather than science and need
driven. Biotechnology research serves the desires of the rich rather
than the needs of humanity, especially the poor.
Biotechnology is
primarily a commercial activity, a reality that determines priorities
of what is investigated, how it is applied and who is to benefit. While
the world may lack food and suffer pesticide pollution, the focus of
MNCs is profit, not philanthropy.
Investors design GMOs for new marketable quality or for import substitution, rather than for greater food production.
Biotechnology companies are emphasising a limited range of crops for
which there are large and secure markets, targeted to relatively
capital-intensive production systems. It is difficult to conceive how
such technology will be introduced in Third World countries to favour
masses of poor farmers.
The thrust of the biotech industry is not to solve agricultural
problems as much as it is to create profitability. Why are herbicide
resistant crops (HRCs) not being developed for parasitic weeds in
Africa? Instead HRC corn and cotton are being produced although there
are myriad herbicides available to control weeds in these crops.
Why isn't the scientific genius of biotechnology turned to develop
varieties of crops more tolerant to weeds rather than herbicides? Why
aren't more promising products of biotechnology, such as nitrogen
fixing and tolerant plants being developed?
Myth # 4: Biotechnology will not attempt to move against the ecological sovereignty of the Third World
Reality: The Third World is now witnessing a ‘gene rush' as
governments and multinational corporations aggressively scour forests,
crop fields and coasts in search of the new genetic gold. Indigenous
people and their biodiversity are viewed as raw material for the MNCs.
Corporations have made billions of dollars on seeds developed in US
labs from germplasm that farmers in the Third World had carefully bred
over generations.
Peasant farmers go unrewarded for their millenary knowledge of what to
grow, while MNCs stand to harvest royalties from Third World countries
estimated at billions of dollars.
Patenting laws prevent farmers from freely reproducing patented
livestock and seeds. Biotech companies offer no concrete provisions to
pay Third World farmers for the seeds they take and use.
Patenting
of plants and animals means that farmers must pay royalties to the
patent holder each time they breed their stock (saving seed is not
possible with hybrid crops, farmers must buy fresh patented seed each
year).
Indigenous farmers can lose rights to their own original seeds.
As bans and regulations delay tests and marketing in the North, GMOs
will increasingly be tested in the South to bypass public control. The
Third World will evolve from chemical and nuclear waste disposal to
genetic dump site.
Myth # 5: Biotechnology will lead to biodiversity conservation
Reality: Although biotechnology has the capacity to create a greater
variety of commercial plants and thus contribute to biodiversity, this
is unlikely to happen. MNCs' strategy is to create broad international
markets for a single product. The tendency is towards uniform
international seed markets.
The agricultural systems developed with
transgenic crops will favour monocultures characterised by dangerously
high levels of genetic homogeneity leading to higher vulnerability of
agriculture to biotic and abiotic stresses.
As the new bioengineered seeds replace the old traditional varieties
and their wild relatives, genetic erosion will accelerate in the Third
World.
The push for uniformity will not only destroy the diversity
of genetic resources, but will also disrupt the biological complexity
that underlies the sustainability of traditional farming systems.
Myth # 6: Biotechnology is ecologically safe, offering softer technologies and will launch a period of chemical-free agriculture
Reality: We can be more sure of the economic outcomes of
biotechnology (especially for MNCs) than we can about its health or
environmental outcomes.
There are many unanswered ecological questions regarding the impact
of the release of transgenic plants and microbes into the environment.
Approaches must be developed and employed for assessing and monitoring
future predictable risks.
Biotechnology will exacerbate the
problems of conventional agriculture and will also undermine ecological
methods of farming such as rotation and polycultures.
Transgenic crops are likely to increase the use of pesticides and to
accelerate the evolution of ‘superweeds' and resistant insect/pest
strains.
Major environmental risks associated with genetically
engineered plants are the unintended transfer to plant relatives of the
‘transgenes' and the unpredictable ecological effects.
Myth # 7: Biotechnology will enhance the use of molecular biology for the benefit of all society
Reality: The demand for the new biotechnology has emerged out of the
change in plant laws and the profit interests of chemical companies in
linking seeds and pesticides. The supply emerged out of breakthroughs
in molecular biology and the availability of venture capital as a
result of favourable tax laws. Plant breeding research is shifting from
the public to the private sector. As more universities enter into
partnerships with corporations, serious ethical questions emerge about
who owns the results of research and which research gets done.
A great deal of the basic knowledge underlying biotechnology was developed using public funding.
The trend to secrecy by publicly funded scientists in government and universities is not in the public interest.
A professor's ability to attract private investments is often more
important than academic qualifications. Applied and alternative
agricultural sciences such as biological pest control which do not
attract corporate sponsorship are being phased out.
The economic and political domination of the agricultural development
agenda has thrived at the expense of the interest of consumers, farm
workers, small family farms, wildlife and the environment.
Citizens should have earlier entry points and broader participation in technological decisions.
The domination of scientific research by corporate interest must be dealt with more stringent public control.
It is not biotechnological science that needs scrutiny; it is its exploitation by narrow business interests.
Mechanisms should be in place to reverse the privatisation of
biotechnology and challenge the direction of current privately led
research.
Myth # 8: Biotechnology is a more environmentally sound approach to pest management and sustainable agriculture
Reality: Biotechnology emerges in an area where there is widespread
concern about the long-term sustainability of our food production
systems. Many scientists raise questions about the growing dependence
of farming on non-renewable resources, the depletion of soils through
erosion and the heavy reliance on chemicals which are costly but also
raise questions about food and environmental quality.
Agroindustry's model reliance on monoculture and inputs such as
pesticides and fertilisers impacts the environment and society: topsoil
has been lost, biodiversity has eroded, and toxics have damaged
wildlife, soil and water. As biotechnology requires reliance on
monocultures these negative trends will become exacerbated.
Worldwide, 2.5 million tons of pesticides are applied each year with a purchase price of $20 billion.
In the US, 500,000 tons of 600 different types of pesticides are used annually at a cost of $4.1 billion.
The cost to Latin America of chemical pest control is expected to reach US$5.2 billion by the year 2006.
An investment of $4 billion in pesticide control saves approximately
$16 billion in US crops. But indirect environmental and public health
costs of pesticide use (reaching $8 billion each year) need to be
balanced against these benefits.
By weight of active ingredients, herbicides now constitute 85% of all pesticides applied to field crops.
Biotechnology treats agricultural problems as genetic deficiencies of organisms, and treats nature as a commodity.
Biotechnology is being used to patch up problems that have been
caused by previous technologies (pest resistance, cost of pesticides,
pollution, etc.) which were promoted by the same companies now leading
the bio-revolution.
Transgenic crops for pest control follow
closely the pesticide paradigm of using a single control mechanism
which has proven to fail with insects, pathogens and weeds. As such,
they do not fit into the broad ideals of sustainable agriculture.
The ‘one gene-one pest' resistance approach is rather easy to be
overcome by pests which are continuously adapting to new situations and
evolving detoxification mechanisms.
As with pesticides, biotechnology companies will feel the impact of
environmental, farm labour, animal rights and consumers lobbies.
Miguel A. Altieri, PhD from the University of California, Berkeley
is a world traveller, spending six months of the year helping small
farmers abroad, mostly in Latin America, the other six teaching at
Berkeley. He has travelled to England to speak about sustainable
agriculture at a conference organised by Prince Charles; to the Vatican
for a meeting on the food needs of the developing world where he met
with the Pope; and to Italy as a resident scholar at the Bellagio
Institute, where he worked on the third edition of his pioneering text,
Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture.
www.nature.berkeley.edu/~agroeco3
Published byronchild/Kindred, issue 17, March 07
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