Challenging the Flawed Premise Behind Pushing GMOs into Indian Agriculture
A common claim
is that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are essential to
agriculture if we are to feed an ever-growing global population.
Supporters of genetically engineered (GE) crops argue that by increasing
productivity and yields, this technology will also help boost farmers’
incomes and lift many out of poverty. Although in this article it will
be argued that the performance of GE crops to date has been
questionable, the main contention is that the pro-GMO lobby, both
outside of India and within, has wasted no time in wrenching the issues
of hunger and poverty from their political contexts
to use notions of
‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its
promotional strategy. There exists a ‘haughty imperialism’ within the
pro-GMO scientific lobby that aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’
which is a distraction from the root causes of poverty, hunger and
malnutrition and genuine solutions based on food justice and food
sovereignty.
Last year, in the journal Current Science, Dr Deepak Pental,
developer of genetically engineered (GE) mustard at Delhi University,
responded to a previous paper in the same journal by eminent scientists PC Kesavan and MS Swaminathan which
questioned the efficacy of and the need for genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. Pental argued that the two authors had
aligned themselves with environmentalists and ideologues who have
mindlessly attacked the use of genetic engineering (GE) technology to
improve crops required for meeting the food and nutritional needs of a
global population that is predicted to peak at 11.2 billion. Pental
added that aspects of the two authors’ analysis are a reflection of
their ideological proclivities.
The use of the word
‘mindlessly’ is telling and betrays Pental’s own ideological
disposition. His words reflect tired industry-inspired rhetoric that
says criticisms of GE technology are driven by ideology not fact.
If hunger and
malnutrition are to be tackled effectively, the pro-GMO lobby must put
aside this type of rhetoric, which is designed to close down debate. It
should accept valid concerns about the GMO paradigm and be willing to
consider why the world already produces enough to feed 10 billion people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which 821 million were classed as chronically undernourished in 2018).
Critics: valid concerns or ideologues?
The performance of GE crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in Kevasan and Swaminathan’s piece and by others,
there is already sufficient evidence to question their efficacy,
especially that of herbicide-tolerant crops (which by 2007 already
accounted for approximately 80% of biotech-derived crops grown globally)
and the devastating impacts on the environment, human health and food
security, not least in places like Latin America.
We should not
accept the premise that only GE can solve problems in agriculture. In
their paper, Kesavan and Swaminathan argue that GE technology is
supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they
say that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. In this
respect, conventional options and innovations that outperform GE
must not be overlooked or sidelined in a rush by powerful interests
like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to facilitate the
introduction of GE crops into global agriculture; crops which are highly
financially lucrative for the corporations behind them.
In Europe, robust
regulatory mechanisms are in place for GMOs because it is recognised
that GE food/crops are not substantially equivalent to their non-GE
counterparts. Numerous studies have highlighted the flawed premise of ‘substantial equivalence’. Furthermore, from the outset of the GMO project, the sidelining of serious concerns
about the technology has occurred and despite industry claims to the
contrary, there is no scientific consensus on the health impacts of GE
crops as noted by Hilbeck et al (Environmental Sciences Europe, 2015). Adopting a precautionary principle where GE is concerned is therefore a valid approach.
As Hilbeck et al
note, both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary
approach to GE crops and foods, in that they agree that GE differs from
conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be required
before GMOs are used in food or released into the environment.
There is sufficient reason to hold back on commercialising GE crops and
to subject each GMO to independent, transparent environmental, social,
economic and health impact evaluations.
Critics’ concerns
cannot therefore be brushed aside by claims that ‘the science’ is
decided and the ‘facts’ about GE are indisputable. Such claims are
merely political posturing and part of a strategy to tip the policy
agenda in favour of GE.
In India, various
high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GE crops.
Appointed by the Supreme Court, the ‘Technical Expert Committee (TEC)
Final Report’ (2013) was scathing about India’s prevailing regulatory
system and highlighted its inadequacies and serious inherent conflicts
of interest. The TEC recommended a 10-year moratorium on the commercial
release of all GE crops.
As we have seen
with the push to get GE mustard commercialised, the problems described
by the TEC persist. Through her numerous submissions to the Supreme
Court, Aruna Rodrigues has argued that GE mustard is being pushed
through based on outright regulatory delinquency. It must also be noted
that this crop is herbicide tolerant, which, as stated by the TEC, is
wholly inappropriate for India with its small biodiverse, multi-cropping
farms.
While the above
discussion has only scratched the surface, it is fair to say that
criticisms of GE technology and various restrictions and moratoriums
have not been driven by ‘mindless’ proclivities.
Can GE crops ‘feed the world’?
The ‘gene
revolution’ is sometimes regarded as Green Revolution 2.0. The Green
Revolution too was sold under the guise of ‘feeding the world’. However,
emerging research indicates that in India it merely led to more wheat
in the diet, while food productivity per capita showed no increase or actually decreased.
Globally, the Green
Revolution dovetailed with the consolidation of an emerging global food
regime based on agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food
commodities taking up prime agricultural land) and (unfair) liberalised
trade, linked to sovereign debt repayment and World Bank/IMF structural
adjustment-privatisation directives. The outcomes have included a
displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the consolidation of Western
agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.
And yet, the corporations behind this system of dependency and their
lobbyists waste no time in spreading the message that this is the route
to achieving food security. Their interests lie in ‘business as usual’.
Today, we hear
terms like ‘foreign direct investment’ and making India ‘business
friendly’, but behind the rhetoric lies the hard-nosed approach of
globalised capitalism. The intention is for India’s displaced
cultivators to be retrained to work as cheap labour in the West’s
offshored plants. India is to be a fully incorporated subsidiary of
global capitalism, with its agri-food sector restructured for the needs
of global supply chains and a reserve army of labour that effectively
serves to beat workers and unions in the West into submission.
Global food
insecurity and malnutrition are not the result of a lack of
productivity. As long as these dynamics persist and food injustice
remains an inbuilt feature of the global food regime, the rhetoric of GE
being necessary for feeding the world will be seen for what it is:
bombast.
Although India fares poorly
in world hunger assessments, the country has achieved self-sufficiency
in food grains and has ensured there is enough food (in terms of
calories) available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), food security is achieved when all people, at all times, have
physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious
food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active
and healthy life.
Food security for
many Indians remains a distant dream. Large sections of India’s
population do not have enough food available to remain healthy nor do
they have sufficiently diverse diets that provide adequate levels of
micronutrients. The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016-18 is
the first-ever nationally representative nutrition survey of children
and adolescents in India. It found that 35 per cent of children under
five were stunted, 22 per cent of school-age children were stunted while
24 per cent of adolescents were thin for their age.
People are not
hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger
and malnutrition result from various factors, including inadequate food
distribution, (gender) inequality and poverty; in fact, the country continues to export food while millions remain hungry. It’s a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance.
Where farmers’
livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GMO lobby says GE will boost
productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. Again, this is
misleading: it ignores crucial political and economic contexts. Even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress.
India’s farmers are not experiencing financial hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies,
years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace smallholder
agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global
agri-food corporations . Little wonder then that the calorie and
essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen.
However, aside from
putting a positive spin on the questionable performance of GMO
agriculture, the pro-GMO lobby, both outside of India and within, has
wasted no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts
to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as
lynchpins of its promotional strategy.
GE was never intended to feed the world
Many of the traditional practices of India’s small farmers are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate for high-productive, sustainable agriculture. It is no surprise therefore that a recent FAO high-level report has
called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and
invested in to achieve global sustainable food security. It argues that
scaling up agroecology offers potential solutions to many of the world’s
most pressing problems, whether, for instance, climate change and
carbon storage, soil degradation, water shortages, unemployment or food
security.
Agroecological
principles represent a shift away from the reductionist yield-output
industrial paradigm, which results in among other things enormous
pressures on soil and water resources, to a more integrated low-input
systems approach to food and agriculture that prioritises local food
security, local calorific production, cropping patterns and diverse
nutrition production per acre, water table stability, climate
resilience, good soil structure and the ability to cope with evolving
pests and disease pressures. Such a system would be underpinned by a
concept of food sovereignty, based on optimal self-sufficiency, the
right to culturally appropriate food and local ownership and stewardship
of common resources, such as land, water, soil and seeds.
Traditional
production systems rely on the knowledge and expertise of farmers in
contrast to imported ‘solutions’. Yet, if we take cotton cultivation in
India as an example, farmers continue to be nudged away from traditional
methods of farming and are being pushed towards (illegal) GE
herbicide-tolerant cotton seeds. Researchers Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note
the results of this shift from traditional practices to date does not
appear to have benefited farmers. This isn’t about giving farmers
‘choice’ where GE seeds and associated chemicals are concerned. It is
more about GE seed companies and weedicide manufactures seeking to
leverage a highly lucrative market.
The potential for
herbicide market growth in India is enormous and industry looked for
sales to reach USD 800 million by 2019. The objective involves opening
India to GE seeds with herbicide tolerance traits, the biotechnology
industry’s biggest money maker by far (86 per cent of the world’s GE
crop acres in 2015 contain plants resistant to glyphosate or glufosinate
and there is a new generation of crops resistant to 2,4-D coming
through).
The aim is to break
farmers’ traditional pathways and move them onto corporate
biotech/chemical treadmills for the benefit of industry.
Calls for
agroecology and highlighting the benefits of traditional, small-scale
agriculture are not based on a romantic yearning for the past or ‘the
peasantry’. Available evidence
suggests that (non-GMO) smallholder farming using low-input methods is
more productive in total output than large-scale industrial farms and
can be more profitable and resilient to climate change. It is for good
reason that the FAO high-level report referred to earlier as well as the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Prof Hilal
Elver, call for investment in this type of agriculture, which is centred
on small farms. Despite the pressures, including the fact that
globally industrial agriculture grabs 80 per cent of subsidies and 90 per cent of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.
That’s a massive
quantity of subsidies and funds to support a system that is only made
profitable as a result of these financial injections and because
agri-food oligopolies externalize the massive health, social and environmental costs of their operations.
But policy makers
tend to accept that profit-driven transnational corporations have a
legitimate claim to be owners and custodians of natural assets (the
‘commons’). These corporations, their lobbyists and their political
representatives have succeeded in cementing a ‘thick legitimacy’ among policy makers for their vision of agriculture.
From World Bank
‘enabling the business of agriculture’ directives to the World Trade
Organization ‘agreement on agriculture’ and trade related intellectual
property agreements, international bodies have enshrined the interests
of corporations that seek to monopolise seeds, land, water, biodiversity
and other natural assets that belong to us all. These corporations, the
promoters of GMO agriculture, are not offering a ‘solution’ for
farmers’ impoverishment or hunger; GE seeds are little more than a value
capture mechanism.
To evaluate the
pro-GMO lobby’s rhetoric that GE is needed to ‘feed the world’, we first
need to understand the dynamics of a globalised food system that fuels
hunger and malnutrition against a backdrop of (subsidised) food
overproduction. We must acknowledge the destructive, predatory dynamics
of capitalism and the need for agri-food giants to maintain profits by
seeking out new (foreign) markets and displacing existing systems of
production with ones that serve their bottom line. And we need to
reject a deceptive ‘haughty imperialism’ within the pro-GMO scientific lobby which aggressively pushes for a GMO ‘solution’.
*
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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Colin Todhunter, Global Research, 2020
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