» News » Blogs

Last week, Sir David King, the government’s chief science adviser, touted the “moral case” for GM technology in feeding the global population, which is due to exceed 9 billion by 2050.

The implication is that by refusing to eat GM products we are threatening the poor world with starvation. But this ignores the fact of a surplus of food in a world where yet people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They go hungry as a by-product of global systems that harness natural wealth for the benefit of the few.

The global food system means, to pick one example, you can sit malnourished on the shores of Lake Victoria - one of the Great Lakes of Africa - and watch the tons of fish fillets being air-freighted out for consumption in the rich world.

Now a handful of private companies stand poised to seize the food market entire, and in the process make a lot of money. Because - keep your eye on the ball - we’re talking about who controls, and, with commercial GM development, gets to monopolise the global food supply.

Private companies gain exclusive rights to the production and distribution of, among other living things, seeds, through patents. What should be commonly available becomes the ‘intellectual property’ of a company, making it illegal for others to save and exchange seed, preventing local economies for the production of food.

The result is inevitably a conflict between global capital and local peasants. The biggest seed corporation, Monsanto, has been linked to 150,000 farmers’ suicides in India. These farmers lost their livelihoods after turning to costly and unreliable hybrids sold by Monsanto.

Where patents are granted for seeds and plants, corporations are suing farmers for seed saving and sharing - for ‘piracy.’ They are hiring private detectives to investigate suspected rogue farmers, to root out who has robbed the rich to give to the poor.

They can even sue you if you don’t know how the seeds got onto your land, as was the case when Monsanto took Canadian farmer, Percy Schmeiser, to court.

But there are other defenders of intellectual property and rights. Dr. Vandana Shiva - a world-renowned defender of biodiversity conservation, farmers’ rights, and organic farming - talks about the ‘intellectual rights of communities’: “The poor are pushed into deeper poverty by making them pay for what was theirs.”

For genetically modified varieties are derived from traditional varieties. And reliance on monoculture - the practice of growing a single crop in an area as opposed to tried-and-tested indigenous biodiversity - “allows destruction and appropriation to be projected as creation,” writes Dr. Shiva:

“Take the case of the much flouted ‘golden rice’ or genetically engineered Vitamin A rice as a cure for blindness. It is assumed that without genetic engineering we cannot remove Vitamin A deficiency. However, nature gives us abundant and diverse sources of vitamin A. If rice was not polished, rice itself would provide Vitamin A. If herbicides were not sprayed on our wheat fields, we would have bathua, amaranth, [and] mustard leaves as delicious and nutritious greens that provide Vitamin A.”

While one of the poster children of globalisation, 46% of India’s children aged 3 years or under are malnourished. And here’s the rub: Most GM crops aren’t grown to feed people at all. The significant majority are grown to feed animals, which are then killed to feed rich world citizens - as good an argument as any to go vegan.

On the shores of Lake Victoria, the local economy now depends on the Nile perch, a beefy predatory fish that has wiped out the native species and triggered the undoing of a once diverse and thriving ecosystem to the point where it now threatens to cease to sustain life and provide drinking water.

In the end, it is quite clear who feeds the poor, and who won’t.