farmers and members
of the public from around the united
kingdom at the october 2003 "tractors and
trolleys" gm protest.
The first decade of the
commercialization of genetically modified
(GM) crops was a resounding failure for
biotech companies. The first GM crop was
commercialized in 1994, and now, ten years
later, the promises made by the biotech
industry and its powerful lobby groups have
still not materialized. Meanwhile, the
global opposition to GM crops continues to
swell.
brave new
agriculture
The genetic engineering of seeds is
without doubt the most radical
transformation in food production since the
first days of agriculture, more than 10,000
years ago. The first GM crop was
commercialized in the United States in
1994. This ‘Flavr Savr' tomato was a flop,
and was eventually removed from the market.
But other GM crops were better received,
and between 1996 and 1999 a significant
number of GM crops were sown, primarily in
the United States , Argentina and Canada
.
the seeding of global
opposition
The enthusiasm of the biotech industry
about the introduction of GM crops around
the world was not universally shared.
Concerns quickly arose about the potential
health, environmental and socioeconomic
impacts of these new crops.
By the end of the 1990s, opposition to
GM crops had arisen on every continent. The
European Union adopted a moratorium on the
commercial growing of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), bans were established in
Asian and Latin American countries, and
many southern countries refused GM food
aid. In general, consumers worldwide were
reluctant to embrace GM food.
Although the biotech industry had
expected people and governments everywhere
to embrace GM crops without question,
public skepticism has forced companies to
limit their current activities to a few
main countries. Biotech corporations failed
to market products with clear benefits for
consumers or farmers. Instead, GM crops
created novel and alarming problems,
including genetic contamination.
Biotech giants and their powerful lobby
groups relied heavily on public relations
strategies to sell their products. For
example, they heralded the genetically
modified ‘Golden Rice' as a solution for
Vitamin A deficiency in the Third World,
but to date this appears to be a ‘golden
hoax' to promote GM crops. Behind the
scenes, biotech companies play dirty to
secure their interests; for instance the
biotech industry has been behind various
threats of trade sanctions, including the
attempts by the US administration to impose
GM food on reluctant countries like Bolivia
, Croatia and Sri Lanka as well as on the
European Union.
However, citizen opposition to GMOs is
snowballing. In Europe , distrust is so
high that GMOs have in effect been removed
from the majority of supermarket shelves.
In the South, several countries in Latin
America , Africa , and Asia have rejected
GM food aid outright. Consumer and retailer
suspicion has forced Monsanto to delay the
commercialization of its GM wheat,
initially planned for 2004.
ten years later: broken promises
and unsustainable agriculture
Biotech companies promised that GM crops
were safe, that they would provide better
quality and cheaper food, that they were
environmentally sustainable, that they
would improve agricultural production, and
that they would feed the developing
world.
After ten years, none of these promises
have materialized. The regulatory regimes
in GM producing countries cannot ensure the
safety of GM crops, and the StarLink and
biopharmaceuticals incidents are early
warnings of the potential health
implications of introducing food products
not authorized for human consumption into
the food chain. Furthermore, not a single
GM food on the market is cheaper or better
quality than its ‘natural' counterpart. GM
crops may threaten biodiversity: for
example, the 2003 UK Farm Scale Evaluations
concluded that GM oilseed rape damaged
farmland wildlife.
Developing countries are already
experiencing serious problems with GM
crops. In several parts of India and
Indonesia for example, farmers have
complained that Monsanto's GM cotton has
not delivered on the company's claims of
higher yields and improvements in the
livelihoods of farmers. Furthermore, the
case of Argentina proves that GM crops are
not the solution for feeding the world, as
the biotech companies promised. Argentina
is the second largest world producer of GM
crops, but millions of people in this
country go to bed hungry each night.
Large biotech companies like Monsanto
are driven to control agriculture markets.
In 2003, Monsanto was the world leader in
GM crops. Seeds with Monsanto traits
accounted for more than 90 percent of the
global area planted with herbicide tolerant
or insect resistant crops. According to the
company's 2003 annual report, their Roundup
herbicide is the world's bestselling
herbicide. At the same time, the company is
suing hundreds of farmers in the US and
Canada in an attempt to prevent them from
saving their seeds, a tradition and right
since the beginning of agriculture.
The biotech industry's dream of the
large-scale introduction of GM crops around
the globe would further exacerbate the
ecological vulnerability already associated
with monoculture agriculture. Ten years
later, it can be concluded that GM crops
are leading us down a dangerous path to
unsustainable agriculture.
Fortunately, however, there are viable
and practical alternatives to GM crops that
are almost invariably cheaper, more
accessible, more productive in marginal
environments and more culturally and
socially acceptable. The failure of biotech
companies in the last decade and the
growing global opposition should catalyze a
shift of focus towards alternative,
reliable agricultural techniques that are
less costly than the multi-billion dollar
modern biotechnology industry
