THE debate about genetically modified crops has stalled. Greens warn of threats to natural ecosystems, the integrity of organic food, and even our health. The biotech industry has a standard response: 鈥淢iddle-class Westerners may fuss about such things, but we have a responsibility to feed the starving millions.鈥�
This week the shrill voices are being heard again around the corridors of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome as it hosts the World Food Summit. It is easy to be cynical of such gatherings. The first, held in 1996, saw governments commit to halving the number of hungry people in the world by 2015, yet do little concrete to achieve that target (see Graph). But clearly there is a shocking problem to solve. Nearly one in seven people continue to go hungry in a world of ever greater plenty.
In a sense, the biotech industry is right to want its technology assessed in a political and economic context. You cannot accurately judge the potential benefits or risks of GM seeds and crops armed only with information about gene flow and plant biochemistry. Just as important are who owns the technology, how it will be traded, and whether it matches the needs and pockets of the world鈥檚 poorest. Unfortunately for the industry, such real-world considerations suggest the argument about GM crops feeding the starving millions needs standing on its head. Far from filling empty stomachs, an explosion of GM seeds across the world is likely to spread hunger.
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How so? Not because GM crops will trigger environmental catastrophes or epidemics of human illness. These fears have been greatly exaggerated, as the ongoing controversy surrounding GM maize in Mexico reveals (see 鈥淭he great Mexican maize scandal鈥�). What is shocking about that episode is not any threat to maize biodiversity, which is close to negligible, but the sinister lengths the biotech industry seems to be prepared to go to in a bid to stifle debate and railroad the scientific world into rubber-stamping their products. This shifty image will not exactly be helped by the news that some scientists are now attempting to redefine certain types of genetically modified plants as non-GM (see 鈥淎ll in the name鈥�).
Nor are we saying GM crops lack the potential to raise food production worldwide. The present generation of crops may already be able to boost yields in some countries, and one day there may be GM seeds that allow high-yield crops to grow in drought conditions or in infertile badlands. But to conclude from this that high-tech food is the solution to starvation, and that every country must therefore drop its opposition to the technology and open its borders to a free trade in food and seeds, is to completely misunderstand the problem of hunger.
We do not face a world food crisis, and never have. 鈥淭here is no shortage of food on the planet,鈥� UN secretary general Kofi Annan told the opening ceremony of the food summit this week. 鈥淏ut while some countries produce more than they need to feed their people, others do not, and many of these cannot afford to import enough to make up the gap.鈥� He might have added that many countries with enough food cannot feed their starving either. The main reason 800 million people go to bed hungry each night is because they lack the resources to grow or buy their own food.
Poverty is the problem, especially rural poverty. And it is hard to see how a combination of high-tech crops and trade liberalised on Western terms will help alleviate it. Poor farmers who struggle to buy even conventional seeds are unlikely to be able to afford the prices charged by the big biotech companies. Nor will they be able to compete with those who can afford the seeds. Farmers in many 鈥渇ood-deficit regions鈥� are already going out of business because their produce is being undercut in local markets by cheap imports from the US, grown on the back of huge subsidies that favour the most mechanised farms.
In the short term at least, GM crops will make that problem worse. Overproduction in the West, coupled with a new world order that outlaws trade barriers but allows the subsidies to continue, will see ever more produce dumped in the developing world, further undermining those countries鈥� chances of feeding themselves and increasing the vulnerability of the rural poor.
We are not Luddites or protectionists. Trade and scientific development both have a role in the modern world. But at present, GM crops and the evolving world trade system share the same fundamental flaw. Both are harnessed to the needs of the rich world rather than the poor. And until that changes, both are likely to remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution.