ONCE again, the boreholes are drying up and the bellies of countless African children are swelling due to malnutrition. Millions are thought to be facing starvation. Yet as New 杏吧原创 went to press, the government of Zimbabwe was still rejecting a large consignment of food aid from the US on the grounds that it contains genetically modified maize (see 鈥淕M row delays food aid鈥�).
This is madness. Even if, as seems likely, a compromise is reached, the delay may already have cost lives. Anyone who attempts to paint it as a proportionate response to the dangers of GM crops has lost sight of where the real problems with this technology lie.
It is true that bungling Western governments have in the past sent inappropriate or useless food as emergency aid. It is also true that in one important sense the US government has only itself to blame. It has spent years encouraging farmers to mix up GM and ordinary produce instead of segregating them. Now the hands of US aid officials are tied. They have no choice but to offer food containing GM produce. Even if there is nothing cynical about this, it inevitably creates the impression of a rich, pro-GM nation using a hunger crisis to force the technology down people鈥檚 throats. The US is unlikely to rethink its policy on segregation. It ought to. Otherwise this ludicrous situation will arise again.
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But the rest of us have plenty to learn as well. Given the millions facing starvation there, Zimbabwe鈥檚 reasons for rejecting the food aid make no sense. The safety of GM maize may not have been tested as rigorously and transparently as some would have liked, but millions of Americans have eaten the stuff and lived to tell the tale. And yes, some of the maize could end up growing in fields or being fed to animals 鈥� but this isn鈥檛 going to harm exports or local crop varieties.
It is tempting to pin the blame entirely on Mugabe鈥檚 increasingly repressive regime. But that would be simplistic. Many of the objections to the emergency GM relief originate in the well-rehearsed fears of Western opponents to the technology. What is happening in Zimbabwe ought to shock people on both sides of the debate into recognising the huge responsibility they bear not to exaggerate or scaremonger. Whipping up concerns about GM crops being poisonous or causing environmental catastrophe might seem justified if it halts an undesirable technology. But what if it causes governments to shun food aid and people to starve? Then it starts to look as irresponsible as claiming HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that antiviral drugs are a waste of a money for countries like South Africa.
As for proponents of GM technology, they should think twice before they unleash their usual rhetoric about it being a solution to world hunger. Zimbabwe might be wrong to turn away this food, but it would be right to reject the dogma that growing hi-tech crops can prevent famine. The real causes of hunger in Africa are poverty, debt, a lack of infrastructure and the Western farm subsidies that make it difficult for African growers to compete in world markets. Today鈥檚 GM crops will not ease any of these problems. They might even make them worse.