Let’s not Barter Away Our Food Security for GM Crops

Important decisions are being made about Genetically Modified (GM) technologies, which aren’t covered in our media or even in our parliament. Journalists and parliamentarians either lack access to information about GM crop trials or do not understand the issues at stake.

Meanwhile, biotech corporations are pressing ahead, leaving decisions that will affect millions of Pakistanis unexamined. After the privatisation of our important public sector entities, the new frontier seems to be our farms and food security. From what was once called the granary of the sub-continent, Pakistan can be reduced to what some are calling a client food state which will have to comply with the whims of Western biotech companies or face famine.

Earlier this week, Kausar Abdullah, member Planning Commission on Agriculture told a news conference that efforts were underway for approval of all BT (Bio-technology) varieties “as soon as possible” to adopt them in an organized manner for cultivation all over the country. This is bad news as it comes without any debate on the issue.

In Pakistan’s business-friendly climate, biotech and GM issues are not a priority and are often mentioned in a polarized manner. In the absence of in-depth knowledge and specialization, it’s either a business story - technologies are reported as good for food production and export markets - or it’s a story about NGO protests.

This is ironic because some experts feel that the media in developing countries will have to increasingly deal with GM issues in the future.

“...Facing a political climate that is generally hostile to agri-biotech, companies have grown pessimistic about their commercial future in Europe and have begun moving their plant biotechnology divisions elsewhere,” said an editorial in the Scientific American magazine in August last year.

According to some experts, multinational companies engaging in crop-improvement programs have taken a stronghold in developing countries through locally influential personages and companies.

In 1998 Monsanto bought a 28 per cent equity stake in Mumbai-based MAHYCO (Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company), an Indian firm. MAHYCO is headed by Dr Raju Barwale, a top scientist who has been decorated for his pioneering work in non-GM seed development. His influence in the government spreads into almost every sector of agriculture and biotechnology, and even the environment ministry.

Monsanto is not controversy-free. Its field trials with genetically modified Bt cotton sparked NGO protests between 2001 and 2003. The department of biotechnology in India gave it permission to produce the seeds even before trials were completed and the company did not make the trial results public.

One claim that Pakistan has to deal with is that GM crops will alleviate poverty and hunger in the developing world. Making the claim, among others, is a non-profit organization with global clout - the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA). With a mandate to aid technology-transfer from rich to poor countries, and a high-profile board of current and past members, the ISAAA was represented at the press conference in Islamabad by its chairman Clive James.

In a 2004 report on the global status of biotech crops, ISAAA chief Clive James says that 90 per cent of beneficiaries of the increase in acreage of biotech crops have been poor farmers “whose increased income from biotech crops contributed to the alleviation of poverty.”

The ISAAA’s growing influence in Pakistan is apparent. It also claims that these technologies would bring about the “next green revolution” in Pakistan.

The ISAAA, which conducts media study tours and symposia, says a country like India saw a 400 rise (500,000 hectares) in Bt cotton hectareage in 2004 and that 11 per cent of cotton farmers adopted Bt seeds. Only a handful queried such claims.

But the increase in acreage that the ISAAA refers to is minuscule compared to India’s 10 million hectares of cotton cultivation, say analysts. Just because farmers are experimenting with GM crops in order to assess their benefits does not mean they have accepted the technology. This is true of Pakistan as well.

Sometimes it is also a question of making use of available data. India’s Crop Weather Watch Group argue that the country’s bumper cotton crop in 2004 was more due to deficient rainfall - low humidity discourages pest-breeding - than to the widespread use of Bt technology as claimed by the ISAAA.

But GM crops have made considerable inroads into traditional agriculture over the last ten years. Major biotech crops to have been successfully commercialised include cotton, corn (maize) and soybean. But is this for the better?

After a decade of commercialisation, global area under biotech crops has expanded to 90 million hectares in 21 countries covering 8.5 million farmers in 2005.

Herbicide-tolerant soybean continues to be the mostly widely adopted trait, accounting for 60 per cent of total global area. Varieties with stacked traits are growing in popularity, accounting for 10 per cent of global area, the ISAAA report pointed out.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that food output must increase by 60 percent over the next 25 years to keep up with demand.

In a report on the bioengineering of crops written for the World Bank and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in October last year, a group led by Henry Kendall, chair of the Washington DC-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said that transgenic crops could improve food yields by up to 25 percent in developing countries and could help to feed an estimated additional three billion people over the next 30 years.

Whether or not the rest of the world falls in line with the US in accepting life patents, researchers predict that with advances in biotechnology there will be a switch in centres of production away from the developing world, accompanied by loss of export income. This is cause for worry.

Farmers in the US are expected to plant twice as much GM soybean in 2008 as in 2007, and with resistance to GM soy in Europe, there are concerns that it will be dumped in countries like Pakistan.

Corporations that patent crop plants often don’t allow nations, where these crops are indigenous, to benefit. The central, over-arching debate (or lack of debate) concerns ownership of resources and how to reconcile the rigid, individualistic patenting system of the developed world with the community-held knowledge systems of poorer countries.

If foreign researchers and TNCs can patent indigenous crop plants without making recompense to the communities who provided them, there are fears that farmers will end up paying royalties on the products of their own knowledge, products on which they rely for survival.

In September 1997, the US company Ricetec, Inc., was granted a patent on Basmati rice. The patent is for a variety achieved by the crossing of Indian Basmati with semi-dwarf varieties, and it covers Basmati grown anywhere in the Western hemisphere.

Ricetec can also put its brand on any breeding crosses involving 22 farmer-bred Basmati varieties from Pakistan and, according to RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International), on any blending of Pakistani or Indian Basmati strains with the company’s other proprietary seeds.

Ricetec also claims the right to use the Basmati name. The Indian government has challenged Ricetec’s claim, arguing that the patent jeopardises India’s annual Basmati export market of around $277 million, and threatens the livelihood of thousands farmers.

Monsanto, a biotech firm, does not allow farmers to save seeds, forcing them to continually buy more Monsanto seed. The ability of farmers to save seed is seen as crucial to food security especially in a country like Pakistan.

According to RAFI, up to 1.4 billion poor farmers in the developing world depend on saved seed and seeds exchanged with farm neighbors, and up to 50 percent of soybean in the developing world is planted with farmer-saved seed.

TNCs such as Monsanto require farmers who buy their GM seeds to sign contracts agreeing not to save seed. In March 1998 RAFI reported that Monsanto had taken legal action against more than 100 soybean growers in the US, and had hired Pinkerton investigators (hired police) to identify those saving seeds.

In 1998 the US Department of Agriculture and the Mississippi-based Delta and Pine Land seed company were granted a patent on the so-called “terminator technology”, which involves engineering seeds so that they do not germinate if planted for a second time.

What does all this mean for the Pakistani farmer? On the one hand, GM seeds and crops promise an increased yield. But the catch is that the farmer cannot re-use the seed. This makes the farmer a client of the biotech company for life. There is no more self sufficiency.

GM crops also have other hazards attached to them and sometimes do not get the results that they promise. All this needs to be considered by Pakistan before it opens the way to bio-technology.

To every cloud there is a silver lining. If our parliament is heavy with agriculturists, this is the platform for us to debate whether we are better off with our crops and techniques or should we adopt technology that barters away our food security. Time for some deep thinking and hard questioning.