I’ve been a wee bit worked up about The Casey-Lugar Global Food Security Act (S.384). If you’re on my email list or have been following my Facebook status updates, you’ll know that it aims to reform the way America delivers food aid to developing countries by shifting the model from direct food aid to helping farmers produce and distribute their own food. This is huge because currently, U.S. food aid, basically an outlet for excess grain, is not only inefficient, with most of the money spent on logistics, it also disrupts local food systems, suppresses markets and makes it difficult for those in need to break free from the aid.
So great – it’s Miller Time, right?
Um, no.
Though well intentioned, this bill is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing as it mandates funding for genetically modified (GM) crop research as the basis of its food security strategy, allowing biotechnology firms like Monsanto, and other agri-businesses, to expand their markets. S.384 essentially trades dumping grain into foreign markets for sowing genetically modified seeds in foreign land, and some players to be named later.
Bono’s ONE campaign supports it, so how bad can it be, right (more on this later)? It fights famine, that’s what it’s important right? JHK doesn’t care about starving people.
Please.
I could spend all this post scaring the hell out of you about the health hazards of GM crops but I think it may be more effective to speak directly and plainly about the canard that the biotech industry puts forth that it will be able to end all hunger through innovations in genetically modified crop.
90% of US soy and 70% of US corn is already genetically modified and yet there are still over 30 million people in America hungry. If biotech and the power of American industry can’t solve hunger here at home – a shameful policy disaster on our part – how is it expected to end global hunger which affects 1 billion?
Modern agriculture is an amazing thing. Farmers are seriously some of the most productive people in the world, producing about 4,000 calories per person. Enough food is produced globally to feed the world’s population, TWICE over. Do not fall victim to biotech’s attempt to greenwash and spin. The problem is not production, it’s distribution.
Besides, research has shown that GM crops actually yield LESS than conventionally grown crops. A landmark three-year study at the University of Kansas showed that GM soy produces 10% less food than conventionally grown soy. Put simply, over the last three years, our national soy crop has been depressed due to GM crops.
Even more damning, from 2005-2007, the World Bank convened The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a collaboration of over 900 participants and 110 countries, to answer the following question, “How can we reduce hunger and poverty, improve rural livelihoods, and facilitate equitable, environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development through the generation, access to, and use of agricultural knowledge, science and technology?”
Their final report concluded that GM crops will not play a substantial role in addressing the challenges of hunger and poverty and that small-scale farmers and agro-ecological methods are the way forward, with indigenous and local knowledge playing as important a role as formal science.
Now, to put their answer into perspective, the organizational seriousness and magnitude of the IAASTD is similar to that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for their work on climate change. So saying that GM crops will solve global hunger seems to me to be tantamount to being a climate change denier.
We should be promoting and supporting the development of sustainable practices to insulate developing nations from fluctuating food prices, alleviating starvation and social inequities. Whereas agri-business has been shown to deplete the environment with deleterious effects on soil fertility and biodiversity, knowledge-based systems of agriculture have benefits for soil fertility, water control, food nutrition and increased biodiversity. Rather than forcing local farmers to depend on large commercial businesses, improving only the businesses’ bottom lines, by financially supporting and developing knowledge-based, local food systems and agriculture, farmers will lean on each other, building and improving community, education and foster cooperation on markets and food access.
So back to Bono and ONE. By opening this door to these biotech firms and making farmers in third world countries dependent on GM seed, fertilizer and pesticides, S.384 actually undermines the ONE campaign’s goals and subverts their core mission of preventing disease (the gorilla in the room with regard to GM food), feeding people and helping the third world become self-reliant.
What. The. Fuck?
I am not suggesting that global hunger is not serious and should not be addressed and I’m also not a hippie-dippy liberal art-farter who believes that we have a responsibility to leave indigenous cultures untouched even if they’re needlessly suffering from starvation.
Rather, I am saying that global hunger gravely important – not only is food security a fundamental human right, it also affects national and environmental security – and that we need to engage the issue and all of its attendant complexities in order to truly solve the problem. The ONE campaign should bring to bear their influence and moral authority to make sure that our tax dollars go to addressing the fundamental, systemic and long-term needs of those suffering from extreme hunger and starvation. Instead, by endorsing this bill, they are making us subsidize yet another corporate welfare program.
Don’t just take my word for it. Learn more:
The U.S. Food Crisis Working Group
Food First (PDF)
