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Biotechnology is NOT Saving the World
Editorial from the March/April 2002 issue of Small Farm Today® magazine.
The back page of The New Yorker and an inside page of Time magazine boast a full page four-color ad, with a picture of a farmer and the headline, “Biotechnology is helping him....” This ad cost at least $39,000 from The New Yorker (based on 1999 prices), but this is just a drop in the bucket of the $550 million spent by the Council for Biotechnology Information in a campaign to convince the American public that biotechnology and biotechnology products are good for the farmer and good for the environment. This ad shows how biotechnology is saving the topsoil, providing more nutritious food, and even creating more effective treatments for leukemia and diabetes. We need to remember that when something sounds like it is too good to be true, it usually is!
Farmers who plant Bt corn are losing money, according to a report by Dr. Charles Benbrook for the Institute for Agriculture and Food Policy (quotes taken from Alternative Agriculture News, January 2002; report available at www.iatp.org).
“From 1996-2001, farmers paid at least $659 million in price premiums to plant Bt corn [corn produced by the same companies who contribute to the Council and ad campaign above], while boosting their harvest by only 276 million bushels worth $567 million in economic gain, the report found...” That was a net loss of $92 million to the farmers.
The report continues, “The cash outlay for seed for... a Bt corn hybrid is about 30-35% higher than the cost of otherwise well-adapted conventional varieties. This increase in per acre seed expenditure is by far the biggest in history linked to a single new trait.... On average nationwide, from 1996-2000, yield increases due to Bt corn have not increased farm income enough to cover the higher costs of Bt seed.” The same was true when we jumped from open-pollinated corn to hybrid corn—different words, same effect. The farmer took—takes—it on the chin and in the pocketbook; and you cannot buy one piece of technology—you have to buy the whole package.
The New Yorker ad also claims, “Biotechnology is... helping provide ways for developing countries to better feed a growing population.” We already grow enough food worldwide to give everyone 3,000-4,000 calories a day (enough to get everyone fat), and people are still starving—mostly due to their government’s distribution, transportation, and infrastructure. Is biotechnology going to cure government corruption and distribution? I doubt it.
The biotech corporations do not currently—and cannot in the future—feed the world, because the starving poor cannot afford biotechnology products to use or eat. What the corporations are feeding is the wallets of their stockholders and CEOs. Biotechnology will not overcome poor soil fertility, water availability, or management and education levels of poor farmers.
With a record bean crop on the way, and Argentina’s current devalued currency, the global market will buy the cheaper Argentine crops, causing American farmers to receive lower prices for their soybeans. Do we really need biotechnology to increase our bean yields?
The United States and Argentina accounted for 90% of the world’s biotech soybean acreage; 66% of U.S. soybeans and virtually 100% of Argentine soybeans were genetically modified (GM). Despite the fact that 130 million acres of biotech crops were planted in 2001, with a 10% increase predicted for this year, the number of starving people in the world has increased.
The biotech companies are trying to patent all living organisms—which includes the indigenous seeds of native people, which these people could grow and use to feed themselves. When biotech companies patent the crop, they can legally charge these people for the use of their own seed, which they may have grown and handed down for generations. A recent court case in Canada was Monsanto vs. Percy Schmeiser, a canola farmer. The farmer’s “crime” was that he infringed on Monsanto’s patent on GM canola because some GM plants were found in his field, and he had not paid for them. Percy stated in an interview (WorldWatch, Jan/Feb 2002) that, “The court ruled that it didn’t matter how [the Monsanto canola] got there, whether it cross-pollinated, blew in by the wind, fell off trucks hauling seeds, washed in during a flood, or was carried by birds and bees.... The fact that there were some plants there ... meant I was guilty.”
Biotechnology and biotechnolgy ads are going to be around for a long time. It is up to the farmers, lenders, consumers, and institutions who have a different vision for the future of agriculture to share their successes and ideas with others—and to speak the truth. As always, the consumer holds the biggest vote. That is why Monsanto’s genetically engineered potatoes were recently turned down by McDonalds and Frito Lay.
You can make a difference.
Happy and Profitable Farming,
Ron Macher
Publisher/Farmer