Why we need GM crops
In view of the current global food crisis, caused by the unprecedented increase in the world's population and the increased appetites that follow economic growth, the Jubilee Centre has published a transcript of part of a talk given by Sir Brian Heap at a conference organised by the Centre in January. In it, the former Royal Society Vice President and Foreign Secretary makes a timely challenge for us to embrace modern agricultural developments, particularly genetically modified crops.
Posted: Friday, May 30, 2008, 15:02 (BST)
What's the dilemma for Christians in this area? We can see the need to produce more food. We've got to produce it in a sustainable way. We have to feed a another 2-3 billion people. Where's the dilemma?
Well, Christian Aid and some other NGOs have set themselves, rather unwisely in my view, against modern technology and particularly against genetically modified crops and arguably, they say, it's because of their concern for poor farmers in less developed countries. I'm quite willing to discuss that - I won't delay on it at the moment but there are some serious concerns about their argument.
Now the Nuffield Council on Bio-Ethics, which is an independent organisation, not funded by Government, specialises in the analysis of complex bio-ethical issues and it concluded in the year 2000 that the large scale introduction of genetically modified crops was a moral imperative on the basis of the ethic 'to each according to need.' And the joint study which I chaired at the Royal Society of the UK's Academies of Science and the US National Academy of Science in Washington, the Third World Academy of Sciences, the academies in Brazil, China, Mexico and India, all concluded that GM crops can be used to produce foods that are more nutritious, stable in storage, in principle health-promoting, and bringing benefits to consumers in industrialised and developing countries.
Now the academies also recognise that multi-national private corporations of research and institutes should share their technology with scientists in less developed countries to enhance food production per acre and hence food security; and schemes have been developed by UNEP specifically to do that so that this technology is now shared, and in my experience some of the brightest young molecular biologists in this field are from less developed countries who when they go home are fully equipped to use this new technology for enhanced food production and food security, but a central fund is needed and this is another international requirement: a central fund is needed to help those who work in less developed countries to protect their new discoveries, to patent their new inventions with the help of the World Bank and the IMF and the Rockefeller Fund. And if that was done, many of us believe it would be a potent signal to the next generation who are coming along that there is a social, political and humanitarian will to eliminate hunger and address climate change by rewarding innovation and by providing income generation for local institutions in less developed countries.
Now there are hard data which I think we need to just bear in mind in this area of GM crops [see image on left]. This is the growth, total growth, of bio-tech crops worldwide. Here it is in industrialised countries; here it is in developing countries and particularly in connection with soya bean, maize, cotton and rape, canola; there are other crops: rice, squash, papaya and alfalfa, and the traits: herbicide resistance, insect resistance, and the combination of both.
In South Africa, the benefits from GM maize are illustrated by these black bars - the percentage increase in different parts of South America where GM maize is grown or here, another example where GM cotton has been used, which has a 32% higher yield, a 68% reduction in labour associated with spraying the crop and here's an interesting development of a form of maize that has now been made resistant to one of the particular problems in South Africa, the European Corn Borer, which then gives a much better yield of the crop when it's carrying this particular gene.
The comments below are readers' personal opinions and are in no way intended to reflect the editorial opinion of Christian Today.
Added: Monday, June 9, 2008, 22:34 (BST)
Like Gill, B'ham, I too wonder what is difference with GM crops as compared with other things we eat. For example all grapes I buy in the market place now are SEEDLESS. Surely they have been 'interfered with' or they would have seeds to provide the next grape vines?!
Pat, Walsall, UK
Added: Sunday, June 1, 2008, 8:28 (BST)
Dear Friend
Just because GM crops 'can' be engineered to produce more nutrition, drough resistance et al., it does NOT mean that they are doing that. Man CAN land on Mars. I would ask you as a Christian, to please read further than the industry-based science you have obviously taken your data from. South African cotton was a distaster. The only 'success' was with a hand-ful of farmers who were given free seeds, free water and capacitated highly, in the likes that can never be replicated with the general population. In other words they were used as a test case. Just search on 'Makathini Cotton'. I also encourage you to visit websites by orgasations whose vested interest is NOT profit before people. On our own website you can see what various faith groups are saying. www.safeage.org - another excellent and unbiased website is www.responsibletechnology.com or www.seedsofdeception.com. At this precarious time in our planet's history, we really do need opinion from leaders like yourself, that is able to see the other side. Do you know that of all the scientists working on GMO, 90% are funded by industry? Only 10% are 'independent'. And these scientists have not had an easy time. I invite you to do some more research please. These crops are UNTESTED and the results shown on animal testings are scary. Pigs giving birth to sacs of water instead of piglets; mice getting stomache lesions and a host of other problems. Please, sir, I respectfully ask that before you become duped by Industry propaganda, you do more research. Anyone doing that, and finding out the truth about GMOs will know, that this is NOT the answer to world hunger. There is NO GM plant that increases nutrition nor yields. Only short term yields to commercial farmers, but then their GMOs contaminate irreversibly the nearby non-gmo crops of their neighbours. Please read further info.
Lastly South Africa is NOT a panacea for GMOs. Consumers here want GM crops labellled as they in fact do NOT want to eat them at all. We are all being used as guinea pigs in a large experiment.
Sincerely,
A South African resident
Charmaine Treherne, Cape Town, South Africa
Added: Friday, May 30, 2008, 17:00 (BST)
what is the difference between GM plants, and plants that have been bred and cross-bred to produce a new version?
Gill, birmingham UK
