 |
ARTICLE |
Eight hundred million people on
earth are poor and malnourished. They live on less than a dollar a day
and cannot be sure that their fields will yield enough food or that
they will earn enough money to buy food. Forty thousand people die each
day of malnutrition, one-half of them children. The doubling of food production enabled by the Green Revolution unfortunately did not solve
the problems of malnutrition and hunger. There were about a billion
hungry people some 40 years ago, and population projections show that
there may still be 600 million poor people by 2025, when the earth's
population will have grown to 8 billion. The Green Revolution did many
things, but it did not wipe out poverty. Not enough jobs were created
in either the rural areas or the cities to generate the purchasing
power that provides farmers with the incentive to grow more food. It is
ironic that hunger persists while the prices for agricultural
commodities are at an all-time low. Can this problem be solved?
Some try to get rid of the whole issue with the canards "It's just
politics" or "It's only a matter of distribution." "Fix the
distribution problem and hunger will disappear." This answer is as
facile as it is incorrect. To eliminate malnutrition and hunger, food
production and purchasing power both need to increase in developing
countries. In addition, food production needs to increase in developed
countries as well so that grain can be exported at a price the poor can
afford. Since land and water are the most limiting resources for food
production, there is only one option: to increase yields on the
available land. Indeed, there is very little extra land that can be put
to the plow. By 2020, the world's farmers will have to produce 40%
more grain (200 million extra tons in the developed countries and 500 million extra tons in the developing countries). According to the
forecasts of the International Food Policy Research Institute in
Washington, DC (Pinstrup-Anderson et al., 1999
), the less-developed
countries will double their grain imports (mostly maize and wheat) by
2020. The reason is that the projected production increase of 500 million tons in those less-developed countries will still not satisfy
demand. That imported grain will come from North America, Australia,
the European Union, and the former Soviet Union. Thus trade will
increase (assuming that prices remain stable and low), but
redistribution is not the answer to the problem of hunger because there
is not enough production capacity in the developed countries to satisfy the expected world demand.
The answer to the problems of the poor, according to a number of
organizations that oppose genetically modified (GM) crops, is more
organic, regenerative agriculture. We certainly need more sustainable
regenerative agricultural practices (Pretty, 1995), but "organic"
farming is the type of agriculture already practiced by the poor,
primarily because they do not have the means to buy fertilizers,
pesticides, and irrigation equipment. According to Dyson (1999),
sub-Saharan Africa, where most food crop production is "organic,"
is unlikely to see much improvement in its already dismal food
situation. Exhaustion of the soil caused by the lack of fertilizers is
depressing yields and pushing agriculture onto more erodable soils.
Organic agriculture is nearly always nitrogen starved unless land is
set aside for the sole purpose of producing green manures, a luxury the
poor can ill afford. Agriculture as it is practiced now in much of
sub-Saharan Africa is environmentally unsustainable and a new approach
that will require considerable investment in agricultural research is
needed. This new approach must be research-driven and will most
certainly include GM crops.
Those who oppose GM crops are also quick to point out that this
technology primarily benefits the multinational corporations that sell the seeds, and that these corporations are more interested in
their own bottom line (always referred to as "corporate greed") than in "feeding the poor." True enough, the big corporations are
not working on the crops of the poor, such as cassava, millets, sorghum, sweet potatoes, yams, and legumes (other than soybeans). Furthermore, they are not giving away their technology to poor countries because they want to recover the costs of their investments in biotechnology. The poor will not have the resources to purchase transgenic seeds from multinationals. Research on these crops in the
public sector is also unfortunately quite limited. Rice, an important
crop of the poor, is an exception, with some research in the corporate
sector and considerable research in the public sector taking place,
primarily as a result of the Rockefeller Foundation's
initiatives. So, if the poor won't have the means to buy the GM seeds
from the multinationals, what then needs to happen for the developing
countries to benefit from GM technology?
To understand the answer to that question we might first examine why
there are still so many poor in spite of the spectacular successes of the Green Revolution. Spectacular indeed, when we consider
that during the past 40 years, 3 billion people were added to the
world's population. The Green Revolution concentrated on three crops
(rice, wheat, and maize) and adapted cultivars for those areas of the
world where they would have the greatest impact on food production.
Cultivars need to be bred for specific conditions of climate and soil
and need to be resistant to the diseases and insects that are prevalent
in the regions where they will be planted. Food production was raised
substantially in large areas of the developing world, but other areas,
especially Africa, were bypassed. An important feature of the Green
Revolution is that the research was carried out in the public domain,
and that the genetically improved crop varieties were given away free
to the farmers without concerns for the intellectual property rights of
those who produced them. It is unfortunate that "public-sector support for agricultural development has collapsed across the board"
according to Robert Paarlberg, with a 57% drop in foreign aid to
agriculture in poor countries between 1988 and 1996 and a 47% decrease
in lending by the World Bank for agriculture and rural development
between 1986 and 1998 (Paarlberg, 2000).
The benefits of the Green Revolution's technologies unfortunately were
not spread evenly over society. This uneven distribution of
technologies was the biggest failure of the Green Revolution and
is the reason why some such as Vandana Shiva, the Indian
physicist who heads the Research Foundation For Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in Dehradun, India, now strenuously oppose GM
crops. Shiva's opposition to GM crops is so strong that she demanded
that the United States stop using GM crops in its food aid for the
victims of the recent super cyclone in the state of Orissa in India. As
with the adoption of all technical innovations, there were winners and
losers during the Green Revolution. It is now clear that many
governments (national or local) did not do enough to ensure an even
spread of the benefits among the different types of farmers and the
different socioeconomic groups. For example, in Asia, many women
farmers were displaced from the land and had to become part-time hired
laborers, impairing their abilities to satisfy their own nutritional
needs and those of their families. In Mexico, the businessmen who owned
large irrigated wheat farms in northern Mexico benefited greatly from
the Green Revolution strains, whereas the small maize and bean farmers
of Chiapas and other mountainous regions were left behind. Gordon
Conway, a champion of the Green Revolution, presents a detailed
discussion of these problems in his recent book, The Doubly Green
Revolution, and gives examples of successes and failures of
spreading the benefits of the Green Revolution (Conway, 1999).
Production of genetically modified crops is not a complex technology
and is clearly within the capabilities of national research institutes
in many developing countries (e.g. Argentina, China, India,
Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, and many others). Genetic modification of crops using recombinant DNA technology is also within reach of the institutes of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), including Centro
Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT) in
Mexico, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in The
Philippines, and the International Institute For Tropical Agriculture
(IITA) in Nigeria. Furthermore, these institutes have already
assumed responsibility for biotechnological research and a number of
crop improvement projects are under way. These institutes see
biotechnology as a tool and not as an end in itself. Crop improvement
through biotechnology need not be equated with transgenic plants. For
example, marker-assisted breeding is a powerful biotechnology that can
find widespread application with the crops of the poor. Detailed
linkage maps of these crops will be tremendously useful. As these CGIAR
institutes focus on their needs, they will want and need to reach out
to public institutions in developed countries. Will the scientists
there respond, or will they be preoccupied with their own research
agendas? Alliances such as the Cassava Biotechnology Network that bring
together researchers from many countries are an effective way to create synergy toward a common goal.
What is the role of the private sector (biotechnology companies) in
this process? The private sector leads in every aspect of the
agricultural biotechnology revolution and activities in the public
sector will have to marshal the strength of the private sector through
public-private partnerships. Such partnerships must be based upon
mutual trust and common goals. The private sector can work with the
CGIAR institutes and with national research institutions (the foreign
equivalents of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) of developing
countries to transfer technologies, train scientists, provide hands-on
experience in intellectual property management, and facilitate the
no-cost or low-cost licensing of inventions. Since the cost of these
inventions is being charged to the consumers in developed countries,
such approaches amount to a transfer of wealth by large corporations
from the developed world to the developing world.
There are many avenues open to the private sector to make sure that the
activities of this sector do not deprive the poor of their rightful
access to this technological revolution. We are beginning to see some
examples of such alliances, such as the decision by Monsanto to make
the rice genome "public." This cooperation will certainly
help the breeders; whether it will help the genetic engineers depends
on the conditions that Monsanto will attach to the use of the
information. The genomic era will generate so much information that
public-private partnerships are the only way in which that information
can be utilized for the benefit of all. The recent decision by Astra
Zeneca to help develop the "golden rice" is certainly a step
in the right direction. Similarly, the Novartis Foundation for
Sustainable Development (http://www.foundation.novartis.com/nfhome.htm) has a
number of projects in developing countries.
The creation of an international clearinghouse or institute funded
by the large multinationals (Am I a dreamer?) to foster such a
partnership would be a significant development to bolster the
confidence of scientists and the public that the agricultural biotechnology industry is serious about the transfer of technology. We
don't need another institute that does research, but a high profile
institute that fosters and mediates interactions between the public and
the private sector: a group of people who make a real effort to solve
the difficult problems that arise in these international
collaborations. Such an institute could also be involved in placing
lawyers from developing countries in intellectual property management
environments where they can learn this important trade. Less-developed
countries have very little expertise in this field and are at a serious
disadvantage when they sit down at the bargaining table with the
representatives of industry. Regaining the trust of the public will
require more than "education campaigns." The public will support
the multinationals if they are perceived to be truly concerned with
helping to solve what looks to me like the greatest challenge of the
21st century: feeding 9 billion people with a sustainable agricultural
production system.
The application of biotechnology to the problems of the poor will not
be straightforward and the models we have from developed countries will
probably not be applicable. Agriculture in developing countries does
not need to be "modernized" although it does need to be improved.
The developing countries can hopefully skip the high input
unsustainable phase through which agriculture is now passing in
developed countries and proceed immediately to more sustainable
practices. Agricultural research for the crops and problems of the poor
has to proceed from the bottom up, not from the top down. Crops have to
be created that fit not only in the agro-ecology of the poorest regions
often characterized by marginal and heterogeneous environments, but the
crops must also fit into the social and economic systems. Agricultural
research has to start with studying farming practices (so called
"on-farm research"), asking the farmers
men and womenwhat they
want, allowing the farmers to make choices between often conflicting
objectives such as higher yield versus yield stability, and examining
the possibility of marketing the excess production. Will the crop be
used by women in their kitchen gardens or by men in their cash crop
fields? Aid workers have to begin by soliciting the help of the
farmers to describe farming practices and analyze these practices to
pinpoint problem areas and opportunities. Together, the aid workers and farmers have to generate a range of choices that the farmers
could implement. The major objective of this approach is not the
transfer of technology, but empowerment of the farmer to improve
production. The major objective has to be the productivity and
profitability of smallholder farms with synergy between food crops,
cash crops, livestock, agroforestry, and aquaculture with
integrated management of soil, water, and nutrients (Serageldin, 1999).
This goal and the process for achieving it are more important than the
introduction of GM crops.
There are many aspects of providing food for the poor that are well
beyond the control of either laboratory scientists or agricultural
advisors in the field. The governments of poor countries must realize
that agriculture can be an important engine of economic growth and
therefore must invest more in agricultural research. These governments
need to encourage agricultural development and create the rural
infrastructure that will permit crop surpluses to be marketed. Cheap
food policies that favor the urban poor are attractive to city dwellers
but discourage development of food production capacity in the
countryside. Such policies amount to a transfer of wealth from the
agricultural sector to the industrial sector. This does not mean that
countries should not strive for self-sufficiency at all costs (Runge
and Senauer, 2000). Rather, developing countries should look at the
entire packagefood production, rural development, job creation, land
reform, and lending institutionsand enact enabling policies.
Developing countries need to examine whether these policies would
benefit only the big farmers who rely primarily on purchased outside
inputs, or also the smaller farmers who might be engaged in more
sustainable practices. If the entire framework for supporting
agricultural development is put into place, then biotechnology can also
play a role. "Biotechnology is only one tool, but a potentially
important one, in the struggle to reduce poverty, improve food
security, reduce malnutrition, and improve the livelihoods of the rural
and the urban poor" (Persley, 1999).
Are the prospects for achieving these goals good? Only if we put
our collective shoulder to the wheel, not only in the lab but also in
the social/political arena. Funding for agricultural research has
declined 50% on a worldwide basis. The intrusion of intellectual
property rights into the arena of crop improvement, while beneficial to
the economies of the developed world, is making the lives of many
researchers more difficult. The failure of the United States to ratify
the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity is decidedly unhelpful. The
cacophony of voices opposing GM crops is casting an aura of suspicion
over all "genetic" research and improvement of crops. And yet we
know that there are no health issues at stake in the consumption of GM
crops and that the environmental issues of GM crops that are still
unresolved pale in comparison to the environmental impact of rural
populations that practice low-yield agriculture on marginal lands.
Similarly, the ethical considerations of genetic engineering of crops
pale in comparisons to the ethical considerations of not improving
the lives of the poor. I remain optimistic that we will overcome
those obstacles to solve a great challenge of the 21st
Century: feeding the human population in an environmentally sustainable manner.
TOP
ARTICLE
LITERATURE CITED
