The New Food Panic: Scientists Call for Green Revolution 2.0 & FoE says No!
Posted on 21. Oct, 2009 by annied in FoE, agriculture
Well, it looks like world maybe headed for a second green revolution. None the least to do with the Royal Society for Agriculture’s new study that calls for £2 billion for R&D over the next decade. A new study from the International Food Policy Research Institute (find link Nelson et al) forecasts future crop yields based upon the IPCCs second worst scenario is 1.6 degree Celsius average rise in global temperatures combined with two climate change weather pattern models (NCAR & CSIRO) . While the study returned highly varied results depending upon the weather model used, the situation is (predictably) dire:
In the global south irrigated wheat production will fall over 25% by 2050, irrigated rice about 15%, in south Africa alone general cereals will fall 50% by 2080, and in south asia alone wheat yields are projected to decrease by 50% by 2050 which is particularly troublesome as the region is currently responsible for 1/6 of global wheat production. But China may fair ok, and so might those Latin American states lead by socialist autocrats.
What’s all this mean? For the Economist, which reported the story it’s tally-ho! for next gen of GMOs. Only scientifically modified food will preserve food security in the West. After all, the first green revolution lead global agriculture dominance by US agribusiness technology which has a major role in keeping the economy afloat.
Not so fast. Let’s have a look see at the other side of the story:
Watch “Soya Story” from Friends of the Earth, which makes it easy to understand, even for kids, how soy came to be grown on a mass scale.
GM seeds are modified so they only work with pesticides tailor made for them. That means that whichever company produces the seeds must also produce the other inputs into the agricultural process. That company then has a monopoly on growth of that seed. And in the name of recouping their R&D costs the prices are often too high for anyone but big agribusiness producers to afford. The result through out the developing world was that many small farmers could not afford to continue growing food because they couldn’t afford the inputs. Farmers that chose or were “forced” to keep growing traditional crops couldn’t compete with the higher yields those using GMO’s produced. People lost their livelihoods and thus the rise of squatter cities in urban environments (please note, this is a simplistic summary, the issue is more complex but the linkage between GM, agribusiness and urbanization is real). This higher yield pattern in agriculture is also apparent in the dairy industry today (see Friends of Earth Fix the Food Chain campaign for more information). Cows are fed genetically modified hormones so they produce more milk.
Click to Watch about Kew Garden's Millenium Seed Project
It’s an odd argument for the Economist to be making, for a new green revolution, as they reported last month that GM crops are more water intensive and therefore have a larger ecological footprint. Growing GM seeds has an important but little mentioned tradeoff: yes, they have higher yields, but they are also more intensive in terms of soil health. Many GM crops strip the soil of nutrients faster than traditional seeds. GM seeds make it possible to grow large plantations of palm oil in Indonesia, where rainforest is burnt illegally to clear way for the highly profitable crop. In short GM crops aren’t good for the environment.
Considering changes in weather pattern predicted by the IFPRI, the unpredictability of the changes, doesn’t it seem a bit odd to produce a new round of genetically modified seeds when we aren’t certain how climates all over the world will change? It’s a good thing our friends at Kew Gardens have now managed to preserve 10% of the world’s seeds. More species will be wiped out as the climate changes.
There’s also questions as to whether GMO’s are safe for our health. See the film “The World According to Monsanto,” the website Say No to GMO’s, GM Watch, and materials by Greenpeace. It may be that studies that few studies say that GM crops are unsafe, but let’s not forget the power of the lobby.