adminas a result of concerns about food safety, the environment and the general public mistrust of multinationals that are often seen as manipulative and unscrupulous, food and agricultural experts say.
“Polarisation and lack of awareness are still the biggest challenge,” said Abisai Mafa, the chief executive of the National Biotechnology Authority.
“People are not informed. Polarisation is the biggest constraint. People are still taking very polarised positions and that it is very dangerous.”
Mafa and other pro-GMO agricultural proponents at a seminar on agricultural trade and rural financial solutions held recently charged that bickering over GMO issues had prolonged delays in developing and implementing national biosafety regulations and guidelines in most African countries.
“In other cases, those charged with the secretariat and co-ordination of biosafety issues deliberately ensure no meetings on the subject are held by the national biosafety authorities citing various reasons,” a National Economic Consultative Forum official said.
“The emotional aspect of the debate has seen technological issues being transformed into public and sovereign issues with limited debate on the potential benefits of GMOs. This is replicated throughout Africa and the result is the hardening of positions and rejection of GM crops. This is worsened by NGOs which are totally opposed to GMOs.”
Commercialisation and planting of GM crops has not been approved by the government. Any GMO grain has to be milled at the border before it is permitted into the country. GM proponents at the seminar made various presentations to encourage the use of GM crops in Zimbabwe as part of what they say are long-term strategies to see food production grow to keep pace with the growing population.
They say Zimbabwe and other African countries clearly still have to look at the GM option as part of broader agricultural strategies to address future food needs on the continent. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation projects that Africa will have to feed about two billion people by 2050. And, pro-GMO agricultural experts say it will be difficult for the continent to feed its people without the use GM crops.
“GM foodstuffs are spreading and entering illegally along our porous borders. South Africa is growing two million hectares of GM crops every year and the bulk of the grain is consumed in most Sadc countries,” said one commercial farmer.
“GM maize costs anything between US$120- US$180 per tonne while our own non-GM maize costs between US$300 and US$400 a tonne. We cannot compete and if we don’t change our farming strategies we will not survive, we will lose business to the South African farmers.
“Every item of food we are eating has an element of GMO in it whether we like it or not,” said an NECF official.
“GM maize meal is being sold across the country because millers find it cheaper, even consumers find it cheaper to buy. So what are we saying when we say no GMOs on one hand and yes when we are eating them.”
For the short term, Zimbabwe and most African countries have accepted that GM food can stave off hunger even if its arrival is greeted with suspicion.
Pro-GMO proponents say advantages of GM crops include high yields, virus resistance, nutrition enhancement, herbicide resistance, extended shelf life for food products, insect resistance and water retention capacities.
But anti-GMO activists fear GMOs have the potential to enlarge internal organs and harm consumers. They also worry about the environmental effects of GM crops including the elimination of natural control mechanism.
Others also fear the impact of cheap GM food on human health as well as on trade for farmers dealing with non-GM crops.
There are also documented malpractices by some multinational seed companies that have also fuelled the negative perceptions of GM crops. In India, one participant noted, But Cotton was introduced by some international seed company which was resistant to pests and other diseases.
“For the first two years, it was bliss.
“Problems started in the third year when cotton farmers were suddenly faced with new pests and plant diseases. The company which supplied the GM seed did not make any attempt to modify the process to eliminate the new threats,” he said.
Instead, he said, the company advised the use of more quantities of pesticides and more fertilisers to increase the yields both of which it provided. “Both pesticides and fertilisers were being manufactured by the same company that had introduced But Cotton. The result was total disgust as the farmers had to spend more than 60 percent to get a yield increase. Before GM
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cotton, they could make up to 80 percent profit,” he said.
Analysts say there are serious long-term implications on the use of GM crops – the position to be adopted by countries towards the growing of GM crops and relations between those countries and the multinational companies which supply GM foods or seeds.
Zimbabwe and most other African countries still have no capacity to monitor and regulate the use of and flow of GM seed and food items. Some have not developed clear policies on GM crops.
The GMO debate is still raging viciously and is proving “heated and difficult” with the anti-GM voices tending to drown out the voices in favour.
Analysts say GM crops are no panacea to hunger in Africa.
A UN investigator into food policy, Jean Ziegler, once said that he was “against the theory of the multinational corporations who say if you are against hunger you must be for genetically modified organisms”.
“There is plenty of natural, normal, good food in the world to nourish the double of humanity,” he says.
Others oppose the introduction of GM crops into Africa saying that food shortages result not from a lack of food but from the inability of poor countries to buy it.
Critics say that if GM seeds are supplied to Africa, “farmers will be caught in a vicious circle, increasingly dependent on a small number of giant multi-nationals”.
But many Western governments and their side-kicks – the multi-nationals, believe that the introduction of GM crops would boost yields in Africa. South Africa commercially released genetically modified maize, cotton and soya several years ago and was carrying out experimental trials on sorghum, potatoes and a range of other seeds and plants, including vines.
“South Africa is forging ahead with GMO. It’s seen as a key strategic priority, but it’s questionable in whose interest this really is,” Michelle Pressend, research, policy and advocacy coordinator of environmental NGO Biowatch said in 2009, suggesting that government concern for economic gain was larger than its concern for the health of its citizens and equal access to food.
“We are only in the beginning stages in terms of legislating GMO. There is little transparency. We are in danger of multi-national concerns driving our food policy.”
“There has hardly been public debate on GM crops in South Africa because decisions about GMO don’t take place in a neutral power setting. The control of genetic resources gravitates to the hands of a few. It’s a chilling prospect,” another critic once said referring to companies, like American biotechnology giant Monsanto, which are systematically trying to patent seeds to control food production on an international scale.
The controversy surrounding GMOs has left no one out as Zimbabwe and most African countries strive to implement biosafety systems and policies to handle this technology.
There are no easy answers to the debate. GMO proponents promise benefits to society but its nature raises ethical, environmental and development issues.
This points to the need for the general public to understand GMO issues clearly and for scientists to demonstrate the efficacy of this new technology without the powerful and interfering hand of multi-nationals.
And, it seems, with engineered crops, Africa is facing a losing battle.
Famine continues to wreck havoc on the continent and hunger-busting solutions remain urgent.
Online Reporter