That the United Nations Environment Programme's annual World Environment Day falls as world leaders are discussing global food shortages in Rome seems quite fitting.
UNEP has come with a handy Environment Alphabet, which suggests 80 ways to work towards saving the planet. But UNEP has been criticised for ignoring the part organic farming can play in preventing an even worse crisis. Today Martin Geake, chief executive of Send a Cow, suggested sending cows to Africa as a way of investing in small-scale, organic agriculture, as a route out of the crisis for the poorest.
And what's going down in Rome? The summit started, of course, with widespread outrage at the attendance of Robert Mugabe. The irony of a man charged with starving his own country adding his voice to the debate on food shortages is lost on nobody, except perhaps Mugabe himself, and his shopaholic wife Grace.
Unsurprisingly, most of the delegates are focusing on grander solutions, and biofuel subsidies in the US and the EU - held to be a major driver of the crisis - have proved a contentious issue. Read The Independent's report on one bio-crop, jatropha, here.
The worry is that GM foods will gain credence as a workable solution to food shortages. Radio 4 considered the merits of this yesterday (listen again here). There are currently no commercial GM crops in the UK, and most consumers here seem wary of them - probably down to the successful branding of GM as "Frankenstein Food" by environmentalists.
The struggle is largely to find an instant fix to present starvation threats (immediate food aid has been promised) and longer term consensus to sustaining agriculture around the world, given rising population levels.
Is it time to reconsider GM? Greenpeace say no, but this special report from the BBC suggests GM experience in the US has not led to any of the health or biodiversity problems we have been warned about in the past. Perhaps, but I'm still a fair way from being convinced.
Well Rthics Girl, you are right to remain sceptical about GM crops and foods. Tom Fielden's piece on the Today Programme was incredibly biased, and also repeated the standard lie that no downsides had been discovered arising from 10 years or more of GM crop growing and consumption in the US. The literature is in fact full of research material demonstrating harmful health and environmental effects associated with GM, but the GM industry refuses to acknowledge the existence of "uncomfortable" or "inconvenient" scientific papers. It also does a nice line in character assassination on scientists who dare to go against the standard line that GM foods are entirely harmless. The industry also refuses to participate in any epidemiological work that might reveal a link between ill-health and GM -- I wonder why? the populations of USA and Canada are involved in a gigantic GM experiment for which they have never given their permission -- God help them.
Posted by: Brian John | Thursday, 05 June 2008 at 05:35 PM
Here is a thought... What about people growing their own food? "Food not Lawns," and a little "Victory Garden." We are so removed from what it is to be a part of the Earth. We no longer have to "work" to eat. It is clear that GMO's are the future of ag because we have become slaves to technology in all other aspects of life. The finger needs to stop being pointed and all the talk needs to be hushed. Contribute, stop consuming, and get your hands dirty. If not, why should there be efforts on behalf of your survival?
Posted by: Kriz | Thursday, 05 June 2008 at 06:31 PM
you should also remember that not all genetic modifications are trying to produce positive effects such as disease resistance, some are to produce sterile seed. This is to ensure that the farmer cannot use part of this year's harvest as the seed for next year's planting. Instead the farmer has to go back to the seed producer with cash every year. This is GM for private profit rather than public benefit.
Posted by: Peter | Thursday, 05 June 2008 at 07:51 PM
All food is genetically modified - nothing anyone eats is 'natural' - it has all been cultivated or bred by human beings for their own benefit. )Except perhaps wild fish and shellfish - but that's all polluted and running out).
Mass production of food has prevented starvation in our over-populated world (the best thing would be to stop people breeding of course).
If GM is not developed then people will die and it will be the fault of scaremongering idiots like Prince Charles, one of the most genetically modified organisms in the history of evolution.
It is therefore highly unethical to oppose GM food and tell 'luddite lies about the awful things that will happen - people just do not know the history of farming or even basic science so get all scared through ignorance and media hysterics.
Posted by: Ethical boy | Thursday, 05 June 2008 at 08:47 PM
The thing I find curious about GM advocation is that it is just a logical extension of supercrops that have been produced over many years now. The theory is that GM crops produce a greater yield per year. That means that they are taking more resources out of the soil every year this in turn means more fertilizer and more crop spreading. This again is only sustainable with technological automation, and a reasonable alternative to oil for continuing this into the future has not been proposed in my opinion.
If we are seriously considering the use of GM crops I would like to hear a full account of the impact across the board. When the price of fuel is said to continue up and therefore will push up the price of food. Surely consideration of other ways to produce our own food bears thought now, not just scaremongering about possible ill effects of 'Frankenstein food'.
Posted by: werdna yelimorb | Thursday, 05 June 2008 at 09:25 PM
The GM lobby likes to perpetuate the myth that GM 'has been going on for ages'. However, natural cross breeding of species is NOT the same as taking DNA from completely different species and forcing them together in a test tube! Also, the discussion about GM issues seems to concentrate on whether it might be unhealthy... I agree there is lots to find out, but more so do I object against 'playing God', plus more people need to realise that with GM, offspring is purposefully made sterile, so far from making farmers more self-sufficient, they will be at the full mercy of global agri-business corporations who focus on delivering profit for shareholders! My 2p, in peace.
Posted by: Rianne, B'ham, UK | Friday, 06 June 2008 at 12:29 PM
Taking the pollen from one plant species and cross polinating another using a paint brush is absolutely the same as forcing them togther in a test tube.
And no, there is not any credible evidence that GM crops are harmful to people directly (though there are some credible studies that they can be harmful indirectly by damaging the natural environment if not controlled correctly).
All of this ignores the issue being addressed in Rome.
First, rising prices and food scarcity are a very bad symptom of a very good thing: more people who couldn't eat enough before can now afford to eat more. China and India are obvious examples.
As a result a great many people who were poor and starving are now starving to death more quickly.
Environmentalists and their supporters who support bio-fuels and oppose GM foods with hearsay evidence masquerading as science are one of the worst dangers facing Africa and other poor areas.
Not to mention that the best alternative is to hack down large swathes of rain forest to produce more food in traditional way using traditional crop varieties.
There has to be a credible alternative to starving people to death. Science and Technology has to be on the table as an option as a result.
Global warming is going to make the problem worse. More people are going to die if agriculture is not made more productive and the focus of agricutlure is not maintained on feeding people - not by making it possible for people to drive 1000 yards to Tesco whilst lowering their "carbon footprint" or repeating the patently untrue "The literature is in fact full of research material demonstrating harmful health and environmental effects associated with GM".
Funny how all anybody can point to are blogs and papers by those with unobjective opinions.
Every time I see a beautifully yellow rapeseed field I cringe. Or poppies in a wheat field,as beuatiful as that maybe. Because someone, somewhere, lacks basic sustenance they might get if well-intentioned but not very well read evangelists hadn't somehow gained control of the debate.
The benefits of alternatives to current agricultural practice are too important to simply brush away with uninformed prejudice.
Organic food production is an expensive hobby for the already fat dumb and happy, for example. One great effect of rising prices is that less of it is likely to be produced on the huge carbon-footprint per calory it requires.
Meanwhile the more blue sky claims of GM producers have some merit: crops that will grow in-country in areas that couldn't support them before. Cheaper, less chemically based production, bigger food yields per pound of carbon spat into the atmosphere.
GM is not the whole solution, but I don't hear anyone here advancing any credible alternatives.
Just changing agricultural policies in the EU and America won't put food in the worlds starving mouths.
Posted by: rustyschwinn | Saturday, 07 June 2008 at 10:15 AM
There is a fundamental issue at the heart of the food crisis which is there are simply too many people.
There is a global carrying capacity - some completely unknown number which is probably far too complicated with far too many variable to work out, but the simple facts are our global population is increasing at a huge rate and no, there is not enough food, resources or land to provide for everyone. And the our land area, if global warming is true (see the article on southern pacific islanders having to evacuate their coral atolls - 97,000 to become homeless in one small archipelago of 33 islands due to sea level rise so far) is only goiing to get less.
Of course people are going to die. It's been happening in poorer countries for centuries. In the UK we simply sell everyone under the poverty line cheap, unhealthy food and then wait for them to die slowly of health related disorders such as obesity, heart disease and alcohol poisoning.
As for GM-
The GM question is hotly debated as it is full of unknowns.
In the UK there is already a plague of visible 'invasive' species that conservationists and businesses spend millions of pounds every year trying to control and eradicate. Japanese Knotweed, Gunnera, Himalyan Balsam and Giant Hogweed to name a few plants, rampage down our watercourses, roads, railway lines and wastegrounds, shading out and eliminating our smaller, native species which our insects rely on as a food source. On the animal front, mink can be found munching their way through the populations of waders, water voles and kingfishers on watercourses. The harlequin ladybird has the potential to make many of our regular garden invertebrate visitors extinct in the not too distant future. American signal crayfish decimate rivers and wetlands. Survival of the fiitest? We tampered in these ecosystems by introducing these creatures, (the harlequin ladybird arriving due to global warming)
These are all threats we can see.
My biggest GM fear is that we release a new invasive into the environment. An invasive that we cannot see. A sterile seed that could destroy the very fabric of the food chains which knit our fragile ecosystems together. Yes big words, yes. Scare mongering, possibly, but do you not think that the threat of forever changing the genetic makeup of our plants is a big and frightening prospect?
Monsanto, one of the largest industries involved in the billion-dollar GM industry (and who, just to throw in conspiracy theory, practically own Mexico and are pushing biofuel crops rather than edible corn which Mexico used to produce. This has vastly hiked up food prices and made the world start to think about Monsanto's other product... GM crops) have a huge team of people within the company whose job it is to prosecute those found growing GM crops illegally. There is evidence to suggest that some of those proecuted so far did not intentionally grow GM, but that it had 'escaped' from other local growers in their vicinity. Something we are allegedly told is impossible. If not 'impossible' then how long before these super plants become as endemic as the current visible invasives? Japanese knotweed has gone from 0-endemic in the past 100 years.
Having worked in the environmental sector for the past 6 years, I would rather fight Japanese knotweed any day of the week than spend a lifetime trying to destroy something I can't even spot without a laboratory. If GM crops are pest resistant and grown in bulk, the implications for the future are that there will be very few insects. The implications for this, for the mammals, birds and fish that rely on them as a food source, is immense. If those crops, bred for vigor and their resistance to disease and herbicides 'escape', then we have a biological battle on our hands which is hard to contemplate.
We cannot seriously consider GM while at the same time talking about conserving the planet and the creatures on it, because if GM crops become the norm, we face an even more serious extinction scenario than the one we are already in.
Posted by: CB | Thursday, 12 June 2008 at 05:34 PM
This drives me crazy. We have been practicing genetic engineering since the days of wrinkly peas! Let us be blunt; genetic engineering is nothing new. Just because we do it by selectively cross breeding rather than in lab doesn't make it any less engineering! We have been playing "God" with our environment for a very, very long time.
At first glance the arguments against GM seem to bear credence, but on closer inspection, they really do fall apart. There is no solid scientific evidence that GM crops damage either the human body or the wider environment.
All that said, the unknowns are disturbing. What annoys me is the anti-technological hype that GM is somehow a "new" and "dangerous" technology.
"Frankenstein foods" is such a childish label and it reveals a great deal about those who apply it. The environmentalists are just as bad as the biotech companies for refusing to approach the issue with an open mind.
This technology could potentially feed the world and we are ignoring it because a relatively small section of society has spread the lie that there is any sort of proof about the potential effects of GM food. The simple fact is we just don't know.
That situation needs to change. Both environmentalists and biotech companies need to get over themselves and actually endorse serious, long term work into the potential effects of GM.
If we find none, the the environmentalists should step aside and admit defeat. If there is a serious risk, even a small one, the technology needs to be restricted and developed until such risks can be addressed. Either way, everyone involved needs to grow up a little and take a more open minded, truly scientific approach.
Posted by: Warren | Wednesday, 18 June 2008 at 05:48 AM