[863] in peace2
Frances Moore Lappe on Biotech
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Felix AuYeung)
Thu Jul 5 11:08:54 2001
From: "Felix AuYeung" <humanpotential@care2.com>
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Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 23:09:43 +0800
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Biotechnology Isn't the Key to Feeding the World
Frances Moore Lappe
Thursday, July 5, 2001
BOSTON Biotechnology companies and even some scientists argue that we
need genetically modified seeds to feed the world and to protect the
Earth from chemicals. Their arguments feel eerily familiar.
.
Thirty years ago, I wrote "Diet for a Small Planet" for one reason.
As a researcher buried in the agricultural library at the University
of California, Berkeley, I was stunned to learn that the experts -
equivalent to the biotech proponents of today - were wrong. They were
telling us that we had reached the Earth's limits to feed ourselves,
but in fact there was more than enough food for us all.
.
Hunger, I learned, is the result of economic "givens" that we have
created, assumptions and structures that actively generate scarcity
from plenty. Today this is more, not less, true.
.
Throughout history, ruminants had served humans by turning grasses
and other "inedibles" into high-grade protein. They were our four-
legged protein factories. But once we began feeding livestock from
cropland that could grow edible food, we began to convert ruminants
into our protein disposals.
.
Only a small fraction of the nutrients fed to animals return to us in
meat; the rest animals use largely for energy or they excrete. Thirty
years ago, one-third of the world's grain was going to livestock;
today it is closer to one-half. And now we are mastering the same
disappearing trick with the world's fish supply. By feeding fish to
fish, again, we are reducing the potential supply.
.
We are shrinking the world's food supply for one reason: The hundreds
of millions of people who go hungry cannot create a
sufficient "market demand" for the fruits of the Earth. So more and
more of it flows into the mouths of livestock, which convert it into
what the better-off can afford. Corn becomes filet mignon. Sardines
become salmon.
.
Enter biotechnology. While its supporters claim that seed
biotechnology methods are "safe" and "precise," other scientists
strongly refute that, as they do claims that biotech crops have
actually reduced pesticide use.
.
But this very debate is in some ways part of the problem. It is a
tragic distraction our planet cannot afford.
.
We are still asking the wrong question. Not only is there already
enough food in the world, but as long as we are only talking about
food - how best to produce it - we will never end hunger or create
the communities and food safety we want.
.
We must ask instead: How do we build communities in tune with
nature's wisdom in which no one, anywhere, has to worry about putting
food - safe, healthy food - on the table? Asking this question takes
us far beyond food. It takes us to the heart of democracy itself, to
whose voices are heard in matters of land, seeds, credit, employment,
trade and food safety.
.
The problem is, this question cannot be addressed by scientists or by
any private entity, including even the most high-minded corporation.
Only citizens can answer it, through public debate and the resulting
accountable institutions that come from our engagement.
.
Where are the channels for public discussion and where are the
accountable polities?
.
Increasingly, public discussion about food and hunger is framed by
advertising by multinational corporations that control not only food
processing and distribution but farm inputs and seed patents.
.
Two years ago, the seven leading biotech companies, including
Monsanto, teamed up under the neutral-sounding Council for
Biotechnology Information and are spending millions to, for example,
blanket us with full-page newspaper ads about biotech's virtues.
.
Government institutions are becoming ever more beholden to these
corporations than to their citizens. Nowhere is this more obvious
than in decisions regarding biotechnology - whether it is the
approval or patenting of biotech seeds and foods without public input
or the rejection of mandatory labeling of biotech foods despite broad
public demand for it.
.
The absence of genuine democratic dialogue and accountable government
is a prime reason most people remain blind to the many breakthroughs
in the last 30 years that demonstrate we can grow abundant, healthy
food and also protect the Earth.
.
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of
democracy. Thus it can never be solved by new technologies, even if
they were to be proved "safe." It can be solved only as citizens
build democracies in which government is accountable to them, not to
private corporate entities.
.
The writer, a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.
"She cannot see in any dream a time where a man holds a
patent to a living seed, or animals are factories, or
people are enslaved to money, or water belongs to a
stockholder..." ~Paul Hawken~
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