We are being deceived! For some time already, the world has been fed a lie. It is a lie that the future of food security, the future of farming, lies in genetically modified organisms or GMOs. That GMOs are the solution to world hunger because they reduce farming costs, are more resilient to blight, have better yield, have higher nutritional content and taste better than non-GMO foods. The ugly truth, however, is that GMOs have perpetrated a situation that has put more farmers out of work and left more people hungrier than before. International Business Review sheds light on the insidious nature of GMOs and how they are waging a war against the hungry.
So, what exactly are GMOs? According to the National Human Genome Research Institute of the USA, “a GMO is a plant, animal or microbe in which one or more changes have been made to the genome, typically using high-tech genetic engineering, in an attempt to alter the characteristics of an organism”. Or to put it in even simpler terms, a GMO is an organism whose DNA has been transformed in a way that is not natural.
At first glance, the idea of unnatural alteration of genes may not seem entirely kosher, which is enough to set alarm bells ringing about GMOs. To be fair though, many things that we accept today are not exactly natural either, such as invitro fertilisation. That being said, GMOs are markedly more dangerous than IVF treatments… at least as far as reach of impact is concerned.
But before we look at the harms caused by GMOs, let’s explore the claims that they enhance food security and supply. We will start with the United Nations’ Global Food Security and Nutrition Report 2023, which was released in July 2022. It states that from 2019 to 2021, the number of people living with food insecurity went up by 122 million to 2.4 billion people. That is almost 30% of the global population.
So, do these grim figures mean that food production has gone down? No, they do not. In fact, we (the world) are producing more than ever. To illustrate, primary crops production, which includes sugar cane, maize, wheat and rice, increased by 54% to 9.5 billion tonnes from 2000 to 2021. What’s more, there are more GMO being produced today than ever.
Therefore, the whole “GMOs are a solution to world hunger” song and dance is nothing more than a myth. Food insecurity is caused by a myriad of other factors beyond production alone, including costs and distribution.
Big Agri vs Real Agri
Going beyond that, we can even say that rather than contribute to reducing food insecurity and global hunger, GMOs exacerbate the situation. We need to recognise GMOs for what they truly are – attempts by big chemical companies and large-scale industrial farming to control agriculture production.
According to a report by international non-profit the Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration (ETC), less than a third of the world’s population get their food supply from the large agrichemical companies that have the monopoly on the production of GMOs, herbicides and pesticides. These companies include the likes of Bayer, BASF, Dow, Corteva and Syngenta as well as – prior to 2018 when it was acquired by Bayer – Monsanto.
The vast majority of people however, around 70% of the population – mainly in the Global South – are dependant on what ETC describes as the peasant food web for their food supply. These are primarily smallholdings which are often family-run and owned, and which not only produce food but are also an integral part of an ecosystem supporting local communities. Altogether, they number around 500 million small farms.
At the same time, smallholdings in the developing and underdeveloped world have better crop diversity that the industrial concerns controlled by the agrichemical giants. To illustrate, 80% of acreage of GMO crops is dedicated to maize and soybean, which are high-value commodities. These are large-scale monocultures, wherein all the crops are genetically similar with no room for other plants to grow.
We think we can engineer life; [that] we can change the carefully organised DNA of a living organism, and there will be no wider impact. But this is a dangerous illusion.”
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Indian Scientist and Anti-GMO Activist
This is unlike traditional farming wherein the soil quality is left intact to allow for the growth of other crops, which enables farmers to practise crop diversification. As such, they are able to change according to the seasons. With GMO seeds, this becomes impossible and the soil is invariably transformed so that it can only sustain just one type of plant.
Creating the Problem to Sell the Solution
Another problem with GMOs is that eventually tolerance builds up. A case in point can be found in GM crops developed by Monsanto which were touted as being tolerant to Roundup – a herbicide that was developed, unsurprisingly, by Monsanto.
Monsanto claimed that the crops grown from their GM seeds will be hardy enough to resist being killed by Roundup, which they touted as being a super herbicide capable to helping farmers reduce the time they need to control weeds.
Farmers, now emboldened by not having to ration their use of herbicides, increase the use of these weedkillers. And why not? After all, they don’t have to worry about their crops being killed, because Roundup will just get rid of those nasty weeds. So the more they spray, the better.
But there is also such a thing called evolution, and over time Roundup resistant superweeds started sprouting up. And this leads to a vicious cycle of having to produce even stronger herbicides, having to produce even more resistant seeds, and then over-spraying again and even more resistant weeds evolving… rinse and repeat.
Of course, it goes without saying that the excess use of Roundup has also resulted in increased toxicity in the environment. It is also interesting that the company that benefited the most from the overuse, and hence increased sales, of Roundup was also the one producing the GM seeds that were more resistant to it. Simply put, without the GM seeds, Roundup would not have been as commercially successful.
To quote famed Indian activist and proponent for organic farming Vandana Shiva, “The group of companies make chemicals and make GMOs for selling more chemicals are ‘the poison cartel’. They are Bayer, which bought Monsanto, Syngenta which is owned by ChemChina, and Dow and DuPont which merged then split into three companies, including Corteva.”
A Naked Money Grab
In addition to outrightly condemning the insidious nature of these agrichemical giants, Vandana Shiva did not mince her words either when explaining why they are so eager to push GMOs to the developing world.
Speaking on the situation in her homeland, she said, “Every fourth farmer in the world is in India and there’s an attempt to grab this huge market.” And when we factor in that the vast majority of farms are, as aforementioned, located in the Global South, it is clear that goal of Big Agri is to make these farmers beholden to them.
So, how best to do it than to get them hooked or addicted to GM seeds? Seeds which only they (the agrichemical companies) can produce, which they have the patents for, and which they can threaten to withhold unless the farmers pay a hefty price for them.
For instance, Monsanto sued hundreds of farmers in the USA for violating intellectual property rights on GM seeds, as well as won a US$7.7 billion lawsuit against farmers in Brazil for saving and replanting Roundup Ready soybeans.
And the cost is not just economical but also human. In India, thousands of farmers commit suicide every year. In 2021, for example, 10,881 people working as farmers or agriculture labourers took their own lives. In 2020, it was 11,290 individuals. The vast majority of these were from the cotton farming sector, which is the only sector in India which uses GM seeds.
For Vandana Shiva and other activists, the root cause for the suicides is clear. It is the high debt that these farmers got into after they started using GM seeds and then the pesticides and herbicides manufactured by the same company that produces the GM seeds.
And they have to keep on paying because now the soil cannot be used to plant any other crop. Now the weeds can only be killed by stronger pesticides. Now they are trapped. And when you are trapped in this vicious cycle, death rather than crippling debt may seem a more viable option.
Ultimately, for all the propaganda about how good they are and how they will save the world, GMOs have not changed the world for the better. On the contrary, as far as the developing world is concerned, as far as small farmers are concerned, GMOs have been nothing but destructive and toxic. And it is time something is done about it.
