| Is Africa rejecting GM? / Biosafety resources (4/3/2008) | |
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1.TWN Update for February 2008 2.Is Africa rejecting genetic engineering in food and agriculture? 3.Starved for Science --- 1.TWN Update for February 2008 ------ Who Benefits from GM Crops - The Rise in Pesticides Use (Executive Summary) ------ Cotton, Contaminated? ------ GM Contamination Register Report 200 ------ Sustainable agriculture's climate mitigation potential ------ Agricultural biodiversity discussions at the CBD --- 2.Is Africa rejecting genetic engineering in food and agriculture? Full text of document This booklet outlines recent key trends, developments and actors in the debate on genetic engineering (GE) in food and agriculture in Africa. It also highlights a number of the key talking points including the harmonisation of bio-safety legislation, the new green revolution in Africa, and genetic diversity. It is argued that more than 10 years have passed since Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) were first commercialised in the world, yet out of more than 50 African countries, only South Africa has explicitly taken bio-safety decisions to authorise the commercial cultivation and importation of GMOs for the purposes of food, feed and processing. Key points highlighted throughout recent trends include: **several African countries such as Sudan, Angola and Zambia have fiercely resisted receiving GM food aid, precipitating reforms in food aid policies internationally **the GM push in Africa has recorded several significant setbacks and failures, with Florence Wambugu's GM sweet potato in Kenya and the Gates Foundation's GM sorghum in South Africa being the most prominent **this rejection represents a huge set back for crucial components of the 'New Green Revolution in Africa' push, which is heavily funded by the Gates Foundation **2007 has not been a good year for GE in South Africa. The first ever GM cassava field trials also faced the thumbs down from the South African regulatory authorities **while the GE lobby has waged a heavily resourced battle for acceptance of GMOs, public reaction has in many instances been hostile. The media has been extremely critical of GMOs in countries such as Kenya, Zambia and South Africa. --- 3.Starved for Science Heading upcountry in Africa to visit small farms is absolutely exhilarating given the dramatic beauty of big skies, red soil, and arid vistas, but eventually the two-lane tarmac narrows to rutted dirt, and the journey must continue on foot. The farmers you eventually meet are mostly women, hardworking but visibly poor. They have no improved seeds, no chemical fertilizers, no irrigation, and with their meager crops they earn less than a dollar a day. Many are malnourished. Nearly two-thirds of Africans are employed in agriculture, yet on a per-capita basis they produce roughly 20 percent less than they did in 1970. Although modern agricultural science was the key to reducing rural poverty in Asia, modern farm science—including biotechnology—has recently been kept out of Africa. In Starved for Science Robert Paarlberg explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought. He traces this obstacle to the current opposition to farm science in prosperous countries. Having embraced agricultural science to become well-fed themselves, those in wealthy countries are now instructing Africans—on the most dubious grounds—not to do the same. In a book sure to generate intense debate, Paarlberg details how this cultural turn against agricultural science among affluent societies is now being exported, inappropriately, to Africa. Those who are opposed to the use of agricultural technologies are telling African farmers that, in effect, it would be just as well for them to remain poor. |
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