Nov 24 2008
Food Insecurity #1, GMO & Monoculture
Ribbons memorialize each migrant who has died in the desert of the US southwest, trying to find work in the US.
I get a lot of blank and bemused stares when I talk about food insecurity. Perhaps people are picturing a silo full of corn saying, “Please don’t make me go out there, I’m SO shy….” Now that WOULD be ridiculous. But the image of bountiful food not leaving storage is one accurate piece of food insecurity. Even NPR’s Morning Edition reported today that 1/3 of the world’s people are experiencing food shortages right now. Those of us living in the US may not think we will ever be touched by these problems, but some of our national neighbors already are, and I believe all of us will be eventually.
So, for the skeptics, the top 10 reasons I am concerned about food insecurity:
1. Genetically-modified organisms and monoculture
We haven’t learned all the risks and consequences (for the earth and our bodies) of genetically modifying food in a lab. Certainly farmers have been doing this since the agricultural revolution began – saving seeds from the largest tomatoes to plant the next year, cross-breeding similar squash to achieve the texture of one, with the taste of the other. Now scientists do this in labs, and the appeal of what’s possible seems to outweigh the question of what’s useful.
But the real danger is monoculture. It’s one thing to produce a strain of corn resistant to mold. It’s another to only plant this kind of corn for entire regions. This strain of corn may be susceptible to one specific bug, and the whole crop could fail. More “traditional” farming would include not only a variety of crops, but a rich genetic diversity even within each species. So 1/2 the corn could be wiped out by a nasty bug, but the rest might survive. (For more from a biologist, read A Fist in the Eye of God by Barbara Kingsolver.)
International trade agreements increase the danger. Through NAFTA and CAFTA, huge US corporations are convincing Central Americans farmers to stop planting the corn they’ve grown and developed for thousands of years, and instead plant a new line of genetically-modified corn. The yield may be impressive the first harvest (perhaps the corn really did resist some local problem), but the results soon trickle down. And these companies have required that farmers NOT save any seed, but instead buy new seed each year from them, so now the farmers are stuck, without seed, and in danger of losing entire harvests due to dangerous monoculture. (For more from a global trade expert, read this article by Deborah James for Global Exchange.)