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Biotechnology is often presented as the new miracle solution for solving the world's food problem; after the Green revolution, the Gene Revolution. However, concerns are rising in developed and developing countries about the real impact of one branch of biotechnology, Genetic Engineering, and its application through the introduction of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the world ecosystem. Voices of independent scientists are challenging the myths of genetic engineering (Hickey and Mittal, 2003). One key issue in this debate is the alleged contribution of genetic engineering for solving poverty problems in rural areas. It is not incidental that the theme of the 2004 FAO report is the question "Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the needs of the poor?" (FAO, 2004).
As argued in the aforementioned report, genetic engineering could improve the condition of the rural poor basically in two ways. The first is through the development of more productive crops that have been genetically modified to suit the needs and conditions of the rural poor's ecosystems. The second is the enhancement of the nutritional content of the crops grown and consumed by the Poor.
Regarding the first point, evidence shows so far that most of the trials and varieties released by the companies who trust the world GMOs market, focus on a limited number of crops and resistance traits (Pingali and Raney, 2003). For the Poor, the good news is that some of these crops are secondary crops (maize, soybean, potato, sorghum, lentils). The bad news is that the varieties under trial relate mostly to resistance to biotic stress (insects, diseases, weeds) when abiotic stress (drought, salinity, soil toxicity, erosion) is often what most limits crop productivity in marginal areas. Arguments that pest resistance is needed for the crops grown by poor farmers because it will reduce the cost (and risks) of pesticides deliberately ignore the fact that these costs are negligible for poor farmers who cannot afford them anyway. Besides, how can they afford the cost of the new seed varieties that must be purchased for each planting season? There is no evidence of GM crops safety as far as transgenic contamination is concerned (World Bank, 2004), so how much less hazardous is it to grow them in the fragile environment of the rural poor?
The belief that higher yielding varieties would improve the situation of the Poor shows only a limited understanding of their real conditions since, in Asia and the Pacific, most of them are landless people, and small farmers (Bourgeois, 2004; Gubbels, 2004) who usually have no land rights.
There is no reason why the use of GMOs will modify the land tenure, the land distribution, and the wage systems; all of which more significantly contribute to keep the disadvantaged rural populations in poverty.
With regards to the second point, enhancement of nutritional content is probably one of the major contributions of genetic engineering in improving the conditions of poor populations. However it won't make the poor richer, it will make them more resilient to endure their harsh conditions, but will these actually also improve?
Actually, the Gene revolution is as much unlikely to significantly reduce rural poverty as the Green Revolution was and it has even a more poor-adverse feature, being mostly promoted by multinational private companies for which it is above all a "Greens" Revolution. To produce GM crops requires huge financial and technical investment that must be paid off. Therefore, clients must be able to purchase the new technology; it won't be given away for free. The Indian biotechnology industry for instance, is expected to earn $ 5 billion in revenues in the next five years (Ernst and Young, 2004), but that money will not come from the Poor. The Poor are not creditworthy; they are not an attractive market; they will be left behind. As of yet, the wealth to be generated from future genetically-engineered "miracle crops" seems unlikely to spread to the Poor.
Even with the dubious assumption that genetically engineered crops are safe, it is a long way before the Poor may feel any benefits. Governments and international organizations cannot hope for a hypothetic and spontaneous technological spillover from rich, developed and powerful biotechnology producers to poor, left-behind and powerless users. The development of rural poor areas and their populations is not only dependent on biotechnology progress, it is also dependent on rural infrastructure investment, on more equitable redistribution of economic growth, on more focus and understanding of the needs of the rural poor.
CAPSA in its new program of work for 2005-2010 has therefore included a research theme called "BIOTECH". It aims at assessing how and how far biotechnology applied to secondary crops can contribute to rural poverty alleviation in Asia and the Pacific.
Written by Dr. Robin Bourgeois, IS/DB Programme Leader, UNESCAP-CAPSA, Bogor, Indonesia.
(References available upon request) |
