Thought this might interest some of you.
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Cashing in on hunger
By Fred Pearce
The rush to promote genetic engineering as a solution to world food
shortages is undermining crop research in the developing world, claim
leading agricultural scientists. Governments, the World Bank and other
funding bodies are withdrawing their support for biological pest
control and switching to genetic research, they say.
This summer, Monsanto, the world's largest supplier of genetically
modified seeds, appealed to African heads of state to back genetic
engineering as a solution to the world's food problems. It also
launched an advertising campaign claiming that biotechnology offered
the best hope of achieving sustainable food production.
But Hans Herren, director of the International Centre of Insect
Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi and a leading expert on fighting
crop diseases, told a meeting at the Overseas Development Institute
in London last week that these claims are diverting essential funds
from traditional pest control: "We shouldn't be driven by this
unproven technology when there are many more efficient solutions to
food problems."
Other experts take a similar view. Jules Pretty, director of the
Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex, warns:
"Biotechnology is much more sexy with donors at the moment and other
research will get squeezed out."
Herren accuses agricultural researchers at UN agencies and the World
Bank of joining a commercial bandwagon that is halting potentially
more useful crop research. He is particularly critical of the UN's
development and agricultural agencies and the Rockefeller Foundation,
one of the world's largest private funders of agricultural research
for the developing world. "Half of Rockefeller's agricultural money
now goes to biotechnology," says Herren.
Many of the 16 research centres run by the World Bank-backed
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, to which
Herren's own institute is affiliated, have also switched from
traditional research. "When I visit agricultural research institutes,
I find the biological control lab half empty with broken windows, and
the taxonomy lab derelict, but the biotechnology lab will be brand
new with all the latest equipment and teeming with staff," Herren
adds.
Herren's views carry weight. A decade ago his work helped to save
Africa from famine caused by a South American mealy bug that was
devastating the cassava crop. It threatened disaster for 200 million
Africans, until Herren found a Paraguayan parasitic wasp that killed
the mealy bug by laying eggs inside its body, and released the wasp
across the continent.
Herren claims that if the same problem arose today, he would not get
the money for such research. "The transgenics people would say they
could insert a gene resistant to the mealy bug into the plant
instead." He argues that if they were successful, they would charge
for new seeds, which African farmers could not afford. His solution
"solved the problem once and for all" and did not cost farmers a
penny--one reason why companies are not interested in biological
control. Herren says his centre has lots of proposals for pest
control based on botanical products, "but nobody in the aid community
wants to fund them".
"There may be occasions when biotechnology is the only way of solving
a problem," says Pretty. "But there are much simpler solutions to
most of the developing world's food problems." He says scientists who
believe biotechnology would banish hunger are being naive. "Most
people are hungry because they are poor, not because they lack
technology."
Monsanto rejects Herren's charges. The US-based company says that
resistance to insects and disease will be among the first benefits of
its products.