7. Contrary to biotechnology industry claims, bioengineered foods are not a cure for world hunger.
- Salt tolerance, drought tolerance and nitrogen fixation are characteristics that are polygenic and therefore difficult to engineer. Indeed some microbiologists believe that engineering these characteristics may prove to be impossible and that modifying a series of genes, which interact with each other, is likely to produce instability in the new organisms. This research, though pertinent to world hunger, is unlikely to pay off in the short term. Private companies are therefore spending relatively little money on research and development in these areas (Kimbrell, p. 297).
- Biotechnology creates dependency. Biotechnology goes hand in hand with intensive agriculture--single crops in large fields. Most Third World farmers are small-scale, farming a variety of crops. By switching to genetically engineered seeds they have to change their practices and become dependent on the companies which provide the 'package' of seeds, herbicides, fertilizers, irrigation systems, etc. Indian farmers using Monsanto's genetically engineered seeds pay an extra $50 - $65 per acre as a 'technical fee' over and above the price of seed. Farmers who do business with Monsanto must sign a contract declaring that they will not buy chemicals from any one else (Campbell).
- The industrial agriculture promoted by biotechnology firms and products pushes peasants off the land to make room for export crops. The result of the industrial system has been millions of people losing their land, community and food independence as they flock to newly industrialized cities where they become the urban poor. Lack of employment in the cities has left many rural migrants unable to buy food even though the city shops and markets are adequately supplied. Those who stay on the land do low paying farm work on the large industrialized farms. More than half a billion rural people in the Third World are landless or don't have enough land to grow their own food. Both urban and rural poor are completely food dependent. Their access to food is solely by purchase. Increased agricultural output has little effect on the hungry because it does not address the key issues of access to land and purchasing power that are at the root of hunger (Kimbrell, p. 294).
- The world's hungry do not make good customers. Science-based biotechnology research has so far tended to be geared to the high external input agriculture of the First World. Most biotech products have been aimed at consumer niche markets in the developed nations. Calgene's $25 million 'Flavr Savr' tomatoes for example, whose only advantage over competitors is three - five days' extra shelf life and is expected to cost about $1 more per pound compared to conventionally grown tomatoes, will not help feed the world's hungry (Campbell).