www.czu.cz ; www.raupp.info

Whether gold or grain, humans don't give it away, February 2005 by Alan
McHughen .

Globally, a thousand people die of hunger every hour. More than 800 million
of us are chronically malnourished. Yet studies consistently conclude that
the world actually produces enough food for everyone; if only it were more
evenly distributed we could eradicate hunger.

This is a major plank in the argument against using modern farming methods
to increase food production, "There's already enough food, so we don't need
modern technology."

All we need do, according to this simple argument, is to redistribute the
surplus grain from those who have it to those who don't.

But humans have been starving for eons, even as the world has been producing
grain and other food surpluses all along. Clearly, if redistribution were as
simple a solution as some suggest, hunger would have been eradicated long
ago.

As with global food production and hunger, society has always had poor
people living in a world filled with bountiful riches. And the simple
solution is to redistribute wealth from those who have to those who haven't.

But complex problems are not solved with sound bites. Hunger persists, and
the simplistic solutions simply don't work. Worse, they actually impede the
development of realistic solutions to reduce, if not eradicate, hunger and
poverty.

Biotechnology and other techniques of modern farming offer a practical means
to provide more nutritious food to more people, and do so in an
environmentally sustainable manner.

Yet these methods are under attack by some of the very people who claim to
represent the hungry and impoverished.

Biotech crops and foods have now been grown by farmers, and eaten by
hundreds of millions of consumers, for 10 years. In that time, farmers
report a dramatic drop in pesticide usage, increases in yield and higher
quality grain with less insect and microbial damage and contamination.

In developing countries, crops under-perform largely due to devastation from
weeds, insects and disease. When whatever's left of the crop is finally
harvested, as much as a third spoils before humans can eat it.

These are exactly the problems that judicious use of biotechnology can
overcome, and a large reason biotech crops have been so enthusiastically
embraced in developing countries.

But let's return to the redistribution scenario and question its
feasibility. Is it realistic to expect American farmers to deliver that
excess, uncompensated, to the hungry overseas? Will our productive farmers
continue to grow surpluses if they have to give away the excess grain?

Having the world's poor and hungry fed by American farmers does nothing to
stimulate self-respect and self-sufficiency. In banning biotech crops and
foods, we deny the hungry a means to overcome both, and continue the cycle
of dependency on charity handouts.

American farmers have overwhelmingly adopted biotech crops. Because the
grain surpluses come mainly from these biotech crop farmers, redistribution
faces another roadblock.

The people spouting the redistribution argument have succeeded in banning
biotech grain in many hungry countries. Since biotech grain forms the bulk
of the surplus, redistribution to those countries will be prohibited, and
the people will continue to be hungry.

One of nature's immutable laws holds that simple solutions to complex
problems don't work. Let's reject this redistribution fallacy and focus on
real solutions.

Alan McHughen is a biotechnology specialist and geneticist at the University
of California at Riverside.

[www.etaiwannews.com]

Biotech rejection a 'tragedy' among developing countries.
A European consultant says more has to be done to coax biotechnology
acceptance among developing countries, February 2005 by Tom Steever.

Failure of developing countries to accept genetically enhanced crops is a
tragedy, according to Willie DeGreef, a biotechnology consultant from
Belgium who spoke at the U.S. Grains Council meeting in Huntington Beach,
California.

DeGreef calls it an outrage and tragedy when third world policy makers state
that they?d rather have their children starve than to eat genetically
enhanced foods. ?How did we get that far; who was responsible for whispering
(those) messages to those policy makers,? says DeGreef, referring to leaders
of developing countries who have rejected humanitarian shipments of food
that may contain genetically enhanced ingredients. ?That is something that I
would rather sooner or later want to find out, because you?re talking about
literally crimes against humanity.?

One way to combat the problem, according to DeGreef, is by getting
information from farmers familiar with biotechnology to third world farmers
who might benefit from the use of biotechnology. That is effective, says
DeGreef, because producers in developing countries make up 50 percent of the
voting public.

[www.brownfieldnetwork.com]-
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