www.checkbiotech.org ; www.raupp.info ; www.czu.cz

A trade dispute between rich nations could unlock the chains on the world?s
poorest farmers--meaning most African women: the World Trade Organisation?s
ruling on GM foods could help them conquer famine, February 2006 by
Margaret Karembu.

The World Economic Forum published a ranking last year of 58 countries and
their ?gender gap,? a big feature of the UN?s Millenium Development Goals.

Only two sub-Saharan countries made the list, South Africa and Zimbabwe, at
36th and 42nd. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, Niger, Ethiopia and many other places
in Africa, millions of women, children and men were starving. In my country,
Kenya, today, close to 3.5 million are in the verge of starvation.

Instead of having careers and au-pairs, most African women are subsistence
farmers. In sub-Saharan Africa, 70% of the population depends on agriculture
as the sole source of income and women and children contribute 60-80% of the
labor. After all these efforts, 30% to 90% of our crops are lost to drought,
disease, pests, weeds and poor storage.

These women do not have modern labour-saving devices such as electric ovens
and washing machines, so the remainder of their time is spent in more manual
labor: fetching water and fuel, cooking and cleaning, and raising children.

But a rapidly increasing population far outstrips food production: right now
12 million Africans are starving and they are expected to reach 30 million
in months.

It is not just drought and locusts that oppress us: weak property rights in
most African countries means farmers have little incentive to invest in
their land, no collateral for loans and no motivation to improve land they
could lose from one day to the next. Women, generally, have even fewer
property and financial rights.

Reduced labour

Lately the HIV/Aids plague has more than decimated the farm labour so badly
needed to increase food production, thus exacerbating aid-dependency,
conflicts, ill-health, malnutrition and the resurgence of communicable
diseases such tuberculosis and hepatitis.

The situation in wealthy countries could not be more different. Farmers
(both male and female) sometimes constitute as little as 2% of the
population yet food is abundant and farming has been modernised by
high-yielding seeds, pesticides, fertilisers, good agronomic practices and
machinery. Their market economies encourage profitable research and
development and have the infrastructure for transport, refrigeration and
trade.

Biotechnology has been the most rapidly adopted technology in agricultural
history because of its social and economic benefits--but nowhere could these
be greater than for women in poor countries in Africa and beyond.

Freeing women

Not only would better crop yields from biotechnology free women to engage in
other economic activities and to get an education and thus reduce the gender
gap, it offers important health and environmental benefits for poor
countries. It improves the quantity and quality of food and cuts pesticides.

By increasing the intensity of crops, there is less pressure to convert
marginal land to agricultural use and more chance of saving our rich
biodiversity. Future technological developments promise plants that could
withstand saline conditions, drought, pests and the other scourges of poor
countries.

So it is easy to understand why biotechnology would help us in so many
ways--but it is not that easy. A small group of activists has
disproportionately affected the global debate on biotechnology, and
particularly in the European Union, using enormous resources to generate
scare stories that regularly appear in the news and affect government
policy: Zambia rejected GM maize donated by the USA last year while its
people were starving--the same corn that Americans and Canadians have been
eating for years.

The WTO has ruled in favour of the USA, Canada and Argentina against the
European Union?s barriers to GM imports: this will have a direct effect on
the ability of poor people to produce better food and to export it. But even
if the EU barriers come down, origin and labelling rules will still threaten
GM produce or even produce grown in a country with GM crops.

To overcome these barriers we must move away from the polarised positions
that have defined the transgenic debate so far, to a rational discussion of
GM food. We African women hope that one day we might share the same concerns
as our Western sisters about juggling careers and family life and attaining
that elusive goal of gender equality. Right now, however, we face the
problem of survival--and biotechnology offers a big part of the solution.

Dr Margaret Karembu is a senior researcher for the International Service for
the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications AfriCenter, Nairobi

[www.monitor.co.ug]

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