COMMENT 21/09/2013
FROM: FOOD SOVEREIGNTY GHANA
TO: WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Comment: Re: GM Crops – are they all that ROSY?

It is quite obvious to us that this new offensive of GM propaganda closely follows in the heels of the news that Monsanto has withdrawn applications for GMOs in the EU because of non-acceptance on scientific grounds and rejection by civil society. Genetic Engineering of crops is a fake science whose only aim is to make us surrender our agriculture to the control and the monopoly of giant multinational corporations of doubtful intentions and abilities.

They are not intended to feed the hungry, we have the double the amount of food needed to feed everyone in the world today! They are neither intended to help the poor farmer. Say that to the hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers who committed suicides after believing these false claims!

There is a growing body of scientific evidence that show that GMO technology is a failed technology and cannot deliver the claims of high yield, resisting climate change, and lower use of pesticides and insecticides. It is simply beyond what Genetic Engineering can do. What they are not telling us are the problems of super-weeds and super-bugs and an increase, not decrease, in the use of pesticides and herbicides manufactured by these same companies!

There is increasing evidence showing that theories on transgenic modification are not just obsolete but completely mistaken, as they are based on assumptions which have now been proved to be false, for example, the mechanical identification of specific characteristics of a gene. The fundamental importance of this, especially with the claims that we need GM in order to make plants tolerant to drought, and saline-tolerant, and flood tolerant and all the rest of it in the face of Climate Change, is that all these desirable properties are multi-gene. It is not just one gene that confers these properties unto a plant, but multi-gene families, working in a very co-ordinated way.

Independent experts are telling us for example, ‘What we can do with biotechnology is map the genes within the DNA of the plant, of one variety of plant that says “drought-tolerant”, and another variety of the plant that says “high yielding… we can breed them naturally, and then use gene mapping methods, to identify the plant offspring which combines the genes, the multi-gene families that confer high yield and drought tolerance.”

However, the current problem is the immense global power of the biotech industry and its enormous capacity to influence thought and to win contracts. The future of our agriculture lies in Agro-ecological agriculture. We know that the International Assessment of Agricultural knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), the UN Report which was co-sponsored by FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, WHO and the World Bank strongly recommended agroecological agriculture and gave thumbs down to GE agriculture. We also know that the World Bank and the rest of the institutions that were behind the report written by 400 independent scientists were supported by independent scientists from almost every nation on the planet!

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