Activist group warns over GMOs

The Civil Society Network, a group of non-governmental bodies, says government should address the wider causes of food insecurity -- land, credit, agricultural training and infrastructure -- before commercially adopting genetically modified (GM) crops in the agricultural sector.

“To have a lasting impact on poverty, policymakers must address the real constraints facing smallholder farmers -- lack of access to land, credit, resources and markets -- instead of focusing on risky technologies that have no track-record in addressing hunger,” said Bernard Guri, Executive Director of the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Organisational Development (CIKOD), a member of the network, at a forum in Accra.

Speaking to participants made up of other representatives from the network and farmers, Mr. Guri said Africa is the only part of the world that is receiving GM crops with both hands.

“Developing country governments are under huge pressure to accept GM crops. Smallholder farmers have not been properly informed [or] consulted, [nor have they] agreed to accept or reject the crops. Poorer farmers and communities are being sidelined in debates and decisions about GM technology,” he said.

“The promoters are working it through our politicians and leaders just because these groups don’t understand its impact and its future effects.”

He said the pervasive adoption of GM crops seems likely to aggravate the underlying causes of food insecurity -- leading to more hungry people, not fewer.

More than 80 percent of small-scale farmers in Africa save their on-farm produced seeds for the next season. Yet the proliferation of intellectual property regimes that come with GM seeds threaten centuries-old practices of saving and exchanging seeds -- as GM seeds must be bought each season.

Research shows that up to 1.4 billion people, including about 90 percent of farmers in Africa -- many of them women -- depend on saved seeds.

Mr. Guri explained that the potential impact of GM crops on food security, poor farmers and biodiversity should guide the development and implementation of a national bio-safety framework, and that poorer farmers should be enabled to participate more in national GM debates and policymaking

A law, the Biosafety Act, 831, of 2011, has been passed to enable the country to allow the application of biotechnology in food crop production, including allowing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to enter food production.

Before the passage of the law, the country was using a legislative instrument -- CSIR Act 521 of 1996 -- as a template, since it had provisions for the conduct of research in general. The new law was simply to extend this to the conduct of research on GMOs.

Mr. Guri said the poor smallholder farmers in the country cannot afford expensive GM agriculture and are vulnerable to falling into cycles of debt. “If they rely heavily on modified seeds, over time they will lose their traditional seeds. Relying on new GM seeds for propagation means that when their prices go up, not all farmers would be able to afford it as this will increase the cost of production -- and subsequently the cost of food.”

Outlining some of the challenges of commercially adopting GM crops, he explained that genetically modified varieties do not meet the needs of poor farmers who rely on affordable, readily-available supplies of seeds for a range of crops to meet diverse environmental, consumption and production needs.

“GM seeds, by contrast, are targetted at large-scale commercial farmers growing cash crops in monocultures,” he said.

Most research and development in GM agriculture is conducted by the private sector, with less than 1 percent of all GM research directed at poor farmers.

GM introduction starts with farmers signing a contract with the company, obliging them to pay a royalty or technology fee and agreeibng not to save or replant seeds from the harvest.

Mr. Buri said buying external supplies of seeds and pesticides leaves farmers more economically and agriculturally dependent on corporations.

“The technology fee makes such seeds prohibitive for the poorest farmers who lack access to credit. The contracts are complex and easily misunderstood by farmers.”

Just six companies control almost all GM crops: Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF and Dupont. They also control three quarters of the agrochemical market.

Monsanto enforces its patents through a force of private investigators, suing farmers on the slightest suspicion.

Richard Adjei-Poku, Executive Director of Livelihood & Environment Ghana, a non-governmental organisation, said the idea that GM will increase farmer yields, empower them better economically and make them wealthier is just fallacious.

He said transnational companies, the government and some civil society organisations promoting GMOs should step back from the speed with which they are proceeding.

“It is important that they listen carefully to the genuine concerns of farmers, rather than proceed with scientific models that seek to entrench the power of transnational companies,” he said.

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has said genetically modified foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health.

The AAEM revealed that animal studies show serious health problems resulting from GMOs in the diet, and that commercial interests, rather than health and scientific interests, are driving the push for GMOs.