Dear Sakiko Fukuda-Parr,
Your 'open letter' arrives at a time when I am trying to comprehend the serious implications of the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) decision to license the notorious 'Terminator' technology to its seed industry partner, Delta & Pine Land.
As you are probably aware, the USDA and D&PL are co-owners of three patents on the controversial technology that genetically modifies plants to produce sterile seeds, preventing farmers from re-using harvested seed. Although many of the Gene Giants hold patents on 'Terminator' technology, as RAFI has pointed out, D&PL is the only company that has publicly declared its intention to commercialize 'Terminator' seeds. And you probably understand the serious threat it poses to seed sovereignity.
Commenting on the 'terminator' technology, Dr M.S.Swaminathan had told a popular news magazine sometimes back: "There is good science. There is bad science. Terminator is a classic example of bad science." I wonder whether you will ever pick up the same courage to come out openly against the 'terminator' technology. You will not. The reason is simple: your job will be at stake. The USDA will not tolerate such a critical comment and that too from the principal author of the controversial UNDP's Human Development Report 2001.
Why I said this is because quoting eminent scientists out of context has become fashionable for those who look for alibis. However, I must tell you how disappointed I was to read your response through your 'open letter'. I don't need to quote anyone to demolish the myth that biotechnology is the 'silver bullet' that probably would show the way to an utopian global agriculture. To me, the way biotechnology is being pushed, including the way your team used (or was it, misused?) the platform of UNDP to promote genetic engineering, will exacerbate the hunger crisis, drive out million of Third World farmers from their small farms and lead to more suicides in the rural areas.
In my own country, which has the dubious distinction of an unmanageable food surplus exceeding 60 million tonnes on the one hand and a staggering population of 320 million hungry people on the other, please tell me how long can we (and that includes the UNDP) go on making 'pledges' to remove half of the globe's 800 million hungry by the year 2015? Are we not equally guilty? Are we not all hypocrites? Are we not part of a global system, which perpetuates hunger, which in reality has become part of the criminal act of exploiting the poor and hungry?
If we were to eradicate hunger from India, a third of the world's hungry would be out of the hunger trap. We don't have to wait for the year 2015 to halve the population of hungry from India. The food is there, stacked in the open, lying exposed to the vagaries of the nature. All that we, including the international community, has to do is to make it easily available to those who cannot afford it. And the UNDP's Human Development Report is telling us to invest in biotechnology and promote GM crops for providing choices for these poor. Given a choice, the hungry in India need food -- and not the functional food or novel food that the GM industry is promoting.
And don't blame the Indian government alone. The US government is equally guilty of bullying the global community to accept its food doctrine. The European Union is also part of the crime when it provides high subsidies to its farmers just to ensure that the food production in the developing countries remain depressed. It then allows for food dumping, thereby marginalising the farming communities in the South. Democratic governments all over the world, and that includes the United States and Japan, have deviated from what Abraham Lincoln had said: "Democracy is by the people, of the people and for the people." Today, democracies have gone far away from people, and unabashedly follow a new mantra: "Democracy is by the industry, of the industry and for the industry." Agricultural scientists are no different. They too have lost contact with the farmers and are now openly serving the interest of the industry. No wonder, even the United Nations has begun to follow the unwritten dictum. And your report is a classic example of the UN's (mis)adventure with the industry and the market forces.
Even without fully realising the potential of the 'green revolution' technology, Indian farmers have been continuously producing a surplus since 1996. Incidentally, 1996 was the year when the World Food Summit promised to halve the world's population of the hungry by the year 2015. Since the paddy harvest in September last year, nearly a hundred farmers have committed suicide in various parts of the country. Their only fault was that they had produced more. They died waiting endlessly for someone to come and purchase their harvest. Isn't this what is called 'produce and perish' ?
You will immediately point a finger towards the faulty policies of the Indian government. But hold on, let me tell you the other part of the story. The Indian government, like all other developing countries, is under pressure from the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to dismantle the food procurement system and obviously disband the mechanism of providing assured prices to farmers. These two mechanisms -- assured market through public intervention and assured prices to farmers -- were the two planks of the 'famine-avoidance' strategy that India had successfully put in place at the time of the advent of 'green revolution'. And the 'green revolution' became a success essentially because of the assured market that the public sector had created.
Probably you are not aware that the Indian government is urging farmers not to produce any more surpluses. The reason is simple. It has no place to keep the food stocks. And you are asking countries like India to invest in genetic engineering to produce more. Don't you think that there is something seriously wrong with the understanding of the prevailing ground realities by the elite economists and policy researchers? Don't you think that you and your core team needs to revise the Human Development Report 2001? Don't you think that you should have kept Mahatma Gandhi's 'Talisman' in front of you while you were writing the report to suit the commercial interests of the multi-billion agri biotech industry? If only you had read Mahatma Gandhi's "Talisman" (which you indirectly quoted through Dr M.S.Swaminathan in your 'open letter'), you would have done justice to the poor and hungry. Mahatma Gandhi had always talked of self-reliance. And biotechnology is not the path to self-reliance.
May better sense prevail, globally.
Best regards
Devinder Sharma
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Devinder Sharma Journalist, Author and chair Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security, New Delhi, India. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.