Clive James/ISAAA special feature
1. 'If anyone says GM is going to feed the world, tell them that it is not.'
2. Fighting poverty by adopting GM crops
3. 25 years living or working in the developing countries
[full url at end of each article]
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http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/1000farming/
[CLIVE JAMES/ISAAA SPECIAL - 3 items]
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1.'If anyone says GM is going to feed the world, tell them that it is not.'
Steve Dube
Western Mail, Feb 15 2005
OPPONENTS of GM crops and food say the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) is an outright advocate of the technology.
The writer, novelist and environmental scientist Dr Brian John, a spokesman for GM Free Wales, says ISAAA calls itself a "not-for-profit organisation" backed by charitable foundations. But its real purpose is to promote the commercial interests of Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience and the other GM multinationals that provide its funding.
Dr John said, "GM crops will not save lives, reduce poverty or counteract malnutrition, but they will - if they are adopted more widely in the Third World - extend the economic colonialism of the GM multinationals, increase poverty and pull small farmers into a chemical-intensive cash crop economy when their governments are seeking to expand the production of basic and indigenous foods."
Dr John said delegates from 20 African countries to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation meeting on Plant Genetic Resources had signed a statement on the issue.
It said, "We strongly object that the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly nor economically beneficial."
The aim of the biotech industry was to help itself, not the poor.
He said the GM industry - and the US and UK governments - had systematically refused to commission any research into GM food safety.
The few independent research projects that have been completed showed major concerns about the effects of long-term ingestion of foods containing GM components.
And the UK's field trials showed that all of the GM crops tested were likely to lead to greater wildlife damage than their conventional counterparts.
As for agrichemical use, studies show that after an initial fall there is a steep rise, and that after a few years chemical applications - and weed resistance - increase.
"And on liability, the multinationals are running scared, since they know that their products are unstable, unsafe and impossible to contain," said Dr John.
The claims made by Dr Clive James's ISAAA - and the statistics - are also challenged by a line-up of opposing groups, including the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex.
This leading centre for research and teaching on international development says there are serious question marks over the accuracy of ISAAA's claims on the uptake of GM crops around the world and the benefits gained by producers.
Aaron deGrassi of the IDS said, "The ISAAA implies that small GM cotton farmers have been using the technology on 100,000 hectares but an industry coalition Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe suggests 5,000 hectares of smallholder cotton, while the IDS survey team suggested 3,000 hectares.
"In other words ISAAA's figures are 20 times higher even than those claimed by a biotech industry source."
GRAIN, an international non-governmental organisation which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge, goes even further.
In a report on ISAAA's activities in Asia, GRAIN concluded that its role was one of "promoting corporate profit in the name of the poor".
The organisation GM Watch says, "There's little doubt that industry is deliberately pursuing contamination to make the global acceptance of GM a fait accompli.
"We increasingly understand where the biotech industry is taking us: to a two-stream system of global food and agriculture - a GM-free niche market for the very rich and a GM polluted supply for the rest of us - with the same small number of corporations controlling both streams, from
seed to supermarket."
Finally the group GM Watch refers to the words of Steve Smith of Novartis Seeds (now Syngenta) at Tittleshall Village Hall, Norfolk, at a public meeting on proposed GM farm scale trial in the area on March 29, 2000.
Mr Smith said, "If anyone tells you that GM is going to feed the world, tell them that it is not To feed the world takes political and financial will."
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2.Fighting poverty by adopting GM crops
Western Mail, Feb 15 2005
Steve Dube
EVEN as Wales warns the world of the risks of genetically modified food production a Welshman is touring the world warning of the risks of not growing GM crops.
Carmarthenshire-born Dr Clive James chairs the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, an organisation he founded 14 years ago with the backing of charitable foundations and the biotech industry.
He now lives in Canada and the Caribbean, but spends nine months of the year travelling the world trying to persuade developing countries to fight poverty by adopting GM crops.
And in a week when Wales was one of 20 European regions that signed a new charter warning of the threats posed by GM to organic and conventional crops, Mr James was in Wales at the start of a European tour talking of the benefits to subsistence farmers and the need for choice.
He points out that 1,000 people die every single hour from malnutrition, and says the goal of the biotech industry is to help the 1.3 billion people who make less than 50p a day.
Against these philanthropic intentions, Dr James says opponents are simply wrong to suspect the multinational companies involved of aiming to use biotechnology to monopolise the food industry in the sordid pursuit of profit. In the process they are simply denying people freedom of choice.
"People say it's being used to rip off farmers, but you'll never be able to rip off farmers," said the former Carmarthen grammar schoolboy who was born in Llansaint.
"In Carmarthen I can't buy a GM product so choice has been taken away."
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the first commercial GM crop. Dr James says there are now 81 million hectares grown by 8.25 million farmers in 17 countries.
"The technology has grown 50-fold since 1996, which is the fastest in modern agricultural history and farmers themselves are almost 100% repeat customers.
"I believe that farmers are the masters of risk aversion and they can come to clear decisions about what this technology offers. Can 8.25 million farmers be wrong?"
Dr James dismisses claims that food safety is untested and rejects claims of adverse effects on the environment.
"The academies of science and medicine have said this food is as safe or safer than conventional technology," he said.
With safety at the heart of the argument in a country that has seen repeated food problems, the question asked by GM opponents is why the biotech companies are not prepared to accept liability if something does go wrong.
Dr James said, "If a technology is accepted by the standards of the day and by governments, then why should they be liable?"
And he warned, "If there's a group of countries that don't accept this technology there is a knock-on effect. It could lead to a delay or a denial of the benefits for those farmers in the developing world that need it most."
He said private biotech companies had freely donated their technology to developing countries.
"One thing appeals to every farmer, whether in Carmarthen or Brazil, is they want to reap more than they sow and if it doesn't deliver they won't want it."
Dr James expects to see the acreage of GM crops almost double from 81 million hectares to about 150 million and more countries accept the technology.
"The most populous countries in the world like China and India have already made that decision and we expect China to accept biotech rice in the near future."
If that happens it will mean that the three main staple crops of the world - rice, wheat and maize - will have substantial crops of GM varieties in cultivation.
"The big five countries of the south - China, India, Brazil, Argentina and South Africa - that grow one-third of total world crops today will make the decisions that will impact on the global acceptance of biotech crops," said Dr James.
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3.25 years living or working in the developing countries
Feb 15 2005
Steve Dube
Western Mail
CLIVE JAMES was born in Llansaint and educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School for Boys, Carmarthen.
He studied for a degree in agriculture at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, followed by a PhD from Cambridge University.
He has been a research scientist with the UK and Canadian Ministries of Agriculture and a senior officer to the food and agricultural organisation of the United Nations.
Before setting up the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications in 1990, he was deputy director-general at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, where he worked with Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Norman Borlaug, who is a patron of the ISAAA. Dr Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for developing high-yield dwarf wheat that resisted a variety of plant pests and diseases and yielded two to three times more grain than traditional varieties. He became known as the Father of the Green Revolution.
Dr James has spent the past 25 years living or working in the developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa researching agriculture and development issues and crop biotechnology.
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