The article below is a typical Prakash melange of half-truths, unsupported claims dressed up as facts and outright deceit.
As usual his starting point is the Green Revolution with its "new crop varieties and farming practices, including pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers", which Prakash paints as an unqualified success.
But the Green Revolution is no necessary predictor for the Gene Revolution he is so keen to promote and, even if it were, Prakash is extremely careful in his choice of example - India. He makes no mention, in this context, of Africa where the Green Revolution was an unqualified failure.
http://www.foodfirst.org/policybriefs
And even in countries like India, the Green Revolution, with its promotion of chemical and irrigation dependent crop varieties, resulted in a series of problems which are widely recognised: reduced genetic diversity, increased vulnerability to pests, increased water shortages, increased soil erosion, reduced soil fertility, increased micronutrient deficiencies, and increased soil contamination.
http://livingheritage.org/green-revolution.htm
In fact, one of the greatest ironies of the so-called Gene Revolution is that so many of the problems it's supposed to solve (eg pesticide dependency, irrigation dependency, micronutrient deficiency) are atually by-products of the Green Revolution!
The Green Revolution has also created serious problems at a socio-economic level. For instance, by increasing dependence on expensive inputs it encouraged endebtedness and economic vulnerability amongst small farmers. More generally, the Green Revolution increased the divide between rich and poor and encouraged the displacement of vast numbers of small farmers from their land.
http://livingheritage.org/green-revolution.htm
Given this, not everyone will be encouraged by Prakash's claim that "the 'gene revolution' will continue what began with the 'green revolution'"!
The Green Revolution also did nothing to solve the critical problem of food distribution to the poor. Ironically, the country that Prakash cites as the examplar of the Green Revolution's success now has by far the largest number of hungry people of any country in the world.
Finally, India's American backed Green Revolution was achieved at the expense of India's high yielding indigenous crop varieties and it directly led to the suppression of the work of Indian scientists who were making a case within the agricultural mainstream for less input-intensive farming better adapted to local conditions in India.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=291
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20001016/agro.htm#2
Having ignored all of that, Prakash uses his article's one-dimensional account of the Green Revolution as a platform for a still more fairytale account of the Gene Revolution - with claims such as "the United States is the model for regulating biotechnology"!
It would be more accurate to say that the United States is doing its damndest to promote itself as "the model for regulating biotechnology," but you'd only have to talk to a US rice farmer to get a somewhat different view.
Only nine months ago the US Department of Agriculture's inspector general warned that, "Current (USDA) regulations, policies and procedures do not go far enough to ensure the safe introduction of agricultural biotechnology". The inspector general's report also note that the USDA even "lacks basic information" on where GM field tests are or what is done with the crops after they are harvested - and that included pharmaceutical producing crops. (US food, anyone?)
This is the biosafety system that the US and the biotech industry are using USAID and lobbyists like CS Prakash to promote as a regulatory "model" for the developing world.
Promoting the interests of the biotech industry and the United States as a "lifesaving vision" for the poor and hungry is something pretty hard to dignify, but then Prakash's career of lobbying and deceit has long since divested itself of anything like dignity - see "the great deceiver": http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=55&page=1&op=2
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Elitism about biotech keeps food from hungry
By C.S. PRAKASH Des Moines Register, October 20 2006 [via AgBioView]
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061020/OPINION01/610200355/1036
In 1965 and 1966, crop failures created massive food shortages in my native India, which produced only about 10 million metric tons of wheat annually. Only emergency shipments of American grain prevented widespread famine.
In 2006, India is a net exporter of food, producing 73 million metric tons of wheat. This is thanks in large measure to Iowa's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution he championed of new crop varieties and farming practices, including pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
This week, as the World Food Prize honors those who have fed millions globally, famine still threatens several parts of the world - on a scale that emergency shipments cannot hope to solve.
In sub-Saharan Africa, dramatically increased yields are needed to save and improve the lives of its many people who depend on the land. A "gene revolution" of biotechnology holds great promise, but anti-science and elitism have stood in its way.
European nations, especially, and their misperception of biotechnology as unsafe are responsible for this. As a result, many African governments limit farmers' access to biotech seeds. Some have even refused emergency food aid of biotech crops - fearing not that the food itself as unsafe, but that farmers might plant and harvest the donated grain and jeopardize exports of future surpluses to affluent nations with a zero-tolerance mentality.
Anti-technology rhetoric apparently carries more weight with European policymakers than the reality of starvation in a distant land. While activists uproot biotech test plots in Europe, small farmers in Africa cannot feed their families because their cassava and cowpeas succumb to viral diseases and insects devour their grains. So disease- and insect-protected crops remain unavailable to poor people trying to feed their families or eke out some income.
As Borlaug points out, affluent nations can afford elitist policies and pay more for food produced by "natural" methods. But the world's 1 billion chronically poor and hungry people cannot.
Fortunately, not every region shares the European mind-set. An estimated 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries - including in Europe - planted biotech crops in 2005. None of the activists' imagined safety fears have materialized. And the results have been phenomenal.
Insect-protected crops have eliminated the need for millions of pounds of chemical insecticides. Herbicide-tolerant crops have reduced the use of weed-killers and enabled farmers to use tillage practices that save soil and energy.
New types of vitamin-rich rice are moving ahead to prevent childhood blindness in rice-dependent regions of the world. African scientists are developing herbicide-tolerant maize with resistance to striga, a parasitic weed that causes nearly $1 billion in damage. Other benefits on the horizon include crops tolerant to drought and disease.
These improvements translate into increased yields to meet the growing global demand for food, feed, fiber and biofuels on an ever-decreasing amount of land available for farming.
The potential of biotechnology is seemingly limitless, but the obstacles are formidable. For much of the world, the United States is the model for regulating biotechnology, with its thorough and practical examination of all likely safety and environmental risks.
Yet other regions, especially Europe, have opted for hyper-cautionary systems that de facto prevent wide-scale adoption of biotechnology. Beneath it all is an anti-science, anti-technology ideology and fear.
There are strong indications that this all will ease in the next decade. Consumer benefits are coming or are already here, such as vegetable oils that prevent heart disease or cancer. Consumers in affluent countries will soon learn of the benefits that producers from Iowa to Africa already know, and they will care less about the false elitist claims that deny such benefits to those who most need them.
Very soon, Borlaug's lifesaving vision will be extended for a new generation. The "gene revolution" will continue what began with the "green revolution," and millions of lives will be saved or improved around the world.
C. S. PRAKASH is a professor at Tuskegee University