1.South Africa: State 'Can Bear Blame for Seed Row'

2.South Africa: Technology Sows Seeds of Public Mistrust

EXTRACT: As for the feted relief for emerging farmers, no one on the panel presenting the GMO statistics last week, or anyone in the contingent of technical experts at the meeting, could provide verifiable statistics for SA [South Africa]. The panel did, however, present one small-scale black farmer, Motlatsi Musi, who farms 25ha south of Johannesburg, to testify about his success with GMO.

Musi is the same black farmer the panel presented last year at a similar meeting and he testified similarly about his profitability. He admitted again, as he did last year, that he was 'helped with seed' from the seed companies.

After fuel and labour, seed is the costliest input for a farmer.

Pannar, a South African seed company, said earlier this year that the costs associated with producing GMOs are prohibitive for emerging farmers... (item 2)

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1.South Africa: State 'Can Bear Blame for Seed Row'
Sarah Hud Leston
Johannesburg
Business Day (Johannesburg), 4 March 2008 http://allafrica.com/stories/200803040199.html

THE government has been implicated in an international row over the export of seed maize to Kenya which has been contaminated with a genetically modified variety banned in every African country except SA.

The director of the African Centre for Biosafety, Mariam Mayet, blamed seed-bulking facilities for the 'contamination', but said the government should shoulder blame for the scandal .

The seed was exported by the South African branch of US seed giant, Pioneer Hi-Bred.

'The maize seeds are contaminated with a genetically engineered variety - Mon810 - belonging to Monsanto that has not been approved in Kenya,' said Mayet. 'GM (genetically modified) maize Mon810 contains a novel gene that is considered unsafe and banned in several +-European countries.'

The contamination was detected by Greenpeace International, which in co-operation with environmental and farmers' organisations in Kenya, commissioned tests of 19 seed varieties bought in stores in key maize-producing areas across Kenya.

The tests, by an independent European laboratory, revealed that Pioneer's seed maize PHB 30V53, sold in the Eldoret region of Kenya, was contaminated with Mon810 maize, a variant that is genetically engineered to be insect-resistant.

Last month, said Mayet, the French government decided to ban the cultivation of Monsanto's maize Mon810 based on several environmental concerns.

Pioneer Hi-Bred spokesman Jeff Johnson denied this yesterday, saying France placed a moratorium on the planting of this seed for one season only. 'In fact, Mon810 is fully approved in the European Union (EU), and last year was grown in eight EU countries on 110000ha.

Biotech seed maize allows for higher production and lower input costs, resulting in greater income and competitiveness for growers of all sizes and scales.'

Johnson said the possible reason for Mon810 showing up in the Kenyan seed was wind pollination, although the crops were grown many kilometres apart.

Mayet said the Kenyan seeds' 'contamination' came on the eve of a United Nations meeting to develop international liability rules for genetically engineered products.

Johnson said Pioneer's testing protocols had 'extremely high standards' that 'meet or exceed' purity requirements of the major maize-producing countries.

'Even given these extraordinary measures, trace amounts of biotech material (called low-level presence) can occur from time to time . Adventitious presence of biotech products does not compromise food safety,' he said. Absolute '100% purity' simply did not exist in genetic make-up or in foreign material content. It was not achieved for any agricultural product anywhere in the food chain, he said.

'We can confirm a proportion of the seed sold in Kenya may contain very small trace amounts of biotech material.'

Johnson said 12 regulatory bodies worldwide, including the European Commission, had found hybrids with Mon810, marketed as Yieldgard, as safe as conventional corn hybrids. Many farmers in those countries were seeing significant benefits.

Jan Vanaken, of Greenpeace in the Netherlands, said yesterday Pioneer 'may talk as long as they wish about approval in the EU, but it is a fact five EU countries banned Mon810 maize on health and environmental grounds'.

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2.South Africa: Technology Sows Seeds of Public Mistrust
Neels Blom Johannesburg Business Day (Johannesburg), 4 March 2008 http://allafrica.com/stories/200803040187.html

JUDGING by the level of antagonism between the proponents of the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the anti-GMO activists, the struggle between these lobby groups is far from over.

It has certainly prompted a call from the South African Women's Agricultural Union (SAWAU) for better communication about biotechnology.

Organised agriculture and seed companies, however, would have us believe that the battle is won, and they have the statistics to prove it.

Agri SA president Lourie Bosman showed at a news conference last week that the mean area planted to GMO crops last year increased more than 30% to 1,8-million hectares, up from 1,4-million hectares in 2006.

That means that SA, now in its 10th year of GMO production, retains its eighth position among the world's 23 leading producers of genetically modified crops, 11 of which are industrialised economies and 12 developing economies. SA's position is particularly meaningful, since it holds it among countries with considerably larger agricultural sectors and vastly greater areas of arable farmland.

In order of acreage, they are the US, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, China and Paraguay. Behind SA are economies such as Australia, Spain and France.

Worldwide, the acreage under GMOs has increased an average of about 12% a year, or by about 12,3-million hectares for 12 years. It now stands at 114,3-million hectares.

The GMO proponents present these statistics as a victory over those who would oppose this branch of biotechnology, as though it is fait accompli. They also present the consistent increase in planting as proof that GMOs are safe for consumption.

'This (genetically modified) maize is being consumed, in one way or another, every year by 40-million South Africans without any medical or scientifically substantiated adverse effects on humans,' Bosman said.

The GMO proponents also make much of its uptake worldwide by resource-poor farmers which, in SA, are represented by more than 450000 emerging farmers, if subsistence farmers are taken into consideration.

A pro-GMO non-profit organisation, International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, says that 11-million of the world's 12-million GMO farmers are regarded as resource poor. But these statistics tell only part of the story.

In SA, the uptake of GMOs is due to enabling legislation and comparatively poor traceability of genetically modified content in food, and not as a result of demand, general acceptance or even apathy.

Bosman admitted that it is virtually impossible for South African consumers to avoid ingesting genetically modified substances, even if they tried.

Already about half of all maize and almost all soya beans consumed in SA are genetically modified. While consumers can theoretically avoid these foodstuffs where their GMO status is labelled, maize and soya beans find their way into the food chain as animal feed and as constituents of processed food.

It must be understood, also, that for all the fanfare about the technology, only two genetic modifications are prevalent in South African agricultural practice, both of which are applied for their agronomically desirable traits, and not because they improve the quality of the resulting food products.

They are Bt organisms (Bacillus thuringiensis), which impart an insecticidal property to maize and cotton target species (maize and cotton), and RoundupReady, which gives target species resistance to a broadleaf herbicide.

A new generation of GMOs, reportedly with improved nutritional value, is expected between four and six years from now.

As for the feted relief for emerging farmers, no one on the panel presenting the GMO statistics last week, or anyone in the contingent of technical experts at the meeting, could provide verifiable statistics for SA. The panel did, however, present one small-scale black farmer, Motlatsi Musi, who farms 25ha south of Johannesburg, to testify about his success with GMO.

Musi is the same black farmer the panel presented last year at a similar meeting and he testified similarly about his profitability. He admitted again, as he did last year, that he was 'helped with seed' from the seed companies.

After fuel and labour, seed is the costliest input for a farmer.

Pannar, a South African seed company, said earlier this year that the costs associated with producing GMOs are prohibitive for emerging farmers and that certain farming practices made that market difficult to penetrate.

The use of farm-saved seed, for instance, posed a problem of intellectual property rights for seed companies in SA that could scupper their arrangements with their principals overseas.

The environmental and food-safety issues have not been adequately addressed either. Although the anti-GMO lobby's objections based on experimental evidence are not supported by repeat experiments [because the research has not been undertaken!] the proponents of GMOs have not proven food safety beyond doubt either. As champions of a new technology, it is incumbent upon them to show food and environmental safety, regardless of other 'acceptable' risks associated with food production.

The SAWAU lauded SA's regulatory system at the panel meeting, but neither it nor the panel could enumerate what the specific safety issues were.

That no one in SA has fallen ill or died (as far as we know) as a direct consequence of ingesting GMOs does not make the technology safe, and to suggest otherwise is spurious. It is perhaps this attitude, combined with the expedient use of statistics, that maintains the high level of public mistrust of the new technology.