1.Uganda's disease-hit banana crops will not be saved by GM science
2."Only GM can save the banana"

EXTRACT: To market GM as a panacea to issues of food security is not borne out by the facts, and to try and dupe farmers in developing countries into accepting this is simply dishonest. The future of feeding a growing world population, in the face of all of the challenges of climate change and resource depletion that face us, is crop variety, soil fertility, and farming systems like organic which don't rely on costly inputs. Not chemical and agribusiness controlling the research and food markets of a GM-inspired future. (item 1)
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1.Uganda's disease-hit banana crops will not be saved by GM science
Emma Hockridge
The Guardian, 15 March 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/15/banana-disease-gm-natural-farming-uganda

*The only protection is crop diversity and proven natural farming methods

Your report states: "A plant disease has led to devastating crop losses. GM could be the only answer" (A nation's staple is under threat but can science save Uganda's bananas?, 9 March). Readers with long memories will recall that the promise of the GM industry to save banana crops has been around for ages (at least since 2001), without any evidence to back it up so far.

Despite vast amounts of time and money put into research, and PR invested in its promotion, GM has failed to deliver. Your report claims "laboratory tests on the genetically modified bananas have been highly promising", yet many other GM crops never pass the field trial stage because they are just not suited to practical farming systems, or behave in ways which are unexpected. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the biggest threat to the health of the banana arises from genetic uniformity, ie not enough variety in its genetic stock. Genetic engineering actually reinforces this uniformity.

Better resilience would come from farmers using a greater diversity of crops alongside proven and effective growing techniques such as using crop rotation to help build soil fertility and plant health naturally. These so-called "agro-ecological" solutions are increasingly being championed by the UN and development organisations, because they offer a much better deal for farmers, and food production that doesn't depend on chemicals and oil-based fertilisers.

The UN's "green Marshall Plan", published recently, argued that large-scale, chemical-intensive approaches to agriculture are not the best way to increase food production. It instead promotes the benefits of agro-ecology for developing countries, which improves their resilience to climate change. Research from the UN has shown adoption of organic and near-organic farming practices in Africa has doubled yields. The claim in your report by Leena Tripathi of the GM research body, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, that "the beauty of the genetic engineering is that you can be very precise" has not been borne out by facts.

In the early days of GM, the Soil Association and other opponents of genetic engineering believed that it was a highly risky and uncertain technology. Developments have shown this to be true. Evidence is continually mounting of the problems that growing GM crops are causing: weed resistance to glyphosate has become a major problem in GM herbicide tolerant crops, while the cost of GM seeds is cutting into farmers' incomes in the US.

To market GM as a panacea to issues of food security is not borne out by the facts, and to try and dupe farmers in developing countries into accepting this is simply dishonest. The future of feeding a growing world population, in the face of all of the challenges of climate change and resource depletion that face us, is crop variety, soil fertility, and farming systems like organic which don't rely on costly inputs. Not chemical and agribusiness controlling the research and food markets of a GM-inspired future.
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2."Only GM can save the banana"
GMWatch, GM Myths
http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-myths
[multiple embedded links at source]

"Only GM can save the banana" is the underlying message of a story that first surfaced in 2001, made a comeback in 2003, and has done the rounds in the media ever since. The story claims that because bananas are sterile, they can't be bred to avoid virulent banana diseases and so could be extinct within a decade.

According to the story, "The standard variety, the Cavendish, is already threatened with a disease called black Sigatoka, and a new strain of another fungal condition, Panama disease, could wipe the plant out within a decade." The banana business, we are told, is "doomed".[1] "No more fresh bananas. No more banana bread. No more banana muffins or banana cream pie."[2] Worse still, bananas are an important nutritional source for many in the developing world. "Half a billion people in Africa and Asia depend on the banana for up to half their daily calories," say the reports.[3] "Genetic engineering may be the only answer"[4]: "Scientists believe that the creation of a GM banana that can resist the diseases may be the only way of preserving the fruit's future."[5]

Each time this headline-grabbing story (re)emerges, it gets expertly debunked... untill the next time comes around. And almost every time, the same scientist is quoted, Dr Emile Frison. Here are some of the headlines Dr Frison has helped to generate:

*"Without a genetic fix, the banana may be history"
*"Bananas 'will slip into extinction without GM'"
*"'Decrepit' banana faces extinction in 10 years"
*"Yes, we'll have no bananas"
*"Bananas could split for good"
*"Defenceless banana 'will be extinct in 10 years'"
*"GM banana needed to fend off pests"
*"Bananas 'killed off' by 2013
*"Banana could split for good"
*"Banana on a slippery slope to extinction"
*"Bye Bye Banana"
*"Bananas; an endangered fruit"
*"Banana R.I.P."

But the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has directly contradicted Dr Frison's claims that bananas are on the verge of extinction, saying that while there are problems of vulnerability to disease, this is aggravated by the widescale commercial use of the Cavendish banana, and can be countered by promoting greater genetic diversity. The FAO also points out that small-scale farmers around the world grow a wide range of banana species which are mostly less threatened than the Cavendish. There are, in fact, hundreds of different species of banana, and only 10 percent of the bananas produced and consumed globally are from the Cavendish.[6]

Other scientists have also dismissed the claim that the banana is close to extinction. The Thai scientist, Benchamas Silayoi from Kasetsart University's Faculty of Agriculture, has said it is just not possible for bananas to vanish so quickly. She points out that there is a world collection of banana germplasm in the Catholic University in Leuven, Belgium, containing over 1,100 accessions, precisely for the purpose of conserving the plant. In addition, there is also an Asian banana collection in the Philippines, and Thailand also has its own collection at Kasetsart University's banana tissue culture lab. According to Benchamas, pests and diseases could not possibly make the banana extinct in the kind of time period claimed. "Only big bombs can do that," she says.[7]

Plant pathologist Dr David Jones, a banana specialist, has also contradicted the claim that genetic engineering may be the only option for improving "sterile" banana cultivars. He points out that although "sterile" bananas "don't breed well, if at all, they can be induced to produce seed if pollinated by hand. Honduras's agricultural research foundation has had the most successful conventional banana breeding programme to date. The Honduran Foundation of Agricultural Research has bred disease-resistant bananas that are now grown extensively in Cuba [where severe problems with disease occurred  previously]. One called Goldfinger is also grown in Australia, and others are on trial in Africa and elsewhere. Conventional breeding can deliver the goods, especially when it comes to  bananas favoured by developing countries. It is true that it may be impossible to alter traits in the familiar 'Cavendish' banana with conventional breeding because of sterility problems. But it may be possible to breed a commercially acceptable disease-resistant export banana using a fertile dwarf variety of 'Gros Michel', an earlier export dessert banana."[8]

In addition, less controversial biotechnologies than genetic engineering have been used with some apparent success, most notably propagation through tissue culture as a means of reducing the risk of spreading banana diseases.

Stories suggesting GM is the only means of saving the banana follow a classic pattern. An exaggerated crisis narrative is created in order to then present genetic engineering as the magical solution to an otherwise intractable problem. This then creates a false dilemma - accept GM or watch poor people suffer. The aim is to blackmail reluctant consumers and farmers into accepting GM bananas as the only solution to a problem that is far more complex than admitted, and where other measures are already proving effective. The driving force behind such scare stories, of course, is the need to overcome market rejection.

It is also worth noting that the GM crops developed to date have generally enabled much greater corporate control of farming - the very last thing small banana farmers need, as they already often have to contend with hugely powerful multinational corporations. On top of that, the biggest threat to the banana, according to the FAO, arises from genetic uniformity, and genetic engineering - with all its hype about techno-fixes - is likely to discourage the pursuit of genetic diversity, reinforcing uniformity.

Interestingly, Dr Emile Frison, the scientist who has done so much to promote GM bananas, is the director general of Bioversity International (BI). BI was set up to deploy genetic resources to counter the rapid loss of crop biodiversity. Although it lays strong emphasis on its governmental sources of funding, among the list of Top 20 donors in BI's Annual Report 2008 is the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which includes among its funders the big corporate players in genetic modification (GM), DuPont and Syngenta. Also among the Top 20 donors to BI are other well known proponents of GM, such as USAID.[9]
 
Notes

[1] Mark Henderson, "Bananas 'will slip into extinction without GM'", The Times, 16 January 2003

[2] Robert Alison, "Yes, we'll have no bananas", Globe & Mail (Canada), 19 July 2003

[3] Robert Uhlig, "Defenceless banana 'will be extinct in 10 years", Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2003

[4] Robert Uhlig, "Defenceless banana 'will be extinct in 10 years", Daily Telegraph, 16 January 2003

[5] Mark Henderson, "Bananas 'will slip into extinction without GM'", The Times, 16 January

[6] "Bananas not on verge of extinction, says FAO", UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Rome, Italy, 30 January 2003;  "UN food agency says bananas not threatened", Agence France Presse, January 30 2003

[7] "Bananas 'can't disappear by 2013'", The Nation, January 30 2003

[8] "Bananas about GM", David Jones, New Scientist, August 4 2001

[9] "Biodiversity International", SpinProfiles, accessed June 30 2009