GM crops feed biotech giants only

Friends of the Earth International has warned that biotech crops are benefiting biotech food giants instead of small farmers and the world’s hungry population in a new report with hard facts about genetically modified crops grown. According to Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth International chair, GM seeds and the pesticides used with them are much too expensive for Africa’s small farmers. The hype around biotech crops has obscured the huge potential of low-cost agroecological and organic techniques to increase food production and alleviate hunger in developing countries. The report mentions several of those techniques, such as ‘push-pull’ maize farming in East Africa.
 

The report explains how the rising grain prices behind the world food crisis have allowed biotech giants like Monsanto to dramatically increase the price of GM seeds and chemicals they sell to farmers. It also describes Monsanto’s strategy of increasing sales of its Roundup herbicide by stacking its “Roundup Ready” trait in nearly all the GM seeds it sells. “Thanks largely to Monsanto, U.S. farmers are facing dramatic increases in the price of GM seeds and the chemicals used with them,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the US-based Center for Food Safety and co-author of the report.
 

The vast majority of GM crops are not grown by or destined for the world’s poor, but rather are soybeans and corn used to feed animals, generate agrofuels, or produce highly processed food products consumed mostly in rich countries. Despite more than a decade of hype, the biotechnology industry has not introduced a single GM crop with increased yield, enhanced nutrition, drought-tolerance or salt-tolerance.  Disease-resistant GM crops are practically non-existent. In fact, GM crops available today are best characterized by the overwhelming penetration of just one trait – herbicide tolerance – which is found in over 80% of all GM crops planted worldwide.  Herbicide-tolerant GM crops have indisputably increased the use of chemical pesticides.
 

http://www.foei.org