 USDA Report Exposes GM Crop Economic Myths |
Inaugural
World Food and Farming Congress
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/wffcongress.htm
London, 25-26 November 2002
Special
Report By Nlpwessex
"What
next, if not biotech?"
Dennis Avery, Hudson
Institute, US
"There
is a limit to the application of science and technology"
Lord Plumb, Congress
Chairman, UK
"The
enormous power of multinational companies"
Matt Dempsey, Irish
Farmers Journal, Ireland
"WTO
means 'We Take Over'"
Devinder Sharma,
Agriculture and Food Trade Analyst, India
"The
rich are robbing the poor"
Jeremy
Hobbs, Oxfam, UK
"Article
34 of TRIPs turns those whose crops are contaminated by pollen
from patented GE varieties into criminals"
Tewolde
Berhan, Environmental Protection Authority, Ethiopia
"The
prospects for agriculture have never been brighter"
Allen
Andreas, Archer Daniels Midland, US
"If
the most promising
biotechnology is also one which is acceptable to society
at large should that not be the area where attention is focused
rather than genetic engineering?"
Nlpwessex
question from the floor of the World Food and Farming Congress
As a guest of the organisers the editor of the nlpwessex GM email news service attended the inaugural session of the World Food and Farming Congress held in London 25 to 26 November 2002. Below is his report on the first meeting of this new global forum.
NATURAL
LAW PARTY WESSEX
nlpwessex@btinternet.com
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex
December 2002
Few people will have heard of the World Food and Farming Congress which held its inaugural conference in London at the end of November - and at £1000 a ticket this was an event for a privileged few, of which there were about 200 (including those who had attended through sponsorship).
Organised by Clarion Events the conference aimed to bring together "global agribusiness companies, leaders of global NGOs, scientists, farmer and consumer leaders to deliberate, discuss and listen to the views of the many sides in this debate." The subject under discussion was the global agenda in world agriculture for trade, development and the environment, and agricultural technology.
An indication of the aspiring importance of the conference was the presence of the Director General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr Supachai Pantichpakdi of Thailand, who addressed delegates on the first day.
From the point of view of a GM critic, however, attendance at the conference gave the ominous feeling of entering the lion's den. The conference's sole sponsor was the 'International Policy Council' (IPC) a Washington based food and agricultural trade 'think-tank' - and anything emanating from Washington these days immediately sets the antennae twitching for signs of treaty shredding and other rapacious tendencies.
The IPC think-tank runs to 38 principal members. Thirty are from the developed world, of which over a quarter are from the US. Many are current and former executives of powerful corporate players in global agribusiness including ag-biotech giants Monsanto and Syngenta.
Certainly the list of congress delegates provided plenty of reason for caution - most of the big names in the agricultural genetic engineering sector were represented along with other major forces in global trade such as Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Nestle, Unilever and Universal Corporation. Only a handful of non-trade related NGOs, such as Oxfam and Compassion in World Farming, were present. Many of the remainder were government related officials, including staff from the European Commission, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank. More importantly, though, 23 WTO representatives from developing countries also attended.
Irrespective of the session during the two days, the issue of biotechnology invariably cropped up at some point, if only briefly. However, the lion of 'genetic engineering' did not really roar until the final technical presentation of the conference provided by Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute (of which more below).
Nonetheless, it was clear throughout the conference that whatever enthusiasm there may be in certain quarters for the use of genetic engineering in agriculture there was widespread recognition that its deployment still requires the broad approval of society as a whole - a considerable change in circumstances compared to what might have been expected had such a gathering been held only two or three years ago.
The conference was opened by Lord Henry Plumb (who as former President of the National Farmers Union, and former President of the European parliament, is regarded as the elder statesman of British Agriculture) together with Lord Whitty, British Minister for Food and Farming. It was closed by Piet Bukman, former Minister of Agriculture, Holland.
Below are some selected points of interest from the various papers (due to be posted on the Congress web site shortly) and additional comments made by their authors at the Congress, followed by some concluding observations:
DAY 1
Session 1: Future world
demand and supply - Chair Matt Dempsey (Ireland: Editor, Irish
Farmers Journal)
Dr Per Pinstrup Anderson
(Denmark: Immediate Past President, International Food Policy
Research Institute)
Professor Jikun Huang (China: Director of the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Science)
Dr Devinder Sharma (India: Food and Trade Policy Analyst; Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, New Delhi)
Session 2: Trade issues and the globalisation of farming - Chair Robert Thompson (United States: Chairman, IPC; Senior Adviser, Agricultural Trade Policy, World Bank)
Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi (Thailand: Director General, WTO)
Jeremy Hobbs (United Kingdom: Executive Director, Oxfam)
Allen Andreas (United States: Chairman, Archer Daniels Midland)
Philip Freiherr von dem Bussche (Germany: President, German Agricultural Society)
DAY 2
Session 3: The balance and transfer of knowledge and experience - Donald McGauchie (Australia: Chairman, Woolstock Australia)
Dr Margaret Karembu (Kenya: Technology Diffusion Advisor and Lecturer, Kenyatta University)
Nestor Osorios (Columbia: Executive Director of the International Coffee Organisation)
Hans Johr (Switzerland: Corporate Head of Agriculture, Assistant Vice President, Nestle Company)
Session 4: The conflict between the affluent consumer and the need of the majority - Chair Lord Selborne (United Kingdom: Former Chairman, House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology
Pedro de Camargo Neto (Brazil: State Secretary for Production and Commercialisation of the Ministry of Agriculture and Supply)
Dr Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher (Ethiopia: General Manager of the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia)
Dr Dennis Avery (United States: Director of Global Food Issues Department, Hudson Institute)
Ben Gill (United Kingdom: President of the National Farmers Union; President of CEA; Vice President, COPA)
Coming principally from the perspective of farmers in the European Union the closing remarks of Ben Gill were nonetheless applicable to much of global agriculture. Even if many do not share his enthusiasm for genetic engineering, few in the developing world would disagree with him that farmers everywhere are unhappy, that multinationals are a major threat and that a vision for global agriculture is desperately needed (a substantially different view to that of the Chairman of ADM who Mr Gill did not hear speak the previous day).
Many diverse views were expressed during the conference but perhaps the most striking presentations were from Devinder Sharma, Margaret Karembu and Dennis Avery.
Dr Sharma's presentation was impressive both for its content and the fluid delivery carried out without the aid of either notes or visual aids. From comments afterwards it was clear that his commentary was a revelation to many, including Lord Plumb. The lucidity was such that one delegate remarked that it was like 'a song'.
To some degree Margaret Karembu's paper was the most significant given the heat that is usually generated in the debate concerning biotechnology.
In addition to her role at Nairobi University Dr Karembu is a researcher for the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) Africenter, an institution regarded by critics as something of a Trojan horse for the biotechnology industry from which it receives much of its funding, in addition to USAID. Despite such potential pressures Dr Karembu went to some effort to demonstrate that there is much more to biotechnology than genetic engineering (something often unappreciated, or ignored, by both sides of the GM debate).
Her presentation provided the opportunity to raise a question from the floor about appropriate priorities for the biotechnology sector. In so doing it was pointed out that senior figures in both industry and academia have drawn attention to the fact that marker assisted selection offers much greater overall potential for the future of world agriculture than genetic engineering (for example, annual improvements in wheat yields from the use of this technology are predicted to arise at twice the rate previously anticipated by the FAO). Moreover - and most importantly - it is a technology for which it is difficult to find objection from either consumers or environmental campaigners.
So the question was posed: if the most promising biotechnology is also one which is acceptable to society at large should that not be the area where attention is focused rather than genetic engineering?
Significantly Dr Karembu responded largely in agreement indicating that there was no need to rush to genetic engineering until other possibilities had been exhausted. Perhaps even more importantly her response downplayed the role of plant breeding in general as a universal solution (in contrast to the seemingly simplistic conclusion reached later by Dennis Avery: "There is no answer other than biotechnology''), indicating that emphasis also needed to be placed on management systems such as integrated pest management.
Although Dr Karembu expressed her frustration at misleading press reporting on biotechnology (which in fact happens on both sides of the debate), these areas of apparent agreement between a prominent biotechnologist and a GM critic were specifically highlighted by Lord Selborne when chairing the next session.
During the breaks it was also possible to discuss the issue of marker assisted selection with other speakers and session Chairs. It was clear that until Dr Karembu's presentation and the questioning that followed there was a substantial lack of awareness of this technology by some influential figures at the conference. The subject appeared to be complete news to the Chairman of ADM as well as to both the Emeritus Chairman of IPC and its Chief Executive, with the latter asking for more information to be provided after the conference (given that IPC presents itself as a leading think-tank with strong influence in government circles it would appear that biotechnology education is required not simply for the less fortunate in the developing world!).
Dennis Avery's presentation, however, was probably the most memorable for entirely different reasons. Although something of a legend in this respect few without prior experience could have been prepared for his 'no-holds barred' attack on environmental activists and his universal promotion of genetic engineering proclaiming "What next, if not biotech?". To some degree that question is valid, but not in the way that was intended (it needs to be born in mind that when Americans use the word 'biotech' in a policy discussion they are usually referring to 'genetic engineering' and little else).
To a great extent Dr Avery's presentation was also notable for what it didn't say. He failed to draw attention to the fact that the world's largest GM crop by far - soya - has actually succeeded in reducing crop yields due to an unexpected disturbance to the genome of the soy plant as a result of the genetic engineering process. Neither did he refer to the advantages of marker assisted selection as an alternative.
He also failed to draw attention to a FAO report published in 2000 which reveals that the world can satisfactorily feed itself to a higher standard than today until at least 2030 without the use of GMOs (the report concludes that"a number of projection studies have addressed and largely answered in the positive the issue whether the resource base of world agriculture, including its land component, can continue to evolve in a flexible and adaptable manner as it did in the past, and also whether it can continue to exert downward pressure on the real price of food .... The largely positive answers mean essentially that for the world as a whole there is enough, or more than enough, food production potential to meet the growth of effective demand...").
Despite Dr Avery's loud enthusiasm for it, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture is now encountering global resistance, with even countries faced with the immediate possibility of hunger reluctant to let down the draw bridge to its invasion.. By contrast even the UK's Soil Association has produced a largely favourable policy paper on the appropriate use of marker assisted selection as applied to conventional breeding. This is clearly an area where a great deal of further consensus can be built.
It is sometimes said that if you have to resort to insults in a discussion then you have lost the argument. So exasperated was Dr Avery with current world public opinion in relation to genetic engineering that he resorted to producing a slide which stated "after Moslem attacks [on the US], activists sided with the terrorists." Although there were possibly two anti-gm activists in the audience at the time, it was a WTO delegate of one of southern African nations who rose to his feet during questions to object to this deliberately antagonistic remark. Dr Avery's vitriolic style had turned out to be a brusque contrast to the dignified delivery of Dr Tewolde from Ethiopia who took the platform immediately before him.
Clearly some in the audience were more than slightly horrified by the form of Dr Avery's presentation, even if perhaps more disturbingly it was also clear that some members of IPC were delighted by it. This was hardly in the spirit of dialogue between stakeholders that Ben Gill, President of the NFU for England and Wales, was to wisely advocate later in the afternoon.
Avery's approach seemed rather self-defeating. Whilst it may have played well to some of his supporters it is unlikely to have impressed anyone sitting on more neutral ground especially from the developing countries present. Indeed, it prompted one delegate to pose a question about American arrogance. The impact of any useful points that Avery may have brought up - such as the relationship between international terrorism and poverty, or the bulk of subsidies going to the largest farmers - was largely lost through his legendary provocative style (about which even the session Chair, Lord Selborne, felt obliged to politely forewarn delegates as Dr Avery approached the podium).
To compensate there were nonetheless some pleasant surprises on the same day. Calls for more responsible world trade came from many quarters including some from unexpected directions - even from a representative of grain trade giant Cargill.
At the end of the conference, however, there was an uncomfortable feeling of agriculture being in disarray on a global scale. The chairman of Velcourt (one of the UK's largest farming companies) admitted to having been confused by the conference. Most of the discussion was about resolving unfair trading conditions between nations. There was much debate about whether such a thing could ever be delivered - particularly in the absence of global production standards (environment, animal welfare etc) and by implication even a global currency.
However, despite brief allusions by some speakers - most explicitly from Ben Gill - there was no significant discussion of the most serious hazard arising from the expansion of free trade as far as farmers are concerned.
Liberalisation of trade, as pointed out by Allen Andreas of ADM, produces fewer and fewer national boundaries. What he did not mention, however, is that this gives global traders in the agricultural sector a bigger canvas on which to play and from where it is possible to divide and rule farmers on a largely unrestricted basis.
Instead of playing farmers off against each other on a national or continental scale in the perennial search for the cheapest sourcing of farm commodities, liberalisation of world trade in the agricultural sector means it can be done increasingly easily on global scale. A handful of powerful companies will be in a position to act even more forcibly in the future as largely unavoidable trade bottlenecks, setting the global price for millions of rural farmer-sellers struggling to get their products to billions of increasingly distant and urbanised consumer-buyers.
From where things stand at present it seems inevitable that farmers across the world will be pitted against each other in this way to an even greater degree than in the past, all as part of a race to the bottom to see who can produce the cheapest food - the phenomenon of so called 'competitiveness'. Meanwhile rural communities and the environment are likely to be causalities of this process on the way through, as the example of the Danish poultry industry referred to in the paper from Philip Freiherr von dem Bussche clearly demonstrated (production systems criticised for negative animal welfare were in effect simply relocated elsewhere in the globe and the product then imported instead, forcing the replacement welfare-friendly Danish units to close. There was absolutely no 'public-good' gain from this chain of events - in fact quite the reverse).
Indeed, there is an obvious danger that farmers in both the developed and developing world will be forced to leave the land in ever increasing numbers with damaging consequences, albeit of differing kinds. Where there is little or no thriving alternative economy in the developing world, displacement from the land as a result of increasing 'competitive' pressures (trade liberalisation also means increasing competition between such countries and not just with farmers in the industrialised world) is likely to translate into unemployment, hunger, homelessness and sickness.
In the developed world the same displacement leads to an extreme urbanisation of the population where research now shows increasing numbers do not even understand that milk comes from a cow. Most will have no family relatives with a direct connection to farming, the countryside and the biological systems within it which sustain them in the form of food.
For farmers in the developed world the consequences will usually be less serious than hunger or homelessness, but the process can be seen as a important factor in the further cultural decline of industrialised countries leading to wider social diseases such as the proliferation of 'atomised' communities (Dr Pinstrup Anderson referred briefly to the phenomenon of 'disintegrating households' in his presentation. The results of a survey published by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors the day after the Congress also confirmed the creeping growth of 'gated communities' in the UK, describing them as 'a symptom of an increasingly socially divided society and a move towards the kind of polarisation found in the US').
'Agriculture' after all is the only major economic sector where 'culture' forms part of its title. In the industrialised world there may be a point at which the degree of participation in agriculture by the population as a whole becomes so small that there are wider consequences that are not easy to measure but whose importance is considerable. This is perhaps part of the same cultural decline as symbolised by the absorption of the preparation of 'real food' into the sea of microwaves so despisingly described by Mr Gill in his keynote address to the conference.
So in the end what kind of impact did the Congress have beyond the conference hall?
That is a little difficult to assess. Farmers Weekly, for example, produced a page quoting the Director General of the WTO, the Chairman of the IPC, the President of the German National Farmers Union and the Chief Executive of Oxfam. There was, however, no mention of any of the speakers from developing countries, including the most captivating speaker of the two days - Devinder Sharma.
However, his long flight from Delhi was far from wasted. CNN gave Dr Sharma over six minutes of solo interview on one of its live news transmissions. Even if by luck, rather than design, a forceful viewpoint from the developing world had suddenly gained a much larger audience (whether as a result of the CNN piece or otherwise, the New York Times then ran an article a week later on the absurd hunger and food surplus situation in India entitled 'India's Poor Starve As Wheat Rots').
From here on the Congress is scheduled to take place in London every two years moving to major venues throughout the world in the years between. For next year India would seem most appropriate given the current contradiction of huge grain surpluses existing along side millions of hungry as described by Dr Sharma.
The principal elements for focus at this year's conference - trade and technology - will always have an important role to play. But as the Chairman of IPC commented during one of the sessions only so much can be achieved through trade, whilst Lord Plumb drew attention at the outset to the limits of what can be achieved through the use of technology.
Certainly a number of areas remain to be explored for future years particularly for developing world agriculture. Obvious candidates would include the need to improve education in soil and water management, improving storage facilities to reduce huge post harvest losses, and tackling land tenure problems which restrict access to land for those who first need to be able to feed themselves before ever contemplating the possibility of production for export.
One internet report has already referred to the Congress as a convention of 'men in grey suits', implying a lack of relevance to real agricultural problems on the ground. In the current world of global trade and agri-politics the inevitability of 'men in grey suits' is inescapable and their importance cannot be ignored. But the need for wider dialogue is also self-evident.
It will be interesting to see how future meetings of the Congress evolve and whether they can bridge the seemingly ever widening gap between local and global concerns in world agriculture. This year the Chair of each session was an anglophone white male. Perhaps this was an inevitable consequence of the meeting location and the choice of sponsor - but it was not an ideal format for encouraging a spirit of global inclusiveness.
It could, however, have been far worse (nlpwessex was approached by the organisers after the initial draft programme had been prepared and it was; fortunately it was not too late to help change the programme by introducing Drs Sharma and Tewolde). Nonetheless, it seems likely that a broader range of stakeholders needs to be introduced for the future if the Congress is to fulfil a truly useful and widely respected global role.
Not least the current cost of admission is likely to be the biggest obstacle to wider participation, more or less guaranteeing future exclusivity for the 'men in grey suits' should it remain.
Drs Sharma and Tewolde Speak
at House of Commons
UK Minister Condemns USAID on GMOs
EC respects Zambian government's decision to
reject transgenic foods
click
here
"Forcing starving countries to
accept genetically modified (GM) food in aid is 'wicked', Michael
Meacher, the environment minister, said late last week. He called
for 'anger to be harnessed' against the policy, which is being
vigorously pushed by the United States government.... He told a
meeting last week: 'It is wicked, when there is such an excess of
non-GM food aid available, for GM to be forced on countries for
reasons of GM politics. If there is an area where anger needs to
be harnessed, it is here.'..."
US policy on aid is 'wicked' ?
Meacher
Independent on Sunday, 1 December 2002
"To say 'if the developing
community turns its back on the explosion of technological
innovation in food, it risks marginalising itself', is in reality
a desperate effort to ensure that the corporate interests are not
sacrificed on the the altar of development."
Devinder Sharma,
November 2002
"Do not
civilise us: just let us be.... My belief is that if our farming
communities, agronomists, soil scientists, ecologists,
sociologists, political scientists, and others got together and
reviewed what is know in each discipline, they can devise a
better system of economic analysis and a sustainable method of
increasing agricultural production than your industrial
agriculture offers."
Tewolde Berhan, November 2002
"We should be on our guard not
to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a
question of human problems; and we should not assume that experts
are the only ones who have a right to express themselves on
questions affecting the organization of society."
Albert Einstein, May
1949
"The tendency of the rural
population towards the large towns, being really the tendency of
water to flow uphill when forced by machinery"
Thomas Hardy,
1891
The
Acceptable Face Of Ag-biotech
click here
"The
policy issue is not 'how can we best address the problems of
world agriculture with genetic engineering?'. The policy issue is
'what are the problems we face in world agriculture; what are all
the options available to us to deal with them; and which of those
options offer the best risk-benefit
ratios?'. Few, if any, of the
governments in the world have yet been through that basic thought
process in a considered manner."
Science V 'PR
Offensive'
nlpwessex, 17 November 2002
Will GM crops deliver benefits to farmers? - some realities behind biotechnology myths
Letter to
Director General of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation -
June 2001
Fundamental
scientific conceptual errors in the
development of recombinant DNA technology
