Disappearing gold

Fruits, vegetables are nowhere near as nutritious as before & a growing number of them are downright dangerous to eat.

Mention the word ‘gold’ and people immediately think in terms of money. Yet, there are far more important things in this world than hard cash, and the right to safe food is, along with the right to potable water, up there at the top of the list. This makes what is happening right here in Pakistan and elsewhere in the world, extremely worrying.

As this has always been a primarily agricultural nation, the population, irrespective of income levels, is used to having easy access to a wide range of seasonal fruits and vegetables at relatively affordable prices. The undeniable fact that basic prices of these nutritionally essential commodities have soared beyond the reach of many is not under discussion here. What is going to be discussed is the equally undeniable fact that fruits and vegetables are nowhere near as nutritious as in the days of yore and a growing number of them are downright dangerous to eat.

Take something as simple as a tomato, for example. The tomatoes available now are of a uniform ‘plum’ shape, often with noticeable black marks where the fruit meets the stem. Many show clear evidence of green underneath their outer skin; they are often partially hollow inside, the skin is distinctly tough and the juice is all but absent. Besides all this, as well as the lack of taste, is the fact — and scientific evidence has proven this — that tomatoes are heavily contaminated with a dangerous cocktail of agricultural and waterborne chemicals and other toxins, which are lethal indeed.

Agricultural mismanagement via the misuse of chemical fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, etc., is just one facet of this increasingly dangerous situation and is a factor which can, given time and education, be rectified. However, the factor which — unless a miracle occurs and that, too, very soon — cannot be reversed is that climatically suitable, naturally pest-resistant, indigenous varieties of fruits and vegetables have all but disappeared and if the current trend is allowed to continue unchecked, they will vanish completely within a very short span of time.

These indigenous, open pollinated varieties (remember those aromatic, flavourful melons of childhood, for instance?) from which growers, be they commercial farmers or home gardeners, could harvest their own free seeds every year and replant without any loss in quality have almost been wiped out as a result of wrong agricultural policies and the incorrect issuance of import licences for those nasty, so-called ‘improved’, hybrid varieties and for the cultivation of genetically-modified organisms, generally referred to as GMOs, which, in the guise of increased production and increased profits for growers, will quite literally see the demise of all that is nutritious, tasty, indigenous and free.

The ‘old gold’ of climatically suitable fruits and vegetables is anathema to seed corporations/companies and agricultural chemical manufacturers/marketers for whom profit is everything. Eradicating indigenous species or, in some cases, ‘stealing’ their patents is essential for such companies to survive and declare huge profits for their investors. Misguided government agricultural policies, with ‘backhanders’ going to who knows where, are killing off the very agriculture on which Pakistan survives and consumers are being slowly but surely poisoned by the ‘fresh’ food they consume. They are the ones to pay the ultimate price unless, of course, they band together and object.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2013.