A matter of choice

The only sure-fire harvest to be reaped is by the purveyors of GMO seeds not trusting farmers grabbing at straws.

Concerns that agricultural flood relief may include seeds for Genetically Modified (GMO) Crops may be well founded as figures including Professor Iqbal Choudhry of the International Centre of Chemical and Biological Science at Karachi University are pushing for exactly this.

The professor is far from alone in promoting the introduction of GMO crops, or BT’s as they are commonly known, as the answer to the country’s food shortage. And also to give a much needed economic boost with high-yielding GMO cotton varieties, although he is a little out of date on the latter as BT cotton was legally introduced last year.

Supporters of this globally controversial biotechnology claim that ‘engineered’ seeds result in higher yields. That crops are both pest and drought resistant and require less fertiliser but those virulently opposed to them hold completely different views. They claim, amongst other things, that GMO’s pose a danger to human and animal health and to the ecosystem as a whole.

Both sides have a point: GMO seeds do give higher yields and some varieties are reasonably pest tolerant and have been developed to flourish in adverse climatic conditions but — unless they are ‘terminators’ producing sterile seeds — they can play havoc with other plants in the vicinity through cross-pollination. Escaped GMO’s have established themselves as tough to eradicate, rapidly spreading weeds, which is just one of the reasons why environmentalists are against them.

Profit, as usual, plays a major role in introducing GMO crops to farmers: some European countries, Australia and East Asian nations have slapped a ban on GMOs. This means that the multinationals promoting them have had to turn to developing countries — Pakistan included — to offload their seed stocks, continue field trials and balance their books well into the black, by snaring gullible farmers in their well-baited trap.

Farmers, particularly small farmers in this part of the world, are hampered by an understandable aversion to agricultural progress, yet unfortunately, succumbed to the wiles of fast-talking fertiliser and pesticide sellers dangling the lure of exceptional crops if they used their expensive products: the farmers, many of them illiterate, fell for it hook, line and sinker, taking loans to buy a golden future. This, however, isn’t what happened as year after year they needed to purchase ever increasing amounts of fertiliser and other chemical interventions simply to maintain the status quo. Profit soon became a thing of the past and hungry loan sharks moved in, driving some farmers to commit suicide.

The one single thing that kept a percentage of small farmers’ solvent was that they cultivated traditional crop varieties from which they were able to harvest their own seed for sowing the following season. Now, along comes an apparently irresistible chance in the form of GMO seeds which do not need, the marketers claim, either fertiliser or pesticides so where’s the catch? GMO crops do not produce savable seed: seed must be purchased annually at no small cost and these crops are not resistant to every single pest in existence as enthusiastic growers of BT cotton discovered when mealy bugs infested their fields. The crops are resistant to only certain problems, not everything that comes their way and insects have an inbuilt radar when it comes to knowing which crops to avoid and which to decimate instead. The only sure-fire harvest to be reaped is a financial one and that by the purveyors of GMO seeds not trusting farmers grabbing at straws.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10^th, 2010.