Lack of Food is Not The Only Reason People Go Hungry: Thoughts on GMOs
The world has a surplus of food, but still people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They cannot afford to buy it because the sources of wealth and the means of production have been captured and in some cases monopolized by landowners and corporations. The purpose of the biotech industry is to capture and monopolize the sources of wealth and the means of production …
GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes which give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can’t be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all.
No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else … We are told that … by refusing to eat GM products, we are threatening the developing world with starvation, an argument that is, shall we say, imaginative …
The above passages come from an article by British writer George Monbiot. I appreciate what he says here about the economic and political issues surrounding GM Technology as it is a perspective that is frequently lost in the whole controversy, I think.
Often, by those who are pro-GM Technology (or those who are just skeptical of all the skepticism), world hunger is cited as a problem potentially remedied by the controversial technology. To me it’s obvious that, as Monbiot points out above, poverty is one of the major issues at the root of the problem of hunger.
Now I for one wouldn’t rule out technology playing a role in helping to solve problems like hunger, but it’s definitely naive to put all our hope in it. As for alternatives to GM Technology as a means of fighting hunger, I do like sustainable, non-heiarchial and more holistic approaches like agroecology a LOT better at this point.
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Photo credit: Wayne Surber
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