European Commission Funding Anti-Biotech Crop Activists
September 30, 2004
The European activist brochure asks, “What’s wrong with genetically modified foods?”
It answers its own question with misstatements that are financially supported by the European Commission.
“The claim that GM crops require fewer herbicides and pesticides has been proved wrong,” says the brochure. “They require fewer chemicals than conventional crops in the short term. But gradually they need significantly more.”
This claim is supposedly supported by the “research” of a U.S. organic activist named Charles Benbrook. It’s not valid.
Indeed, farmers in America, China, and many other countries have foregone tens of millions of pounds of pesticides that they formerly had to spray on cotton, corn, and other crops because the pest resistance has been engineered into the plants. Beneficial insects are being protected. As a result, yield losses are reduced, meaning less land is needed for crops, and more can be left as wildlife habitat.
Millions of small farmers in Asia no longer have to spray their crops a dozen times a year, from leaky back-pack sprayers as they walk bare-legged through plants wet from the spray pattern. Women no longer have to spend their whole lives stooping to pull weeds by hand.
The anti-GM brochure says that Mexico’s thousands of farmer-bred corn varieties are being contaminated by biotech corn. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug, who has been breeding grains in Mexico for 60 years simply asks, “Is Mexican corn now yellow?” U.S. biotech corn is yellow and Mexican corn varieties are white. If the Mexican breeds were “contaminated,” they would show yellow kernels. They don’t.
The activist brochure says Third World farmers can’t afford biotech seeds. However, one of the worst pests in Africa is a parasitic weed graphically named “witchweed.” It invades corn through the roots, so the farmer doesn’t know its stealing his harvest until his corn sprouts red flowers instead of grain ears. An Israeli scientist has applied for field tests of Roundup-Ready corn, soaked in a small amount of systemic herbicide that should kill the witchweeds before they can do damage. Would African farmers buy a quart of herbicide and 10 pounds of biotech corn seed if it would produce an extra 1,000 pounds of food grain for their families?
The activists worry about the biotech corporations getting “control of the world’s food.” However, the companies can’t make farmers use their seed. Unless it produces more food at less overall cost, the farmers won’t buy it. Is this control or contribution? In America, the farmers quit saving their own seed 60 years ago, because purchased hybrids yield far more.
The activists accuse America of forcing dangerous biotech corn onto African famine victims as food aid. In reality, the U.S. donated the same corn we eat in our breakfast cereals and taco shells. Since all our corn is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, we don’t keep biotech corn separate.
The activist brochure says the world should promote “sustainable” farming-which in Europe usually means organic crops. Unfortunately, it takes twice as much land to grow organic food; organic farmers refuse to use nitrogen fertilizer to replace the soil nutrients taken up by previous crops. The world is already farming half the land on the planet not covered with deserts or glaciers. Whose forests would we clear to get the extra land for more “green manure” crops?
The brochure says it was “Produced with the financial assistance of the European Commission.” Finally, a true statement.
The final irony is that this anti-human and anti-conservation screed was produced by the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR). Meanwhile, the Vatican’s own Director of Bioethics, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, has criticized the “catastrophic sensationalism” of the anti-biotech campaign, and warned that he rejects the “idea of conceiving scientific progress as something that should be feared.”
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