No Magic Bullets
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CBC Radio’s The Current deserves credit for digging into some key issues regarding the shameful state of hunger on our planet that many hoped the World Summit on Food Security in Rome this week would address. Their interview on Monday with Olivier de Shutter, the UN’s Rapporteur on Food Sovereignty, was bang on.
The next day the focus was on two magic crops: one genetically engineered (Golden Rice) and the other biologically engineered (the orange sweet potato). The story about Golden Rice as a brilliant biotech solution to the Vitamin-A-deficiency that causes blindness among millions of the world’s poorest children prompted this response from USC Executive Director Susan Walsh. Definitely worth reading!
Wednesday November 18, 2009, Ottawa – We applaud The Current’s work to raise awareness among Canadians about the Rome Food Summit and about efforts to address the shameful fact that over one billion people on this planet head to bed with empty stomachs. We especially appreciated Monday’s interview with Olivier de Shutter, UN Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
On today’s program, however, we would have liked coverage that looks beyond the silver-bullet approach to curbing this shameful state of affairs. Why do we in the West keep insisting on one, or a few, magic products to solve the problem? Can we not learn from the mistakes of farming systems that have focussed on a narrow base of food crops – single variety crops in need of expensive input packages or with foreign genes that may, or may not, have lasting or welcomed benefits?
We urgently need to take a hard look at the broader food system. Might it be our Western logic that is undermining more sustainable and affordable food production? While Vandana’s Shiva’s response to the Golden Rice debate was an angry one – bred, no doubt, from years of work with farmers harmed by one-size-fits-all approaches – she raised some very good points about the challenges to lasting food security around the world.
Into the Hands of the Hungry
There are, for example, plenty of food plants with vitamin A – domesticated and wild foods – that are, or could easily be, accessible to families in need, if only we would redirect our energies and resources to that end. These foods are not in the hands of the hungry now, as The Current’s host rightly suggested. That’s because we have promoted high-yielding, single-variety crops that undermine such diversity. Nutrient-rich alternatives are dismissed, called minor crops simply because they don’t have high commercial value. But they are the foods that could feed the majority of people on this planet well. 
Just ask the experts on the World Bank-funded International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), whose recent report linked the “organic and biodiverse practices of small-scale producers to sustainable and impressive yields.”
A system based primarily on local, natural, and affordable materials is feeding people who were once the poorest of the poor, and could feed more people. I returned last week from a two-week visit with Honduran farmers who have successfully cut the number of annual hungry days – called los Junios – down from more than five weeks to just over one! How? Within farmer researcher teams (CIALs), they crossed their hardier criolla (or local) varieties with higher yielding ones – hybrids can be very helpful. But as well as raising yields, they diversified both the types of food they grew and the varieties within each crop. They then selected the best seeds to deal with a broad range of needs, including characteristics to deal with increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather. CIAL members also become important local leaders and organizers, breaking the isolation and taking greater control of their local food system.
Complex Solutions
And that, finally, is the point we would like to stress most. The food system is an incredibly complex one, with lots of messy politics and international bullying thrown in. In Ghana, for example, it is cheaper to buy a frozen chicken from the EU than a local fresh one. How can the most marginal in this system ever feed themselves when the odds are so stacked against them? Even if Golden Rice were a magic bullet and could play an important part in alleviating blindness, on such an uneven playing field, could the hungry really expect its fair and needed share?
What’s needed? A redirection of the billions the world now spends on laboratory seeds and single new technologies toward farming systems that consider the role of small-scale producers, the ecosystems they farm within, and broader global structures, such as prohibitive trade regimes. Until this happens, claims of the superiority of any biotech approach will remain untested.
Susan Walsh
Executive Director, USC Canada
2 Responses to “No Magic Bullets”
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Three cheers for the USC’s reply. People across the world can grow their own food using traditional crops and methods. The seeds are saved from the more nutritious and climate adaptable plants. These farmers use their knowledge and skills to sustain their communities. We should not ever destroy this food supply with technically modified seeds and equipement which is unaffordable. I remember the fanfare over a previous “green revolution” which has left inappropriate agricultural machinery rusting away and people are still hungry!
Hi Susan,
Thanks for your excellent response to this topic. If we are to address world hunger in a sustainable way we must move the popular culture lens from one of ‘doing for’ to one of ‘doing with’.
Troy Mitchell