GM crops and food security
Arguments about whether genetically modified crops can increase food security for farmers and consumers in the developing world have been at the heart of debates about agricultural biotechnology for over a decade. Opponents of GM farming believe that the technology’s failure to produce a decisive breakthrough on this front to date is proof that the technology’s potential has been inflated by an overblown hype that has been built on a number of doubtful assumptions about the role of technology in “feeding the world”. For their part, advocates of GM crops argue that important new benefits are just around the corner, and urge a quicker and more enthusiastic embrace of GM crop technology.
These debates about biotechnology and its potential contribution to food security revolve around issues of access and control – especially the roles played by public and private sectors, and the effects of intellectual property rights (IPRs), in shaping the types of biotechnologies that are developed and how they are made available.
Some critics argue that the enthusiasm for genetically modified crops reflects a fixation with the quick fix – technological “silver bullets” that can overcome problems which are actually rooted in social, economic and political institutions and structures. Others believe that obstacles to the free flow of knowledge and technology, which are imposed by restrictive IPRs, hamper the efforts of scientists working to develop “pro-poor” biotechnologies for farmers in the developing world.
But many international organisations and aid donors take the position that, if the public and private sectors can work in complementary ways, in a context where IPRs are properly protected and technologies can be licensed for use, it will be possible to develop new types of GM crops and other biotechnologies that will more directly address the needs of farmers and consumers in the developing world.
Recommended reading
- GM crops and developing countries: a UK food group briefing, July 2003
- ( UK Food Group , 2003)
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This short two page briefing argues that in most developing countries, whose small-scale, labour-intensive agriculture is dramatically different from the UK, GM crops are at best irrelevant and at ...
- Ending African hunger: GM or agro-ecology?
- ( L. Orton / Open Democracy , 2003)
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This article counters the claim that biotechnology can address hunger in ways that are effective,
affordable and safe. Taking an article by Gordon Conway as a starting point, the author ... - Major heretofore intractable biotic constraints to African food security that may be amenable to novel biotechnological solutions
- ( J. Gressel;A. Hanafi;G. Head / Elsevier Science , 2008)
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The input costs of pesticides to control biotic constraints are often prohibitive to the subsistence farmers of Africa, making seed based solutions to biotic stresses more appropriate. Plant breedi...
- Agri-biotech in Africa
- ( SciDev.Net , 2008)
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Sub-Saharan Africa is a hotbed of activity in agricultural biotechnology — from research initiatives for tackling local pests to commercial growing of genetically modified crops. This SciDev....
- Gene technology for grain legumes: can it contribute to the food challenge in developing countries?
- ( J. C. Popelka;N. Terryn;T.J.V. Higgins / Elsevier Science , 2008)
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Grain legumes play a crucial role in the sustainability of agricultural systems and in food protein supply in developing countries. Several constraints that limit crop production or quality have be...
