“Sixty per cent of the world’s arable land available today is in Africa. All efforts to feed the world — not just to feed Africa, but to feed the world — in the next decade or more are going to focus on Africa. Which means Africa has to do it right and have the scientific basis not to mess it up.” – Calestous Juma
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) are a topic that provokes spirited debate between its detractors and proponents. One side insists that GM crops offer a second green revolution to a continent with persistent food security problems, and governments and people should just get over their reservations and embrace them. The other side warns of dire ecological, economic, health and neo-colonial consequences if Africa allows its crops to come under the control of the corporate mono-culturalists for whom profit is their sole goal with the apparent concern around the health and well-being of Africans and their environment being PR at best.
This is not a black and white issue. Both sides have valid viewpoints. GM crops do have the potential to be highly beneficial to African farmers and enhance the food security and health of millions around the continent. However, the practices of the corporations that make, distribute and are lobbying for GM crops are disturbing. Furthermore, the concerns for people’s health and ecological sustainability should not be dismissed but addressed with data and testing.
Like the debate around GM crops, Africa does not face a black and white choice of refusal or submission GM crops and the companies that make them. Africa can chart a different path, with a policy that puts African farmers, food security and innovation at its heart. Africa can tap into the potential benefits of GM crops, driven by the needs of its farmers and innovations of scientists without having to give our agricultural future to the profit motives of foreign multinational Agri-corps. For that to happen, GM policy in Africa would have to be based around the ideals of public ownership, accountability and collaboration.
Potential and pitfalls
When dealing with the topic it is crucial that a proper definition of GMO’s be used. With that in mind I will use the WHO definition of “Organisms (i.e. plants, animals or microorganisms) in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination… It allows selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism into another, also between nonrelated species.” [1]. People have been altering crops and animals for millennia, through techniques such as selective breeding. What makes GM different is that we are altering the blueprints of the organism, its DNA, to add or remove characteristics that we may like or dislike. This is a potentially powerful technology and it is unsurprising that it provokes such strong feelings.
The Potential – Higher, healthier yields with less inputs
By inserting desirable traits into the genes of plants, there are a number of advantageous properties that could be given to plants.
First are the yields farmers get, which genetic modification can significantly increase through several avenues. Plants can be modified to be resistant to bacterial, viral or fungal diseases as well as pests, reducing the number of crops farmers loose to these scourges. In addition, plants can be given genes that allow them to withstand environmental stresses. For instance, as rains become less consistent it would be a great benefit to have crops that can withstand periods of drought or heavy rains. With climate change causing shifting weather patterns resilient crops will be critical.
The second great benefit is health, and this come about in two forms. GM crops that can be made naturally resistant to pests and infections require less pesticide, herbicide, fungicide etc. This is healthy for the farmers who would handle less chemicals, healthier for consumers as less chemical use means less of these substances being ingested, and its better for the environment as there are fewer of these chemicals getting into the wider environment and having adverse effects (e.g. water run off into rivers and lakes that causes fish deaths and algal blooms). The second possible health benefit of GM is nutritional. Through genetic modification the nutritional value of the plant can be enhanced. An example of this is yellow rice which has been modified to produce Vitamin A in order to prevent Vitamin A deficiency in children which can cause blindness.
The third broad benefit is an offshoot of the other two. By modifying plants to require less pesticide, herbicide, fungicides and fertiliser, you reduce the inputs necessary for farming. In a continent where, expensive farm inputs such as fertiliser and pesticides are a constant burden for farmers, reducing the amount of inputs required while sustaining or improving yields would give farmers a leg up without having to resort to expensive subsidies or government programs as we do now.
The Pitfalls
However, GMO’s are not all rosy. First, is the reality that “life finds a way”. Try as we may eventually GM crops will mix with and reproduce with indigenous crops. What effect will this have on the farmers who have chosen not to grow GM crops, what characteristics will these crops have, and if the GM crops are patented will they be forced to pay royalties.
Which brings us to the second issue, and in my mind the most crucial. Corporate control. Currently GM crops are largely a corporate creation, patented and controlled by large agricultural biotech corporations whose prime motivation is profit and not the interests of African farmers and consumers. Companies like Monsanto develop crops to be compatible with their own herbicide so that you only get good yields when used in conjunction with their other products. In addition, such crops tend to have terminator seeds. The seeds produced by the plants are sterile and thus farmers must purchase new seeds every year guaranteeing the company a revenue stream. Furthermore, the patents that these corporations have on these crops blocks innovation, evolution and adaption forcing farmers into farming in a specific way.
The third question is one of safety. Do we know enough about GM crops and their impacts on the environment and human health to be confident enough to allow them into the market? Do we have the systems regulations and facilities to test these crops to ensure their safety?
GMO’s with an African (policy) flavour
The answer to the issues presented by GMO’s both their potential and pitfalls, is not to completely ban them or allow agro-chemical industry free reign in the continent. What is needed is good policy. Good policy on GMO’s in Africa would consist of three elements. The first is public ownership and accountability. A major problem with GM crops is their corporate nature. The only way to ensure that GMO’s would be beneficial to Africa is to strip the profit motive from their research, design, testing and regulation. And the only way to do that is public ownership. This brings us to the second element, accountability. There is a lot of mistrust around GMO’s, the motives behind them, their ecological and health impacts and their use. The only way to assuage these concerns is transparency. No for-profit corporation will be transparent about commercially sensitive information such as its own GMO’s, but public institutions can be transparent and can be designed to be so, by incorporating stakeholders and their concerns into their design and decision-making structures to ensure that those concerns are met. The third element is collaboration. If GMO’s are truly going to be beneficial to Africa it will require collaboration on two levels. First between stakeholders within the agricultural industry, research scientists, farmers, environmentalists, doctors, consumers will all need to come together to guide the development of GM crops for the African context. A context in which small farmers are the vast majority of farmers, where climate change and changing weather patterns are making farming harder and where growing populations require more agricultural productivity to feed them. The second level is internationally. No single African country has the ability to set up and sustainably fund institutions that can design, develop, test and disseminate GM crops over the long term. However, together they could do so. The ability to pool funding, expertise, and facilities only makes sense, especially as many African countries face similar agricultural challenges and most staple and commercial crops are grown across multiple countries.
African GMO’s
GMO’s need not be a threat to Africa, they could be an opportunity. However, in their current corporate dominated form they do pose a threat. They threaten to yoke African agriculture to the profit motives of multinational Agri-biotech companies, who are not accountable to the African public or governments.
As Calestous Juma urged, Africa must do agriculture right, and to do that we have to embrace and own the science. Since Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented the Haber-Bosch Process in the early 20th century that allowed the production of fertiliser on an industrial scale, to Norman Borlaug and short stalk wheat in the 60s and 70s that saved millions from famine, science in agriculture is how we have fed the world. If we are to feed and develop Africa we must embrace science as part of the solution, and GMO’s as part of that. Smart policy, that is public, transparent, accountable and collaborative, would help ensure that Africa owns its GMO’s and its own agricultural destiny.
[1] http://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/food-technology/faq-genetically-modified-food/en/
Also published on Medium.