US Academic makes Fiery Argument for Africa to Embrace Biotechnology - PART 2 of 5 | Voice of America - English
American academic and author Robert Paarlberg says activists in rich countries are inadvertently denying improved agricultural techniques to millions of poor farmers in Africa. He draws the conclusion in his book, Starved for Science. Only one country on the continent, South Africa, has legalized the planting of genetically modified (GM) food crops. NGOs in the developed world argue that the GM food poses health risks, but Paarlberg says there?s no ?scientific evidence? of this.
In , Paarlberg argues that whilepeople in the ?overfed? developed nations of Europe and North America have the?luxurious? choice of whether or not to plant and eat genetically engineeredfood, the crops of smallholder African farmers are destroyed by drought anddisease, insect infestations and poor farming techniques, with the result thatmuch of Africa continues to be gripped by malnutrition. Paarlberg is a professor of political science at WellesleyCollege, a visiting professor at Harvard University and an expert ongenetically modified crops. He?s convinced much suffering will be eased, andeven prevented, if Africans are given access to improved technologies andpermitted to plant drought and insect resistant GM seeds. Paarlberg says African governments have been forced to banGM seeds by ?excessive? legislation that controls GM foodstuffs in Europe.Because of that legislation, Africans? produce must be certified GM-free, orthey?re barred from exporting to the big markets in Europe. Experts estimate that nearly two-thirds of Africans areemployed in agriculture, with most languishing in extreme poverty and withlittle access to modern farming strategies and equipment. Paarlberg says while agricultural science has beencredited with boosting food production in Asia, Africa has yet to experiencecorresponding good fortune, and he sets out to explain why in . His argument is summarized by reviewer Jenny Wiggins, writing inBritain?s Financial Times: in this timely book, (the author) makes astrong argument: Europeans, who have so much food they do not need the help ofscience to make more, are pushing their prejudices on Africa, which stillrelies on foreign aid to feed its people. He calls on global policymakers torenew investment in agricultural science and to stop imposing visions of?organic food purity? on a continent that has never had a green revolution.? Accordingto Paarlberg, several ?grim realities? characterize farming in Africa today. ?Typicalsmallholder farmers in Africa don?t use improved seeds, they don?t applychemical fertilizers, they don?t have access to any electrical power; theydon?t have access to modern veterinary medicine for their animals. No matterhow hard they work under these circumstances?they?re poor, because of theconstraining environment in which they use their labor and agriculture.? Paarlberghighlights in his book how most African governments have constantly failed tomake even ?minimal? investments in farming and agricultural research that wouldimprove and save the lives of many on the continent. ?Evensome model countries in Africa usually fail regarding this?. If you look atUganda you?ll find that since 1991, in no year has the government spent morethan three per cent of its budget on agriculture. And in many years, it hasspent less than two per cent.? Paarlberg?sbook, however, doesn?t blame the collapse of agriculture in Africa solely onAfricans. He says the catastrophe is ?significantly donor-driven.? ?Aiddependent governments in Africa have neglected agriculture in large partbecause the donor community has been neglecting agriculture badly for at leastthe last 20 years or so,? he concludes. Paarlbergexplains that donors in 1988 gave four billion dollars in aid to Africa?sagricultural sector?. Yet by 2001, ?as Africa?s circumstances continued toworsen,? external aid to African agriculture had fallen down to one billiondollars ? ?a 75 per cent drop since the 1980s.? Hestates that rich countries have essentially stopped donating to Africanagriculture, leading domestic governments to stop funding agriculturalresearch?with the result that many in Africa don?t realize the potentialbenefits of genetically modified crops, specifically with regard to increasedyields of staple food such as maize. Paarlbergquips that the United States Agency for International Development?sagricultural unit in Africa ? once the most powerful of organizations workingfor the continent?s agricultural development - has ?disappeared.? ?It?sa similar story at the World Bank, where the agricultural share of lendingsince 1978 has fallen from 30 per cent, down to just eight per cent. In fact,in 2005, (then-president of the World Bank) Paul Wolfowitz, in an off-hand commentto a business forum, said: ?Oh, my institution?s mostly gotten out of thebusiness of agriculture. devotesa lot of space to explaining why, since the 1980s, donors have been cuttingback so much in supporting agricultural development in general and agriculturalscience in particular in Africa. ?Itisn?t because donors have lost interest in Africa. To the contrary, donors arefocused on Africa more than ever before, and giving generously to Africa ? butnot to agriculture in Africa,? Paarlberg notes. Hesays that instead of investing in teaching Africans to practice betteragriculture, donors have been ?lavishly? boosting their spending on food aid tothe continent. ?In2005, the U.S. all by itself spent $1.5 billion on food aid to Africa ? whichis ten times as much as it was spending on agricultural improvements in Africa.This is a neat reversal of the old ?teach-a-man to fish? adage. We?d rathergive them fish ? more and more and more every year, apparently.? Healso isn?t convinced that donors are skeptical about the effects of quality scientificresearch in Africa, saying international studies showing that investment insuch research on the continent has resulted in good returns, abound. Paarlbergsays, ?In my book I reject a lot of these phony explanations for the withdrawalof donor support for agriculture in Africa, and I point instead towards quite adifferent explanation.? Theauthor says over the past 30 years, ?cultural elites? in both Europe and NorthAmerica have come to ?actively dislike? agricultural science ? despite thatthey themselves have used it to make their farmers more productive andprosperous and thereby to feed themselves adequately. Now,Paarlberg posits, Europeans and Americans feel they don?t need any moreagricultural science ? of which GM foods are the modern result ? becausethey?re afraid of what it might do to their farming sectors. ?Theyassociate agricultural science with farms that are too large and toospecialized, farms that use too many chemicals, farms that mistreat animals,farms that enrich only large agri-business companies and farms that give usfoods that are seldom palatable, or even healthy.? Paarlbergacknowledges that these criticisms are ?fair? in Europe and North America, andso people there are now advocating a return to small, traditional farms thatgrow organic produce and not GM crops and treat animals better by allowing themto range freely. Inthe developed world, where there?s a surplus of food, he comments, consumersand activists can afford to demand organic produce and to ignore the benefitsoffered by GM crops. In contrast, Paarlberg argues, Africans can no longerafford to ignore the potential of genetic engineering to produce much more foodfor their continent, where thousands die of hunger every year. He says governments in rich countries, under pressure fromanti-GM activists, are reducing domestic spending on agricultural research anddevelopment, with a corresponding reduction in funding for the same in Africa. Paarlberg?s book presents the view that some internationalenvironmental NGOs, while they may be well meaning, are forcing their beliefson Africa and thereby trapping the continent in a cycle of food shortages. For example, he says, international movements promotingorganic food go to Africa to campaign against the use of nitrogen fertilizer onfarms. ?Now African farms currently barely use any nitrogenfertilizer at all, which is why soil nutrient deficits are such a problem inAfrica, why yields are not going up, why African farms lose one to threebillion dollars a year in crops that they could have produced if they?d beenable to fertilize.? Paarlberg says the activists? approach of convincingAfricans not to fertilize or to plant GM crops is ?damaging to the prospects ofthe poor in Africa,? who, instead of producing a lot of food for the masses,end up growing a little organic food to satisfy the appetites of the elites ofthe developed world. He acknowledges also that foods derived from geneticallyengineered seeds ?don?t look any better or taste any better or store any longeror prepare any better; they?re not any more nutritious and they?re notnoticeably cheaper.? But Starved for Science repeatedly emphasizes thatthe chief benefit of GM technology for Africa is the production of more food. Paarlberg maintains the opposition to GM food in thedeveloped world lies not in potential risks to people who eat it, but rather inthe fact that only a tiny minority of people there ? such as seed companies,farmers and patent holders in the biotech companies who develop the seeds ??reap huge direct benefits? from food that isn?t any better than that fromnaturally-grown crops. But he says ?serious problems? arise when European andAmerican perspectives against agricultural biotechnology are exported to Africa?where circumstances are so different, where farmers aren?t four per cent ofthe population but 70 per cent of the population, and where the direct benefitsof agricultural biotechnology wouldn?t go to just a sliver of people who arealready prosperous and well fed, but to a majority of the population, desperateto have an improved technology capable of making their labor and farming moreproductive.? Paarlberg hits out at anti-GM activists, saying they?vespread ?utterly irresponsible scare stories? about GM organisms to Africans. ?They talk about how this technology might form ananti-retrovirus similar to HIV/AIDS; they talk about cancer risks ? never evertelling Africans that every single scientific academy in Europe has in writingsaid that a review of the literature reveals no documented evidence of any newrisks to human health or the environment from any of the (GM) products on themarket so far.? He also explains that European governments are especiallyeager to help African governments adopt ?regulatory systems? that ?stifle? theplanting and production of GM food. ?Following this as a consequence, not a single country inAfrica, other than one, the Republic of South Africa, has yet made it legal forAfrican farmers to plant any GM crops. So you ask: Why aren?t African farmersplanting GM (organisms)? Because outside of the Republic of South Africa, it?sa criminal activity.? Paarlberg says it?s of critical importance for Africa toembrace agricultural science and GM technology as soon as possible, to allow itaccess to new applications of crop biotechnology that are ?ideally tailored tothe needs of smallholder farmers in Africa ? crops engineered not to lose asmuch yield under drought conditions.? He adds, ?Funding lags are now only the first hurdle forgetting drought tolerant maize to Africa. Next we have to hope that the researchis successful. But then ? and this is where my worries start to grow ? we haveto hope that when the new drought tolerant maize varieties are ready for use inAfrica, in eight or ten years from now, the current regulatory blockage hasbeen lifted. We have to hope that it will be legal for African farmers toactually plant these new seeds.? In the end, Paarlberg says, his book is best described as a ?plea.? ?It?s a plea mostly to the donor community not to continueimposing on Africa?s rural poor the new? hostility to agricultural science thatis becoming so prevalent in prosperous countries. This perspective iscompletely inappropriate to the circumstances of smallholder farmers in Africa.It represents an imposition of the richest of tastes on the poorest of people.? The professor says GM food isn?t more or less nutritiousthan any other food; it?s just easier for farmers to grow more of it. And hesays this is what Africa needs more than anything else.