Biotech-Recipe for Starving the World

People, Not Technology, Are the Key to Ending Hunger
The debate over biotechnology is a tragic distraction.

An Op-Ed from the Los Angeles Times
June 28, 2001

By FRANCES MOORE LAPPE

Biotechnology companies and even some scientists argue that we need
genetically modified seeds to feed the world and to protect the Earth from
chemicals. Their arguments feel eerily familiar.

Thirty years ago, I wrote "Diet for a Small Planet" for one reason. As a
researcher buried in the UC Berkeley agricultural library, I was stunned to
learn that the experts--equivalent to the biotech proponents of today--were
wrong. They were telling us we'd reached the Earth's limits to feed
ourselves, but in fact there was more than enough food for us all.

Hunger, I learned, is the result of economic "givens" we ourselves have
created, assumptions and structures that actively generate scarcity from
plenty. Today this is more, not less, true.

Throughout history, ruminants had served humans by turning grasses and other
"inedibles" into high-grade protein. They were our four-legged protein
factories. But once we began feeding livestock from cropland that could grow
edible food, we began to convert ruminants into our protein disposals. Only
a small fraction of the nutrients fed to animals return to us in meat; the
rest animals use largely for energy or they excrete. Thirty years ago,
one-third of the world's grain was going to livestock; today it is closer to
one-half. And now we're mastering the same disappearing trick with the
world's fish supply. By feeding fish to fish, again, we're reducing the
potential supply.

We're shrinking the world's food supply for one reason: The hundreds of
millions of people who go hungry cannot create a sufficient "market demand"
for the fruits of the Earth. So more and more of it flows into the mouths of
livestock, which convert it into what the better-off can afford. Corn
becomes filet mignon. Sardines become salmon.

Enter biotechnology. While its supporters claim that seed biotechnology
methods are "safe" and "precise," other scientists strongly refute that, as
they do claims that biotech crops have actually reduced pesticide use. But
this very debate is in some ways part of the problem. It is a tragic
distraction our planet cannot afford. We're still asking the wrong question.
Not only is there already enough food in the world, but as long as we are
only talking about food--how best to produce it--we'll never end hunger or
create the communities and food safety we want.

We must ask instead: How do we build communities in tune with nature's
wisdom in which no one, anywhere, has to worry about putting food--safe,
healthy food--on the table? Asking this question takes us far beyond food.
It takes us to the heart of democracy itself, to whose voices are heard in
matters of land, seeds, credit, employment, trade and food safety.

The problem is, this question cannot be addressed by scientists or by any
private entity, including even the most high-minded corporation. Only
citizens can answer it, through public debate and the resulting accountable
institutions that come from our engagement. Where are the channels for
public discussion and where are the accountable polities?

Increasingly, public discussion about food and hunger is framed by
advertising by multinational corporations that control not only food
processing and distribution but farm inputs and seed patents. Two years
ago, the seven leading biotech companies, including Monsanto, teamed up
under the neutral-sounding Council for Biotechnology Information and are
spending millions to, for example, blanket us with full-page newspaper ads
about biotech's virtues.

Government institutions are becoming ever more beholden to these
corporations than to their citizens. Nowhere is this more obvious than in
decisions regarding biotechnology--whether it's the approval or patenting of
biotech seeds and foods without public input or the rejection of mandatory
labeling of biotech foods despite broad public demand for it.

The absence of genuine democratic dialogue and accountable government is a
prime reason most people remain blind to the many breakthroughs in the last
30 years that demonstrate we can grow abundant, healthy food and also
protect the Earth.

Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy.
Thus it can never be solved by new technologies, even if they were to be
proved "safe." It can only be solved as citizens build democracies in which
government is accountable to them, not private corporate entities.
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Frances Moore Lappe Is a Visiting Scholar at MIT