By Ochuoga Otunge

I AM dismayed by the lack of basic knowledge on agricultural biotechnology among some local journalists and civil society activists in Kenya. Their views on biotechnology reflect the thinking of the early 1990s when opponents of the technology used to talk about things like Frankenstein foods and Terminator technology, among others. The fact is these are no longer issues of concern among enlightened critics of biotechnology.
To begin with, genetic engineering (GE) is the latest in a number of new technologies that lead to considerable increase in food production in North and South America, Asia and Europe. GE is one tool of biotechnologies that are providing seeds to farmers that are better adapted to their cultivation requirements. The transgenic seeds, scientists say, have the added benefit of pest resistance and tolerance to extreme environmental conditions such as drought that are needed to sustain village farms. Scientists are also producing crops tolerant to poor acid and alkaline soils that affect 40-60 percent of Africa’s agricultural farmland. This is the technology that these activists wrongly blame for hunger and poverty in Africa. Globally, the benefits of biotech are only being felt now when hunger and poverty have been with us in Africa from time immemorial.
They rely on European sentiments and their agri-businesses jealousness of America’s runaway success in biotech research and development to advance their arguments. It is important to note, however, that the same carping by Europe did not deter America from spearheading the “Green Revolution” that prevented widespread hunger worldwide. Let us not be fooled. Europe will, predictably, embrace the technology once their biotech institutions mature. In fact, anti-biotech public opinion is rapidly waning on the continent thanks to increased use of weapons of mass persuasion. Most of these commentators are evidently ignorant of biotech developments in Europe. A number of European Union (EU) institutions have tested and certified the transgenic crops as fit for human consumption. The positive results have lead to the EU directive that farmers who wish to grow such crops be supported. Moreover, the EU now applies principles of co-existence for both GM and non-GM farmers. The writers rightly observe that sub-Saharan Africa has stagnated in terms of food production but curiously fail to relate this to poor policies, conflicts and rudimentary farming methods used on the continent by peasant farmers. It is common knowledge that regions that feed their people well are the ones that have embraced new technologies in their farming systems. Subsistence agriculture, which some non-governmental organizations operating in Africa glorify, is largely to blame for the incessant food shortages in Africa. But they would rather it is preserved as it is. This is tantamount to condemning our farmers to perpetual poverty and misery yet technologies exist to enable them to produce surplus for sale. The sub-Saharan Africa’s food security forecast is very bleak. According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) projections, for Africa to have food self-sufficiency, it has to increase its food production by 300 per cent, compared to Latin America’s 80 percent, Asia’s 70 percent and USA’s 30 percent. Without an increase in farm productivity, additional 1.6 billion hectares of arable land will be needed by 2050 to produce enough food to feed the world. These NGO mandarins know all too well that Africa’s arable land is under intense pressure due to population explosion but still insists that we should keep our old ways because of their unfounded fear for transgenic crops that are aimed at producing more within the smallest available land. The challenge of feeding the world without exhausting the earth’s resources cannot be met with conventional agricultural technology alone. New applications of biotech are essential for helping future generations, particularly in the world’s less developed areas to move beyond subsistence and towards food security and expanded economic opportunities. Admittedly, genetic engineering is not the only way of increasing food production. However, it is a powerful tool that could significantly increase our ability to produce the quantities of food that our growing world population will need. World population in 1900 was roughly 1 billion people. In the year 2000, it increased to about 6 billion people. And it is projected to grow to 9 or10 billion by the year 2050. These people will not be fed adequately through small-scale; labour-intensive farming. In fact, it’s the labour-intensiveness of traditional agriculture that makes farming less attractive to young people. To suggest that it be left intact is to fail to understand why many youths migrate to towns in search of non-existent jobs instead of staying in the farms to produce more food. With the new technologies, like conservation tillage and transgenic seeds, these people could happily take-up farming as a career. The alternative is not sustainable. They include increasing the number of acres devoted to crops, increasing the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and irrigation, each of which have well-known ecological risks, including loss of biodiversity. The encroachment of forests by peasant farmers is not a viable option but critics of biotech see nothing wrong with it. Problems with agriculture in developing countries are far too complex to be blamed on a technology that they have not even adopted. Instead of bashing biotech, they should instead advice our policy makers to address the root causes of pitiable performance of the agricultural sector, including poor policy, shoddy infrastructure, small-holding, poor seeds, subsistence, dependence on nature, limited water and land, diseases, pests, drought, heat, weeds, storage and transportation. The thesis that there is no direct correlation between increasing food production and elimination of hunger championed by human rights activists is persuasive but holds no water in the long run. What would happen if food production was stopped? Food redistribution is a function of governance and economics. It is reasonable to consider economic deprivation to be the major cause of starvation in the world. Redistribution of food has its own problems. But if you increase food production in an area, you reduce the need for food to be purchased and transported to that area. Insofar as GE allows people to become more self-reliant in food production, their dependence upon expensive transportation and redistribution schemes is decreased. Ironically, advocates of equality in food access come out in strong opposition to the very technologies that could help free poor people from unreliable handouts or relief foods, which seems to be their preferred solution. An old saying has it that to feed a village for a day, give them fish. But to feed them for a lifetime, teach them how to fish. Shall we give the poor food for a day, or teach them how to use modern technology and feed themselves for a life time? If biotech is to blame, why is Kenya experiencing hunger yet it has no transgenic crops? Why can’t subsistence farmers produce enough using their cherished outdated technology to feed the country? Related to the question of food accessibility is its quality: that is, whether it delivers the vitamins and minerals required to maintain human health. Here, too, GE is helping in putting essential vitamins into food stuffs. For instance, rice has been developed with added beta carotene (which is converted into vitamin A in the human body) and increased iron levels. Crops with higher protein levels and better amino acid balance are possible, as are crops that enhance the useable content of other important micronutrients. What more do you need to fight malnutrition in the Third World? Concerns about transgenic seeds not being suitable to small-holder farmers are not new, and they are being addressed. To start with, the developers of the golden rice have donated the technology to developing nations. In addition, national agricultural research institutes in developing countries are supported with the aim of generating crop plants for developing countries. Efforts by the West African Rice Development Association (WARDA), a public international agricultural research centre in Ivory Coast, which has used embryo rescue to cross-breed African and Asian varieties of rice, is illustrative. The resulting New Rice for Africa (NERICA), which has been adopted by peasant farmers across the region, has many advantages, including earlier maturity, improved pest resistance, tolerance to drought and acid soils, and greater height, making it easier to harvest by hand. In short the scientists, governments and donors are working to ‘democratize’ biotechnology. It is true that patent holders for some seed technologies charge royalties for their usage, but the benefits, as South African cotton farmers will testify, far out weigh the cost of seeds. There are 3000 subsistence farmers and 1000 commercial cotton farmers in South Africa who opted for planting transgenic seeds because they are cost-effective, have better yields and more profitable. These seeds are engineered to have built-in pest and disease resistance. In fact, they have saved about one million liters of insecticide applications in the US during the past four years. With good policies, poor countries can profit from biotechnology. Cuba is a developing country that has made significant strides in biotechnology. With 35 national research institutes dedicated to health-related biotechnology and 25 agricultural centers, the country has generated a variety of biomedical and agricultural products. It now produces the world’s only successful anti-meningococcal vaccine, which is patented worldwide. Other successful vaccines include those of hepatitis B and Cholera. Kenya has no option but to go the Cuba way. The biotech industry is growing exponentially. US venture capital investment in biotech and life sciences is estimated to be in the region of US$ 5 billion per annum. It has about 1300 (350 of which are listed biotech companies employing over 140,000 people) followed by the United Kingdom with 460 biotech companies, employing 40,000 people, and Israel with 120 companies. All countries that have developed had to seek out food security through the use of new technologies. Kenya whose economy is still based on agriculture must follow a similar route to develop.

The writer is a Program Officer with the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA)