Biotech Boasting: Are
Frankenfoods Conquering the World?
By Ronnie Cummins
BioDemocracy News #38
February/March 2002
In January, a biotech industry front group, International Service for
the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), announced, with great
fanfare, that global acreage of genetically engineered (GE)crops had increased
19% in 2001. According to ISAAA, 5.5
million farmers last year planted 130 million acres (52.6 million hectares) of
GE crops, a 30-fold increase since 1996.
For the year 2000, ISAAA had reported a somewhat smaller 11% growth in
GE acreage. Cheerleaders for Frankenfoods,
including Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau, hailed ISAAA's most recent
projections as "proof" that the Biotech Century was going forward,
despite widespread opposition in Europe and Asia, and increased rumblings of
discontent among North American consumers and farmers.
Although most of the corporate media dutifully regurgitated ISAAA's
press release on the "progress" of agbiotech, a closer more critical
look at the evidence reveals a somewhat different story. First of all, ISAAA estimates on crop
acreage are based on interviews with "true believers," farmers who
are growing GE crops. Secondly, ISAAA
gets its funds from corporations such as Monsanto, Aventis, and Pioneer
(Dupont). In addition, previous
assertions made by the group's spokesman, Clive James have subsequently been
proven false. For example, James
claimed that 1998 plantings of GE soybeans resulted in a 12% yield increase,
when in fact yields fell 6-12%.
Finally, even assuming ISAAA's estimates are correct, BioDemocracy News
believes they are inflated); biotech industry trends themselves tell a
different story. For example: global GE
crop acreage grew over thirty-fold in 1996; 675% in 1997; 255% in 1998; and
143% in 1999. In comparison, puny
11%-18% growth rates in 2000 and 2001 indicate a sharp leveling off in demand
for GE seeds worldwide, rather than an increase--obviously a reaction to the
growing global opposition against Frankenfoods. ISAAA boasts that 5.5 million farmers around the world are now
growing GE crops (another questionable figure) but forgets to mention that
there are 2.4 billion farmers and rural villagers who are not growing GE crops.
Despite industry rhetoric, very few countries are willing to ignore
public opposition and allow the commercial cultivation of GE soybeans, corn,
cotton, or canola, the only four crops currently being grown on any significant
scale. While farmers in 130 nations are
currently producing certified organic crops, a grand total of three nations,
(the US-with 68% of the world's GE crops, Canada-6%, and Argentina-22%) are still
producing 96% of the world's Frankencrops.
Several highly touted GE crops, the Flavr Savr tomato and Monsanto's Bt
potato, have already been taken off the market. Moreover the US, Canada, and Argentina are finding that that
their major overseas customers such as Europe, Japan, and South Korea no longer
want to buy
GE crops, even for animal feed.
In Europe, the largest agricultural market in the world, grassroots
market pressure has forced all of the major supermarket chains and food
companies to remove GE ingredients from their consumer products. Meanwhile, on the regulatory front, no new
GE crops have been approved for commercialization in the EU since 1998.
Syngenta (formerly Novartis), the largest biotech company in the world,
has removed all GE ingredients from its consumer food products.
Because of increasing marketplace pressure, 25% of all animal feed in
the EU is already GE-free. In a recent
poll 80% of British consumers said they would avoid purchasing meat or dairy
products from animals fed GE feed. Even
China, which was supposed to be the Promised Land for agbiotech, has been
reluctant to embrace Frankencrops (other than Bt cotton), sensing that the real
future for their agricultural exports to Asia and the EU will be non-GE and
organic crops.
Agbiotech industry propaganda about feeding the world through increased
productivity is no longer credible. As
Amory and Hunter Lovins, founders of the Rocky Mountain Institute, point out:
"Genetically engineered crops were created not because they are
productive but because they're patentable.
Their economic value is oriented not toward helping subsistence farmers
to feed themselves but toward feeding more livestock for the already overfed
rich."
Currently 63% of the world's GE crops are soybeans, used primarily for
animal feed. Corn, again mainly for
animal feed, makes up 19% of all GE crops, while rapeseed, used for animal feed
and cooking oil, makes up 5%. Even
cotton, which constitutes 13% of all GE crops, provides feed for cattle, in the
form of cottonseed and cotton gin trash.
A look at ISAAA's figures for 2001 and 2000 reveal that most of the
growth in global GE acreage in 2001 resulted from increased cultivation of
Monsanto's flagship GE product, herbicide-resistant Roundup Ready (RR)
soybeans, by farmers in Argentina (where Monsanto is selling RR seeds at
bargain basement prices, trying to boost sales) and the US (where farmers have
to grow more and more soybeans in order to obtain government subsidies and to
make up for record low prices of soybeans on the world market). One might ask why US farmers are buying so
many RR soybeans, since they cost more (US soy farmers have complained about
Monsanto selling RR beans at a much lower price in Argentina) and since RR
varieties actually produce a 6-12% lower yield as documented by Dr. Charles
Benbrook and others.
The answer to the riddle of why US farmers and their counterparts in
Argentina are planting so many RR soybeans does not bode well for the future of
GE crops. In Argentina, Monsanto's
seeds are the cheapest seeds available.
If Monsanto sold RR seeds worldwide at such low prices they would lose
much of their profitability as a company.
In Latin America, Monsanto and their allies (Cargill and Archer Daniels
Midland) are desperate to develop a major market for RR soybeans, since
Argentina's next door neighbor, Brazil, now the largest producer of soybeans in
the world, has a ban on GE soybeans and has taken over the major US overseas
soybean markets in the EU, Japan, and Korea, where anti-GE sentiments are
strong.
Government Subsidies--Why US Farmers Plant GE Crops
American farmers are planting millions of acres of RR soybeans and
other GE crops, not because there is a market demand for them, but because they
are receiving taxpayer subsidies from the US government. Although gene-altered
RR seeds and Roundup herbicide are expensive, herbicide-resistant soybeans are
more convenient and less time-consuming to grow than traditional
varieties-enabling farmers to plant, weed, and harvest more and more acres in a
limited amount of time. Instead of
having to till weeds with their tractors and spray several different toxic
pesticides, farmers need only spray Monsanto's potent broad-spectrum herbicide
Roundup, which kills everything green-except for the GE soybean plants. Especially for cash and time-strapped
farmers earning most of their money from off-farm employment (US family farmers
get about 90% of their net income from jobs off the farm), this
"efficiency" makes RR soybeans seem attractive.
Far more important is the fact that in the US, the more acres a farmer
plants in soybeans (or other subsidized crops like corn or cotton), the more
money the farmer gets from the government farm subsidy program, which last year
paid out $28 billion. Of this $28
billion in farm subsidies, at least $7-10 billion went to farmers growing GE
crops. Thus even though Cargill or ADM
routinely rob farmers by paying them less for a bushel of RR soybeans or Bt
corn than it took to grow them, farmers can count on recouping their losses
with a subsidy payment from the USDA.
The fundamental flaw, from an economic standpoint, of US farmers
ignoring global opposition to Frankenfoods and planting more and more GE
soybeans so as to collect more and more subsidy payments from the government,
is that there is already a huge global surplus of soybeans, not to mention corn
and cotton. This massive surplus is
quite profitable for the crop commodities giants like Cargill and ADM, cotton
buyers, and the big factory farm cattle feedlots and hog farms, who can count
on getting cheap grain and fiber from farmers desperate to sell at any price,
but it's nothing less than a recipe for disaster for rural America. Billion dollar subsidies are the driving
force for GE soybeans and corn, but they are also the major destructive force
flooding the market and lowering the price for soybeans paid to the
farmers.
This ever-declining price results in farmers planting even more
soybeans or corn. The end result of
this process will likely be the elimination of most small and medium sized
farms in the US who depend upon subsidies (with the notable exception of
organic farms, which are selling products which consumers want). Organic farmers currently receive no US
government subsidies whatsoever.
A major nightmare for the US grain and cotton farmers (including those
growing GE crops) who are surviving on taxpayer subsidies is that government
support may soon be declining. Bush
administration officials, hell-bent on subsidizing the military-industrial
complex to the tune of $380 billion a year and cutting taxes for large
corporations and the wealthy, have recently warned agribusiness lobbyists that
crop subsidies may decline over the next few years.
This could be bad news indeed for non-organic farmers, but also bad
news for Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, Bayer, and the other Gene Giants. Without
$7-10 billion a year in government crop subsidies paid out to US farmers
growing GE crops, we're likely to see a significant decline, rather than an
increase, in GE acreage next year.
For updates on the growing global opposition to GE foods and crops
click on the Daily News section of the OCA's website at
www.organicconsumers.org.