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30 April 2008

How to Fix the Food Crisis
Starvation in a Time of Record Profits

The Daily Green, 30 April 2008.

U.S. food companies are rolling in money while food riots roll through poor cities around the world.

The Wall Street Journal today reports on the massive profits of companies dealing in grain processing (high-fructose corn syrup, ethanol and others), fertilizers, genetically modified seeds, pesticides and other food- and farm-related products and services.

In the last quarter alone, the six most profitable companies in this sector have earned more than $4 billion. Here's how they might spend a bit of their windfall:

Those profits make the United Nations Food Program's emergency request for $755 million to feed the 73 million people at risk of starvation look tiny. It amounts to 20% of the profits from those companies over the last three months. And remember, these companies ‚ Monsanto, Cargill, Mosaic, ADM, Deere and Bunge ‚ have for the most part been raking it in for at least a couple years, as they ride (or is that drive?) the congressional mandate for ethanol. Food prices, according to one index, are up 57% in a year.

Meanwhile, the U.N. and World Bank have warned that a whole generation is at risk of malnutrition in some parts of the world as the "silent tsunami" claims lives, stunts growth and propels volatile countries into violence.

Here are the earnings of those companies in the last quarter, as reported by the Journal:

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Monsanto ‚ $1.13 billion

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Cargill ‚ $1.03 billion

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Mosaic ‚ $520.8 million

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Archer-Daniels-Midland ‚ $517 million

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Deere ‚ $369.1 million

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Bunge ‚ $289 million

[Photo caption: A man carries a sack of food through a Nicaraguan market. Nicaragua's food prices have shot up 48% according to the UN.]

USA: Farm Broadcaster Ousted after Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Corporate Crime Reporter, April 30 2008.

If you have heard of Learfield Communications, it is probably from listening to college football and basketball games.

The Jefferson City, Missouri based Learfield is one of the nation's largest broadcasters of college sports.

But it also produces news programming heard throughout the farm belt.

Learfield was started 35 years ago by Clyde Lear and Derry Brownfield.

Lear went on to be the chairman of the company. He bought out his friend and partner Brownfield in 1985.

Brownfield went on to do market news reports for the Learfield news division until 1997 or so, when he started broadcasting a daily call-in show called The Common Sense Coalition.

Derry Brownfield would broadcast The Common Sense Coalition from the studios of Learfield Communications.

Learfield would subsidize the program and allow Brownfield to use its studios and satellite hook-up.

Monsanto happens to be a big advertiser of the Learfield news division ‚ to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Brownfield happens to think that Monsanto is an evil corporation.

Therein lies the rub.

For weeks, Brownfield had been ripping Monsanto on air for its policies of enforcing its seed patents against farmers.

On the April 16 show, Brownfield's topic was seed industry concentration in America.

His guests were Fred Stokes, president of the Organization for Competitive Markets, and Michael Stumo, general counsel of the group.

Stokes and Stumo were promoting a new project to study corporate concentration in the seed industry.

Monsanto is the dominant player in the global seed industry and has a reputation for playing rough.

On air, Brownfield quoted from a newly published Vanity Fair article titled "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear" by Donald Barlett and James Steele.

"Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country," Barlett and Steele write. "They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops, infiltrate community meetings, and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the 'seed police' and use words such as 'Gestapo' and 'Mafia' to describe their tactics."

After reading from the Vanity Fair article, Brownfield then begins to riff on the Mafia theme.

"Multinational corporations are doing everything possible to change agriculture ‚ and not for the better," Brownfield says on the show. "I know a little bit about this ‚ not a lot, just a little bit ‚ but Monsanto literally they have Mafia goons out, do they not? They show up on farmers' property, they try and harass them, they say if you don't sign this, we are going to take you to court. They have literally tried to destroy agriculture as we know it. They have a goon squad. Maybe that's not what they like to be called. But if it was the Mafia, we would call them the goon squad."

Calling Monsanto's patent enforcers goons was apparently the straw that broke this camel's back.

Brownfield's stint at Dearfield was about to end.

Last week, Brownfield was told that he could no longer broadcast out of the Dearfield studios. His buddy, Clyde Lear, posted a blog on the Learfield web site saying that Brownfield's last show will be in mid-May.

"The Common Sense Coalition grinds to a halt on our system," Lear wrote.

"Most of his listeners loved him as did his affiliates," Lear wrote about his buddy. "He didn't mind controversy or taking on giants like the Monsanto Corporation. He thought they were bad for farmers, too big for their britches and generally bad for America. Increasingly he's been saying so, without seeking balance, in my opinion."

And then later, in response to listeners who were upset that Brownfield was being let go, Lear wrote:

"Some seem to think the reason Derry is leaving is because Monsanto threatened to stop advertising if we didn't put a gag on him. If that were the only reason Derry was asked to leave, then I can see why they think we are selling out. We've parted ways because accusations being made about not only advertisers, but individuals, corporations, government, (fill in the blank) were based on fear and lies with absolutely no truth to back them up. I abhor radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh...and Derry Brownfield where half-truths are articulated. I won't be a part of them. And, that's my right."

But in an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter, Lear admits that the Monsanto issue is what drove his buddy Brownfield out.

"If the Monsanto issue had not come up, we would not be here today," Lear said.

Lear said that the President of Learfield Communications, Roger Gardner, talked recently with John Raines, Monsanto's director of public affairs.

"John Raines talked to Roger Gardner about the difficulties they felt Brownfield is giving them," Lear said. "(Gardner) told me he talked to John Raines about the Vanity Fair article."

"The pressure I got came from the president of the news division, Stan Koenigsfeld," Lear said. "Stan is the guy that has responsibility for selling and maintaining the financial viability of our news division. Stan is a no nonsense guy. So, Stan comes in and says ‚ why are we doing this? Why do we continue to do this? We give him all of these things and he spits in our face by lambasting our good advertisers, without giving them an opportunity for fair and balanced reporting. And it is not reporting ‚ it's just entertainment. Why do we continue to do this?"

Lear says that the complaints have been mounting over the past five years about Brownfield.

"And I've been saying to Stan, settle down, it will all be alright," Lear said. "But I imagine Stan is getting a lot of pressure from his sales executives. We have three that call on Monsanto for different products. And I would assume that he is getting pressure from those sales executives. When those sales executives call on Monsanto, Monsanto is complaining to the sales executives. That is where the connection happens. But you would have to talk to them about the kind of leverage Monsanto is putting on them. They have never to my knowledge threatened to pull any advertising."

Lear finally confronted Brownfield.

"I went to him and said ‚ Derry, look, lay off of this," Lear said. "Lay off of this Monsanto thing. I am getting a lot of complaints."

Lear said he was the only one in the company who could approach Brownfield.

"I'm the only one who can talk to him," Lear said. "No one else in the company will go to him. He is kind of persona non grata. He is one of the guys who helped start the company years ago. He was my partner for years until 1985 when I bought him out. He is a dear friend of mine. So, there is no one else ‚ all of the rest of the guys are half my age. They won't go to him. They are afraid of him. They just won't go and talk to him."

"They all came to me and said ‚ go talk to Derry," Lear said. "We've got to quit doing this. Plus, it came at a bad time. It came during the same week that the National Association of Farm Broadcasters national convention was being held in Kansas City. And at that convention, of course, Monsanto was omnipresent. They are there trying to woo farm broadcasters, because they want them to say nice things about them, right? So, here are all of the Monsanto people at this convention. And their advertising agencies ‚ Osborne & Barr out of St. Louis ‚ among others. They were all there. And it was embarrassing, because all of that week, Derry is lambasting Monsanto."

"We have explained to Monsanto, in any way we can, that the Brownfield Network has nothing to do with Derry's show," Lear says. "This is a completely independent show that he puts on. Well, Monsanto says ‚ he's doing it from your studios, isn't he? And we say yes, we give him space because of the history."

"And they ask ‚ how else do you help him? If he weren't doing the show, would this problem disappear?"

"So my guys came to me and said ‚ we've got to do something about this."

"So, I went in to Derry and I sat down with him," Lear said. "It was very good natured. I wasn't angry. I wasn't planning on doing anything. I said ‚ let this Monsanto thing go for awhile. Just let it go."

"He said ‚ 'Clyde ‚ Monsanto is an evil empire,'" Lear recalled. "'This is evil. He said ‚ every farmer hates Monsanto. You know what they have done ‚ and then he would lambast Monsanto and lay out this litany of stuff that they do. It included milk. Apparently there is a human growth hormone that they put in the milk. I don't know a thing about it, but apparently they won a court case that prohibited milk retailers from putting on the milk carton the label ‚ hormone free. I didn't know anything about this, but Brownfield was complaining about how the liberal judges of America are siding with the evil empire. And Monsanto pays them off. All kinds of allegations which I'm sure are not true. But Derry believes them."

"So, I said ‚ will you let Monsanto be on the air? And he said ‚ I'm not going to give them a forum. But then he changed his mind and said ‚ yeah, bring them on. I'll let them on the show."

Lear then went to hole up with his executives. And his execs told him ‚ "It's bigger than this now. We just don't need to be associated with him."

"So, I just walked back there and said to Derry ‚ you say you are not going to lighten up. And he said no, I'm staying the course. And I said ‚ not with us you are not. You are going to have to find some other way to distribute your program, and you are going to have to find some other office to do it out of."

Given that he was willing put Monsanto on his show, why not keep him on?

"Maybe we should have," Lear said.

Would you reconsider your decision?

"I don't think so," Lear says. "It is just not a business I want to be in anymore."

Lear says he feels sad about parting with his old buddy, but he wants to help set up an internet radio studio for Derry out of Derry's home office.

"We are helping him build a new facility in his home," Lear says. "But we won't have a connection to him. Then we can easily say to Monsanto ‚ we don't have a thing to do with Derry. We don't have a thing to do with him. He's not on our property. We can't control him."

Brownfield said he couldn't comment on the situation until after May 30.

Corporate Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
Tel + 1 202 737 1680

The public is proved right: GM crops are no panacea

The Guardian (UK), April 30 2008. By Tom Wakeford.

The IAASTD last week concluded that "data on some GM crops indicate highly variable yield gains in some places and declines in others". The door was left open, on the basis that it would be unwise to rule out GM crops for the future, but as the charity Practical Action commented, "the report rightly concludes that small-scale farmers and ecological methods provide the way forward to avert the current food crisis".

It's time many science policy-makers started eating GM humble pie, and urgent questions must now be raised about the lessons they have drawn from the GMO debate. With the exception of John Battle, every UK science minister and chief scientist since Labour came to power, together with media-friendly scientists and policy wonks, have assumed that the public "misunderstood the facts" in rejecting the current generation of GM crops. But in virtually every deliberative process undertaken the jury said no to GM crops.

Together with Andy Stirling, from the science policy research unit at the University of Sussex, I was involved in the first citizens' jury to discuss GM crops exactly 10 years ago. Its 1998 report concurs with the 2008 IAASTD findings. We've had 10 years and, I suspect, tens of millions of pounds, promoting transgenic crops as a solution for world hunger and sustainable agriculture - in the face of the balance of scientific evidence.

Some within government, though not the research councils, are still using the GMO debate, alongside the MMR controversy, in support of attempts to send us back to the dark age of the deficit model. The irrationality of this model, contrasting officially approved experts with mere lay people, is now beyond argument.

Completely preposterous arguments, such as those used to defend deficit thinking or that GM crops will feed the world, require unflinching faith. The previous chief scientist, Sir David King, seemed to think that most problems related to public trust in science could be solved by the application of the deficit model and his ethical code.

The funding councils are not without their deficit fans. They've even been known to support deficit fringe groups such as Sense About Science. Thankfully, wiser heads at the councils decided to set up the six Beacons for Public Engagement. Together, we have four years to show that researchers at universities can welcome those whose expertise comes from experience as co-producers of useful knowledge.

I wonder how many hunger-related deaths in developing countries could have been avoided if science policy-makers had applied this philosophy to GM crops 10 years ago?

Tom Wakeford is director of the Durham-Newcastle Beacon for Public Engagement. publicengagement.ac.uk

UN task force to tackle food price crisis

The Guardian (UK), 30 April 2008. By Julian Borger, diplomantic editor.

The United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, Tuesday called for world leaders to attend a summit in June to tackle the food price crisis that has triggered global social unrest. In the run up to the summit in Rome, Italy, a U.N.Ý task force headed by a British diplomat, Sir John Holmes, will try to develop a coherent international response to the crisis, at a time of sharp international divisions over food exports, genetically modified crops and biofuels.

The plans for a task force and summit were announced at a meeting of the U.N.'s chief executive board in Berne, Switzerland, bringing together the U.N.'s humanitarian organizations with the world's principal financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

"We consider that the recent dramatic escalation in food prices worldwide has evolved into an unprecedented challenge of global proportions that has become a crisis for the world's most vulnerable, including the urban poor," said a U.N. statement issued at the end of the Berne meeting. It called for donor nations to help the World Food Program (WFP) raise an additional $755 million (£380 million) to meet its existing food aid targets in the face of higher costs, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called for $1.7 billion to pay for seeds and inputs to help farmers in poor countries respond to the high prices by growing more.

The Rome summit, starting on June 3, had initially been planned by the U.N.'s FAO as an experts' meeting on the impact of climate change and biofuel production on global food security, but the dramatic increase in the price of staple foods such as rice, wheat and soya and the consequent food price riots in poor and middle-income countries around the world, has attracted the attention of world leaders.

France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have confirmed their attendance. Downing Street said last night the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had no plans to attend.

In a letter earlier this month to Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, Brown had called for a coordinated response to the crisis from the G8 group of industrialized nations, due to meet this year in Japan.

Holmes told an audience at the London School of Economics on Monday: "Food insecurity is not like classic famines, such as Ethiopia. It's more insidious. It's been likened to a silent, rolling tsunami."

Sir John will have to navigate some deep divides on how best to respond to the crisis. While Britain and the U.S. argue that it gives added urgency for a new global agreement to liberalize trade, known as the Doha Round, being negotiated by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Some countries, including India and Thailand, have responded to food shortages and riots by curbing exports of staples. In recent days, France's agriculture minister, Michel Barnier, warned European Union officials: "We must not leave the vital issue of feeding people to the mercy of market laws and international speculation."

There are also heated debates over whether genetically modified plants are a possible solution to increasing yields, and whether the world should abandon the cultivation of biofuels, which have diverted land and other resources away from food crops.

Phillipines: Greenpeace refutes DA assurance on GMO rice

Inquirer.net, 30 April 2008. By Abigail Kwok.

MANILA, Philippines -- The Department of Agriculture (DA) is "uninformed" about the issue of genetically-modified organisms (GMO) in US rice imports, an international environmentalist group said Wednesday.

In a statement, Daniel Ocampo, Greenpeace Southeast Asia Sustainable Agriculture campaigner, said, "The DA was either lying or uninformed when it assured consumers that US GMO rice has the seal of approval of international food safety agencies. Contrary to the DA's claims, the GMO rice LL601 has not been approved anywhere in the world outside of the United States." DA issued a statement last Friday refuting the claim of Greenpeace that at least two brands of US commercial rice sold in public markets were allegedly contaminated by at least two GMO strains, one of which was LL601.

Greenpeace identified the two brands of US rice as Blue Ribbon Texas Long Grain and Rice Land Arkansas Long Grain. These brands were said to be sold in all S&R Supermarkets in Metro Manila. However, DA said that the two brands have yet to be shipped in the country. DA also said that the GMO strain LL601 was safe for consumption as certified by the US Food and Drugs Authority (USFDA).

But Greenpeace disputed this claim.

"Greenpeace knows that there have been no findings of safety of the GMO rice LL601 by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), nor the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA), nor the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). And for the DA's own GMO regulators to claim the opposite is completely unbelievable. We are convinced this puts into question the DA's credibility, their honesty and integrity, with regard to GMO assessments," Ocampo said.

Greenpeace also questioned the DAís "suspicious lack of transparency" in the method used for testing rice for GMA strain. Ocampo said the lateral flow method used by DA to test rice imports was unacceptable.

"Using the lateral flow or strip test to determine GMO content is not an acceptable protocol for detecting LL601 or LL62 GMO rice under both the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and European Union standards," Ocampo said.

The environmentalist group is calling on the DA to regulate US rice imports in the country for GMO safety and to conduct a thorough testing of rice imports to ensure that they are GMO-free.

29 April 2008

UK: Politics of the plate: GM myths and raising meat standards

Gourmet magazine, 29 April 2008. By Barry Estabrook.

Debunking yet another GM myth

Those singing the praises of genetically modified (GM) crops often tout increased yields as one of the advantages to growing them. Two important studies say otherwise. Barney Gordon of Kansas State University reports in a recent issue of the journal Better Crops that his test plots of GM soybeans (which make up 90 percent of the soybeans grown in this country) produced 10 percent fewer beans than conventional crops. He suspects that the bioengineered beans do not absorb magnesium, an element essential to photosynthesis, as well as non-GM plants. An earlier study from the University of Nebraska produced similar results.

Higher yields is the second GM myth to be busted this year. Modified crops were also supposed to reduce the use of pesticides. But a report earlier this year by Friends of the Earth International showed that applications of glyphosate, an insecticide, and 2,4-D and atrazine, both herbicides, have increased dramatically in the United States in the dozen years since GM seeds were first sown in farmers' fields.

More good news...

...for those of us trying to eat animals raised and killed in a humane manner: The formidable Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released a report this week calling for an end to intensive confinement practices on American farms. The list of unacceptable living quarters includes gestation crates for sows; veal crates; and battery cages for laying hens.

Commission members include such influential luminaries as former U. S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman; former Kansas governor John Carlin; and the former Dean of the University of Tennessee's College of Veterinary Medicine, Michael Blackwell. This is not a group of animal rights extremists, to be sure.

A few weeks ago, an act to ban confinement practices qualified for the ballot in California. Florida, Arizona, and Oregon have prohibited gestation crates. Arizona also disallows veal crates. Who knows, we may be catching up to the rest of the civilized world: The European Union has already legislated against the "Big Three" confinement abuses.

Better butchering

Grass-fed beef has a lot going for it. The cattle that produce it spend their days on pastures eating grass like they are supposed toóunlike feedlot cattle, which live in crowded pens for the last several months of their lives, stuffing themselves with corn-based feed (and a whole lot of drugs to counteract the ill effects of that corn, which isn't part of a cow's natural diet). But the differences between the two types of cows end at the last crucial stage of their lives. Due to a shortage of slaughterhouses, many grass-fed cattle are herded into trailers and trucked vast distances to the same large, inhumane, and dirty plants that process their industrially raised counterparts.

That may be changing. Two conscientious beef farmers on opposite sides of the country have opened their own slaughterhouses. In Bluffton, GA, White Oak Pastures, the state's largest grass-fed beef producer, has just completed its own on-farm plant, according to Sustainable Food News. The plant was designed by Dr. Temple Grandin, an expert on the humane treatment of animals. A similar facility was opened earlier this year by Sallie Calhoun, owner of Paicines Ranch, a grass-fed cattle operation in Benito County, CA.

In addition to handling the production from their owners' fields, both of the new boutique abattoirs will provide a valuable service to other small, local, sustainable growers, who until now had to truck their animals great distances, and whose output was not limited by demand (it's soaring) but by the capacity of processing plants.

UK: I'll have the cloneburger and fries

New Scientist, 29 April 2008. By Sharon Oosthoek.

Media and community opposition caused two cows born of a cloned mother to be withdrawn from auction in the UK. The use of cloned animals to produce meat and milk seems likely to cause as much controversy as the issue of genetically modified food. Stephen Sundlof, of the US Food & Drug Administration, says that even finding a theory about why food derived from clones could be unsafe is "beyond our imagination". Cloning could make it possible to produce animals resistant to illnesses such as mad cow disease. Utah State University's Kenneth White says the practice could also allow the production of healthier foods, such as meat with reduced cholesterol.

GMO: A Dangerous Experiment

OpEdNews.com, 29 April 2008. By Barbara Peterson.

The problems with Genetically Modified (GM) foods are as many as they are varied. Respected scientists have risked everything to step forward and warn consumers that this new fast-track "solution to world hunger" is bad for their health and the environment, but to little avail. Giant agri-business companies such as Monsanto forge ahead to flood the world's food chain with experimental technologies that are proving to be harmful to life. The worst part is, the longer this reckless experiment is allowed to go on, the closer we get to a complete planetary takeover by Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO).

The GMO Cover-upÝ

Dr. Arpad Pusztai, PhD, FRSE, "one of the few genuinely independent scientists specializing in plant genetics and animal feeding studies" (OCA, 2005), worked for the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1998. During his employment, he was commissioned to study potatoes "fitted" or genetically modified (GM) with a lectin gene from Galanthus Nivalis, a European plant. He inserted the gene into the potatoes himself, then fed the GM potatoes to lab rats in order to document the effects. What he found was that these potatoes had damaged the organs of the rats and depressed their immune systems. On August 10, 1998, Dr. Pusztai appeared on a British documentary and issued a warning to the public about the inadequate testing of GM foods, and revealed his test results. For his candor, Dr. Pusztai was accused of incompetence, and forced to retire.

A scandal ensued after Dr. Pusztai raised questions about the safety of GM potatoes. Accusations that Monsanto used its influence to ram the technology through with bribery and coercion were made, as chronicled by the Doric Column (1999):

•

12 February 1999: Twenty scientists from 14 countries who have examined Pusztai's report accuse Rowett of bowing to political pressure. The group calls for a moratorium on GM crops.

•

13 February 1999: The British government "rejects calls for a moratorium amid allegations that it is in the pocket of the biotech industry."

•

14 February 1999: Rowett is reported to have received £140,000 from Monsanto before the blow-up.

Dr. Pusztai was later "asked by the German authorities in the autumn of 2004 to examine Monsanto's own 1,139-page report on the feeding of MON863 to laboratory rats over a 90-day period" (OCA, 2005). He was forced to sign a "declaration of secrecy," or gag order before Monsanto would allow him to see the report.

This would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that Dr Pusztai's evaluation was highly critical of both the methods and the findings of the study, indicating that MON863 maize by no means has a "clean bill of health." Subsequent leaks from France, Germany and Belgium suggest that the maize variety may indeed be unsafe for animal or human consumption, and that a major cover-up is under way, designed to protect the corporate giant Monsanto and the regulatory authorities that have prematurely advised that MON863 is perfectly safe. (GM-Free Ireland, 2005).

His concerns regarding the dangers of MON863 maize after seeing the report were the same as several German and other European scientists, "but the German Government refused to publish their findings, and insisted that Dr Pusztai should respect his "gagging order"" (OCA, 2005).

Not to be held back in its rush to give the okay to GMO foods and the questionable technology behind them, The European Safety Authority commissioned its own set of experts to conclude that MON863 was perfectly safe and wholesome. More seriously, in the EFSA Statement, and in subsequent Monsanto press releases, Dr Pusztai was named and criticized in spite of the fact that it was known by all concerned that he was effectively "gagged" and could not defend himself. (OCA, 2005)

Independent Research Confirms - GMO Food is Dangerous

On October 10[2005], during the symposium over genetic modification, which was organized by the National Association for Genetic Security (NAGS), Doctor of Biology Irina Ermakova made public the results of the research led by her at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). This is the first research that determined clear dependence between eating genetically modified soy and the posterity of living creatures (Regnum, 2005).

Ý Over half of the rats born to mothers who ate GM-soy (55-56%) were dead in three weeks, as opposed to a 9% mortality rate in rats whose mothers ate normal soy. "The morphology and biochemical structures of rats are very similar to those of humans, and this makes the results we obtained very disturbing," said Irina Ermakova to NAGS press office. (Regnum, 2005)

Another glaring example of the dangers of GMO food is that of Syngenta and the German farmer, Gottfried Glockner of North Hessen. As William Engdahl explains in Seeds of Destruction,

This farmer found evidence that planting Syngenta Bt-176 genetically engineered corn to feed his cattle in 1997 had been responsible for killing off his cattle, destroying his milk production, and poisoning his farmland. Syngenta's Bt-176 corn had been engineered to produce a toxin of Bacillus thuringiensis, which they claimed was deadly to a damaging insect, the European Corn Borer (pg. 230).

GMO Technology Threatens the World's Food Supply

Not only is GMO food harmful to the animals that eat it, but it also has the potential to overcome the crops around it. Insects, birds, and wind carry seeds into neighboring fields and beyond. This is cross-pollination, and cannot be controlled in an outdoor environment. Genetically engineered plants are no exception to this. The pollen from GM plants can cross-pollinate with normal plants and contaminate entire fields. With the proliferation of GM crops, this is a real danger.

ÝÝ In 1996, there were approximately 6,563 square miles of farmland in the world devoted to GMO crops. In 2006, there were 393,828 square miles devoted to GMO crops (GMO Compass, 2007). This is a 5900% increase in land devoted to GMO crops in a 10-year period! At this rate, the amount of GM crops will double in the next ten years, not including cross-pollination factors.

Is "Organic" Really Organic?

Even foods labeled "organic" are allowed a percentage of GMO contamination.

"EU Agricultural Ministers have decided to allow organic food accidentally contaminated with genetically modified organisms to be classified as organic as long as the GMO presence is less than 0.9%" (Shield, 2007).

In the United States, "the US National Organic Program (NOP) rules prohibit GMOs in organics but don't require methods to prohibit GMO contamination or establish thresholds for adventitious GM presence" (Roseboro, 2007).

Many organic companies simply do not want to undergo the expense and effort necessary to test their fields for GMO contamination, but some say that it is essential in order to maintain integrity.

Jack Olson is an organic farmer in Litchville, North Dakota, who grows organic soybeans, wheat, and other crops. "It's hard for one organic farmer to fight Monsanto," he says.ÝStill, Olson puts up with the inconveniences because he is committed to organic agriculture. "At least we're clean, that's why we grow organic. It's God's way," he says. (Roseboro, 2007)

Fighting the Giant

It is difficult to fight the giant like Jack Olson is doing, but essential for health and the survival of our food supply. Scientists that are not afraid to speak out, and organic farmers that are not afraid to compete with companies such as Monsanto and offer customers GMO-free organic foods, stand between the agri-business giants intent on profiting from an improperly tested technology and the people who need the information and resources to make sure that what they are eating is healthy and nutritious. Without these people, the Monsantos of the world will soon have us eating nothing but their genetically engineered foods, with no thought for the consequences of their actions.

References:

Doric Column. (1999). Transgenic Potatoes ¡ La Carte.
http://www.mbbnet.umn.edu/doric/potato.html

Engdahl, F.W. (2007). Seeds of Destruction. Global Research.

GM Free Ireland. (2005). Monsanto GM Maize Conspiracy Revealed.
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/resources/documents/science/scandals/GMfreecymru1.php

GMO Compass. (2007). Transgenic Crops by Trait. GM Trait Statistics.
http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/agri_biotechnology/gmo_planting/145.gmo_cultivation_trait_statistics.html

Organic Consumers Association (OCA). (2005). Monsanto's GE Corn Experiments on Rats Continue to Generate Global Controversy
Ý http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/rats060205.cfm

Regnum. (2005). Genetically modified soy affects posterity: Results of Russian scientists' studies.Ý
http://www.regnum.ru/english/526651.html

ÝÝ Roseboro, K. (2007). How Organic is Organic? New Calls for Testing Organic Foods for GMOs. Environmental News Network.
ÝÝ http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/23152

Shield, P. (2007). GMOs Threaten Organic Standards. Organic Consumers Association (OCA).
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5649.cfm

About the author:

Barbara H. Peterson is retired from the California Department of Corrections, where she worked as a Correctional Officer at Folsom Prison. She was one of the first females to work at the facility in this classification. After retirement, she went to college online to obtain a Bachelor's degree in Business, and graduated with honors. The most valuable thing she received from her time with UOP was a realization that her life's passion is writing. Now her business degree sits in her desk drawer, and she counts herself in the category of Writer/Activist. Someday she will make money writing, but that is not why she does it. "I do it because I must. A driving force compels me to reach out to others with what I learn about the condition we the people are in, and that is what I devote my time to. After all, time is the most precious thing we have, and the older I get the more I want to use it wisely." Barbara lives on a small ranch in Oregon with her husband, where they raise geese, chickens, Navajo Churro sheep, Oggie Dog, a variety of cats, and an opinionated Macaw named Rita. She believes that self-sufficiency and localization of food sources will be necessary to survive the coming depression. To this end, she has put up a website to share information at: http://survivingthemiddleclasscrash.wordpress.com. Her philosophy is this: You are on this earth for a reason - to fight for the light. Your words are swords that penetrate the darkness with truth and light. You have a purpose.

USA: American Apparel in drive for Cleaner Cotton

MR Magazine, 29 April 2008.

In an effort to expand its sustainable practices, T-shirt and casualwear brand American Apparel Inc has just purchased 30,000 pounds of Cleaner Cotton(TM) from California's Central Valley.

This cotton is farmed using fewer chemicals than conventional cotton cultivation, and also avoids the use of genetically modified seeds.

The Cleaner Cotton Campaign, which is led by The Sustainable Cotton Project, aims to keep toxins out of the soil, air and water by using biological techniques instead.

Erika Martinez, head of organic programs at American Apparel, said: "This unique program not only promotes the reduction of chemical use but it also assists farmers through the cultivation process." Ý

Last year, there 2,000 acres of Cleaner Cotton were grown, preventing 7,000 pounds of chemicals from entering the environment according to the California Environmental Protection Agency. Ý

American Apparel is a vertically integrated manufacturer, distributor and retailer of T-shirts and related products with nearly 200 stores in 15 countries.

All clothes are cut and sewn at its 800,000 sq ft facility in downtown Los Angeles.

UK: Pledge to keep cost of school meals down

Red Hill and Reigate Life, 29 April 2008.

SURREY County Council has said it will do its utmost to keep the cost of school meals down despite rising food prices. The increasing cost of staple food such as bread, eggs and rice, combined with pressure to provide more healthy schools meals, has led to fears that school dinner bills could soar.

Primary school children in Surrey pay £1.70 for a school meal while secondary schools charge £1.75. But some national newspapers have predicted the cost of meals could rise to £2 or more, costing parents more than £390 a year.

Surrey's head of commercial services, Beverley Baker, said: "Surrey County Council is working very hard to minimise the impact of this rise in costs and we do not intend to pass any cost increases on to parents."

The average price of a school meal last year was £1.64 including a subsidy of 43p. The Government also introduced extra national nutritional standards in September last year, putting further pressure on school dinner budgets.

Food provided by local authorities must include high quality meat and two portions of fruit and vegetables.

Controls on the amount of fried food served have also been introduced and fizzy drinks and unhealthy snacks have been removed from school menus and vending machines.

Surrey County Council has a number of measures in place, including a ban on mechanically recovered meat and genetically modified foods.

NPC panel: Chinese draft food law gets positive feedback

Xinhua, 29 April 2008.

BEIJING -- Chinese citizens have submitted nearly 5,000 comments on a draft food safety law, most of which praised the effort to make the law or urged tougher penalties and supervision, according to officials.

As of 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, the public had sent 4,838 comments through various means, according to the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee. The Standing Committee of the NPC released the full draft for public comment on April 20. It was posted on the national legislature website, www.npc.gov.cn.

Citizens making proposals all favored enacting the law, the commission said. They believed that the move demonstrated the policy of "putting the people first" and could ensure food safety and public health.

Some citizens made specific suggestions, for example, imposing tighter controls and penalties, clarifying food safety supervisory institutions' responsibilities and the government's role in financing food safety efforts, establishing uniform national standards and enhancing monitoring of small food processing workshops, according to the commission.

The definition of "food" should be specific and cover drinking water, edible oils, beverages, produce and meat, some suggested.

The food safety law should designate one department, instead of several, to be in charge of matters related to food processing including production, delivery and consumption, some proposed. These proposals noted that having several departments involved could lead to overlapping supervisory power and heavier regulatory burdens for the food industry.

Other submissions called for regular public updates on the monitoring and evaluation of genetically modified food.

Some citizens urged China to embrace international food regulations and replace numerous food standards with uniform ones.

The law should also ban food producers from using additives and enforce tight hygiene standards over staff in the food industry.

The draft law lays out penalties ranging from fines to life terms for makers of substandard food.

The comment period ends on May 20. Submissions will be delivered to the NPC Standing Committee for further study. A legislative schedule has yet to be set.

The draft law, covering food safety evaluation, monitoring, recall and information release, was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee last December for a first hearing.

EU: Brussels blames part of food price rise on US biofuels policy

EU Observer, 29 April 2008. By Leigh Phillips.

EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson has conceded that certain biofuel policies contribute to food price rises and increase greenhouse gas emissions, but that Europe's policies are sound.

Instead, Mr Mandelson has suggested that it is Washington's biofuels policies that are having these unwanted consequences.

"We can already see that large-scale biofuel production, especially in the US, may be one of the factors pushing up food prices as it diverts resources from food production," said the commissioner, writing in UK daily the Guardian on Tuesday (29 April).

"The race to grow maize for ethanol subsidies in the US reduces the supply of food crops on world markets and drives up the cost of this important staple," he continued.

EU leaders last spring agreed that the EU should increase the use of biofuels in transport fuel to ten percent by 2020, up from a planned 5.75 percent target to be achieved by 2010.

But in recent months the target has come under strong fire with critics saying it is contributing to further poverty in already poor countries as land is cleared for biofuel production.

According to Mr Mandelson, European biofuel production is having "only a minimal effect" on global prices.

Quoting the soundbite green NGOs have been using in their multiple campaigns against biofuels over the last year, the commissioner wrote: "There are enough corn calories in an SUV fuel tank to feed a person for a year."

No social criteria

But he warned that any consideration of social questions amongst the criteria for allowing imports of biofuels would have much wider consequences for Europe's trade agenda.

"Why should we suggest there is an obligation on producers who export sugar cane biofuel, but not on those who export plain sugar cane?"

A trade official told the EUobserver that social questions cannot be included because they "can't be defended that at the WTO," and "in any case, taken to it's logical extreme, we would have to ensure that everything we import, not just biofuels, meet social criteria," he said. "Do we want that?"

"We have to ensure our thoughts are known in other ways, such as pushing our trading partners to sign up to International Labour Organisation standards."

The commission's agriculture spokesperson on Tuesday echoed the criticism of Washington's biofuels strategies.

"It would be wrong to claim, and no one has ever claimed that people in America growing a lot of corn for ethanol does not have an effect."

Nonetheless, he said: "It is not for us to tell the US what strategies and policies to have."

However, not all the commissioners have been singing from the same song sheet. Last week, development commissioner Louis Michel criticised biofuels as a "catastrophe" for food prices.

For his part, commission president Jose Manuel Barroso recently called for a study on whether there is any relationship between the increased food prices around the world and biofuels.

GM crops will not produce miracle

Irish Independent, letter to the editor, 29 April 2008.

In his column 'If Ever The World Needed GM Food Production It's Right Now' (Irish Independent, April 23), Kevin Myers claims that, "GM will enable us to increase plant production, without greater use of fertiliser."

The cornerstone of modern science is that any claims must be based on empirical evidence.

While being passionate about his views, Kevin Myers offers no data in support of his assertion.

Pity he had not read an article entitled "Exposed: the Great GM Crop Myth", by Geoffrey Lean, the environment editor, in the [UK} Independent (April 30).

Lean reported on a study carried out during the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain-belt.

It found that GM soya produced 10pc less than its conventional equivalent. This contradicts the clam that GM technology increases yields.

Furthermore, last week the findings of a four-year study by the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology concuded that GM was not the answer to world hunger.

When Prof Bob[Watson, the director of the study and the chief scientist at the Deparment for environment, food and rural affairs in the UK, was asked whether GM crops could feed the world, he said: "The simple answer is no".

Fr Seán McDonagh
St. Columban's, Navan
Ireland.

USA: Emptying the Breadbasket
For decades, wheat was king on the Great Plains and prices were low everywhere. Those days are over.

Washington Post, 29 April 2008. By Dan Morgan.

At Stephen Fleishman's busy Bethesda shop, the era of the 95-cent bagel is coming to an end.

Breaking the dollar barrier "scares me," said the Bronx-born owner of Bethesda Bagels. But with 100-pound bags of North Dakota flour now above $50 -- more than double what they were a few months ago -- he sees no alternative to a hefty increase in the price of his signature product, a bagel made by hand in the back of the store.

"I've never seen anything like this in 20 years," he said. "It's a nightmare."

Fleishman and his customers are hardly alone. Across America, turmoil in the world wheat markets has sent prices of bread, pasta, noodles, pizza, pastry and bagels skittering upward, bringing protests from consumers.

But underlying this food inflation are changes that are transforming U.S. agriculture and making a return to the long era of cheap wheat products doubtful at best.

Half a continent away, in the North Dakota country that grows the high-quality wheats used in Fleishman's bagels, many farmers are cutting back on growing wheat in favor of more profitable, less disease-prone corn and soybeans for ethanol refineries and Asian consumers.

"Wheat was king once," said David Braaten, whose Norwegian immigrant grandparents built their Kindred, N.D., farm around wheat a century ago. "Now I just don't want to grow it. It's not a consistent crop."

In the 1980s, more than half the farm's acres were wheat. This year only one in 10 will be, and 40 percent will go to soybeans. Braaten and other farmers are considering investing in a $180 million plant to turn the beans into animal feed and cooking oil, both now in strong demand in China. And to stress his hopes for ethanol, his business card shows a sketch of a fuel pump.

Across the Red River and farther north, in Euclid, Minn., Don Strickler, 63, describes wheat as "a necessary evil." Most years, he explained, farmers lose money on it. Still, it provides conservation benefits and can block diseases in soybeans and sugar beets when rotated with those crops.

Wheat's fall from favor, little noticed when it was cheap, has been long coming. Though still an iconic symbol of American abundance -- engraved on currency and praised in song -- the nation's amber waves of wheat have been increasingly shoved aside by other crops. The "breadbasket of the world," which had alleviated hunger and famine since World War I, now generally supplies only a quarter of world wheat exports.

U.S. farmers are expected to plant about 64 million acres of wheat this year, down from a high of 88 million in 1981. In Kansas, wheat acreage has declined by a third since the mid-1980s, and nationwide, there is now less wheat in grain bins than at any time since World War II -- only about enough to supply the world for four days. This occurs as developing countries with some of the poorest populations are rapidly increasing their wheat imports.

Driving south from Grand Forks, N.D., on a freezing spring day, a motorist travels through a landscape that looks like a scene from the movie "Fargo." Mile after mile, fence posts rise from the snowy fields on each side of the ruler-straight highway. It looks like classic wheat country. But come summer, much of it will turn green from corn and beans.

"Last summer it looked like Iowa around here," Braaten said.

Science, weather, economics and farm policy have all played a part in the changes.

U.S. wheat yields per acre have increased little in two decades, partly because commercial seed companies have all but abandoned investments in improved varieties, preferring to focus on the more profitable corn and soybeans. Subtle warming changes in the climate and the recent availability of new plant varieties that thrive in cold, dry conditions have pushed the corn belt north and west.

In 1996, Congress gave a strong nudge to these changes by passing legislation allowing wheat growers for the first time to switch to other crops and still collect government subsidies. The result is that farmers received federal wheat payments last year on 15 million acres more than were planted.

"Every year now, we're in a battle for acres," said Neal Fisher, administrator of the North Dakota Wheat Commission. "We have a lot on our plates as we try to manage the challenges that wheat faces."

"If our comparative advantage is corn and soybeans and Russia's is wheat, having these shifts occur over time is not the end of the world," said Edward W. Allen, a senior economic analyst at the Agriculture Department.

But in the long run, said USDA wheat analyst Gary Vocke, "The forces leading to the trends are still in place." Though supplies may rebound, he and other experts doubt that prices will drop to prior levels.

That poses serious concerns for countries that historically have counted on the United States to have inexpensive wheat on hand to cushion shocks.

A Run on American Grain

The U.S. government stopped holding large stocks of wheat in the 1980s, but the United States, nearly alone among wheat producers, allows countries to shop here even when others have shut off exports.

This free-trade policy resulted in a run on the 2007 U.S. wheat crop this year by foreign buyers taking advantage of the favorable dollar exchange rate to stock up, even as Ukraine, Argentina and Kazakhstan blocked exports.

"It was a perfect storm," said Jochum Wiersma, a grains specialist with the University of Minnesota.

Problems started last summer with poor European harvests and a disappointing winter wheat crop in the southern Great Plains. U.S. prices moved above $7 a bushel, then crossed $10 after Australia harvested yet another drought-damaged crop in December. As supplies of wheat ran low, foreign countries began grabbing limited stocks of premium wheat from the northern plains -- the variety used to make the flour for Fleishman's bagels. Morocco, its own harvest of wheat to make traditional couscous inadequate, jumped in with a purchase of 127,000 tons.

"With low stocks and a weak dollar, things fly off the shelf faster than they used to," said David Brown, chairman of the American Bakers Association's commodity task force. "There's just not enough acreage coming back into production to replenish these stocks."

The reverberations were felt from Strickler's farm to Fleishman's shop -- and far and wide across world wheat markets. When Strickler checked his records recently, he found he had sold 850 bushels, about a truckload, for a record $20 a bushel. That's a receipt he plans to frame and hang on his wall.

But the same events put a squeeze on Vance Taylor, general manager of North Dakota Mill, the huge state-owned flour mill that looms over Grand Forks. Taylor's mill processes the spring-planted wheat grown along the Canadian border and prized by bakers of bread, bagels and other premium flour products. This spring wheat is high in protein and gluten, which helps breads rise and imparts texture. Among the mill's products are the bags of Dakota King flour that Fleishman uses to give his bagels their special chewy quality.

Suddenly Taylor couldn't find enough wheat. On Feb. 4, the state's Industrial Commission, headed by the governor, approved a rare waiver allowing the mill to buy spring wheat from Canada if needed. But in late March, the commission rescinded the waiver, which was highly unpopular with U.S. farm organizations. That left Taylor with a shortage of 1 million bushels before the August harvest. Since then, he said, he has found enough domestic wheat to get him through.

But prices rose rapidly down the supply chain.

"We raised our selling prices after the flour mills raised theirs," said Ted Lentz, president of Lentz Milling of Reading, Pa., which distributes North Dakota flour to bakeries from New York to Virginia. "Some of our baking customers have reduced their flour purchases up to 20 percent because of the higher prices."

A Return to Wheat?

Whether 2008's high prices will lure many farmers back to wheat is still a matter of debate.

The ethanol boom, in particular, is providing strong incentives to keep former wheat acres in corn. Within a year, Braaten will be able to truck his corn to three modern ethanol refineries, one already built and two others near completion. These huge distilleries will need corn from an area about the size of Rhode Island, and many of the acres will come at the expense of such traditional crops as wheat and sugar beets.

Corn has even begun to make inroads in the western part of the state, where sparse rainfall and the short growing season traditionally have ruled out most crops except wheat, barley and oats. Spurred by the availability of cheap coal for power and a local cattle industry that will buy the dry byproducts for feed, a new ethanol plant opened last year in Richardton, west of Bismarck, the capital.

"There's getting to be more and more corn all the time," said Clark Holzwarth, the refinery's commodity manager.

At current prices, farmers like Braaten can make more money from an acre of corn than from an acre of wheat, according to North Dakota State University economist Dwight Aakre. But wheat's biggest problem is susceptibility to disease, which has turned many farmers against it.

They remember the 1990s, when fusarium head blight, commonly called "scab," devastated successive wheat crops. After that, many farmers switched to new varieties of hybrid corn and genetically modified soybeans.

These seeds are protected by patents and licensing agreements, requiring farmers to buy a new batch each year. That produces strong financial incentives for the companies.

Research might solve many of wheat's problems, but commercial companies say the opportunities for profit are limited. In 2004, Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, shelved its research on a wheat plant that had been genetically modified to tolerate chemical weed killers.

The milling industry has been resistant to using such genetically modified wheats, so wheat plants have to be improved the old-fashioned way, by laboriously selecting those with the desired qualities in test plots. That is an expensive and time-consuming process.

Even then, there is no assurance that farmers will buy the seed year after year. That is because of the nature of the wheat plant, an unusually complex organism originating in the Middle East thousands of years ago. Unlike hybrid corn, which loses its productivity after the first year, seeds from improved wheat varieties can be saved and replanted for several years without significant loss of yield.

Syngenta, a large seed company, is still working to develop improved wheat, but Rob Bruns, who heads the North American cereal seed operation, acknowledged that it's difficult to create "enough critical mass to pay for the higher tech investments."

The upshot is that most wheat research is now consigned to public colleges with limited amounts of federal and state funds.

At North Dakota State University, wheat breeder Mohamed Mergoum helped develop Glenn, a new wheat based on a cross with Chinese plants. "It's a joy to make a difference in the life of the growers," said Mergoum, who worked earlier in the international program that developed higher-yielding "green revolution" wheats.

Glenn has proved resistant to scab, but it hasn't achieved universal acceptance among farmers.

Strickler, the farmer in Euclid, Minn., gave it a try one year but stopped using it after finding that a lot of the kernels cracked when they were separated from the chaff during threshing. As he sees it, Glenn is another example of how devilishly difficult it is to develop positive new traits in wheat without other problems arising.

James A. Anderson, a plant breeder at the University of Minnesota, predicted that the seed companies will continue to make inroads in wheat country with new kinds of corn and soybeans.

"They've definitely moved into the spring-wheat region with dedicated breeding," he said. "They're trying to get whatever acreage they can and sell more of their seed."

These developments suggest that the days of a bagel for less than a buck may not return to Bethesda anytime soon. Though prices have dropped from their March high, Fleishman is still paying close to $50 for a bag of flour.

"I feel helpless. I go with the flow," he said recently at his store. He is getting ready to change his menu boards to reflect a new price: probably $1.10.

He is not happy about it. "There's a psychological barrier, and a certain segment will be resentful," he said. "They'll get angry and feel gouged. People don't understand about food prices."

Morgan writes for The Washington Post on contract and is a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan public policy institution. Staff writer Jane Black contributed to this report.

Kenya: Harsh Weather Patterns to Shrink Maize Production

Business Daily/All Africa Global Media, 29 April 2008.

Kenyans could soon be forced to adjust their eating habits as the favourite maize meal becomes more scarce due to the effects of climate change.

Options include sorghum, millet or cassava, unless scientists unveil maize varieties that can mature faster under reduced rainfall and rising temperatures.

The climate change, which has been informed by excess emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, has led to irregular rainfall and a rise in temperatures in Kenya.

With a huge fraction of Kenya's agricultural activities pegged on rainfall, experts have raised the red flag that the country was facing dwindling output from rain-fed agriculture with the maize crop set to bear the brunt.

"If measures are not taken to develop highly drought resistant maize variety, production will drop significantly in the next 10 years," says Lilian Njeri, a maize breeder at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI).

Local scientists are predicting that temperature in Kenya will rise by two degree centigrade in the next 25 years. This means arable land will become drier.

But a lot has already been happening in the last 20 years. For instance, in Muguga, a high rainfall area in Kiambu District, changing climate is taking its toll on production with farmers shifting to other crops.

The area is located at an altitude of 2095 metres above the sea level. In the last 20 years, potatoes were one of the favourite crops for farmers like James Waruinge.

"The yield from potatoes has gone low. The crop is also vulnerable to diseases, some of which are new. I used to grow two acres every season for sale but bow I have shifted to maize," said Mr Waruinge.

Ms Njeri says it is not the farming methods that have changed but the climate such that potato seeds available cannot withstand weather changes.

In Muguga, residents used to grow maize varieties known as Hybrid 6, which were developed for high altitude and high rainfall fed areas.

"But now, farmers are coming to us asking for high altitude low rainfall fed varieties. The weather patterns have changed and are still changing," she said.

So, the situation is such that farmers in Muguga have opted for maize breed known as Hybrid 5 Series, which were originally developed for drier places like Ukambani, in Eastern Province.

The only consolation for Kenya today is a maize breed known as Hybrid 6 14, so far the most popular breed of maize because it adapts to various weather conditions, its yield is stable and it is sweet.

But the maize variety takes longer to mature, about 8 months, meaning it can only grow for a season per year.

But in unfavourable weather conditions, the maize can grow in six months but the yield becomes lower.

Breeders at KARI say they are in the process of developing a maize breed which can take four months to mature in places like Muguga.

"Before we give up on maize, however, we should work on developing a variety that is highly adaptive to drought," said Ms Njeri. Most maize breeders in Kenya are using the conventional breeding method, which does not involve genetic modification of the seed.

But the options are limited because one of the proposals being considered is to get a gene from a crop which is drought resistant and then introduce it to maize.

However, it is regarded as genetic engineering, which is not allowed by Kenyan laws.

A Bill to regulate development of new crop breeds through genetic modification, popularly known as GMO, is yet to be passed by Parliament.

The Bill has caused a lot of controversy with strong opposition from farmers groups, faith based organisations and the civil society.

Despite the opposition, scientists who spoke to Business Daily and requested not to be named said they believe the best way to deal with food shortage occasioned by global warming is to go the GMO way.

28 April 2008

UK: Science friction
The Daily Telegraph looks set to lose its science correspondent amid growing fears about standards of science reporting in the press. Iain Hollingshead reports

The Guardian, Monday April 28 2008. By Iain Hollingshead.

[Extract only. For full story see http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/28/dailytelegraph.pressandpublishing.]

...Yet there are still a disquieting number of contemporary voices suggesting that all is is not well with science journalism. "Science in the daily media is too often reported in the same deferential way as political journalists used to report politics in the 1950s," says Jonathan Leake, science and environment editor at the Sunday Times. "Many of the tensions, rows and skulduggery in the science community get far less attention than they would in business or politics." The main criticism is that respected journals such as Science and Nature - along with active news agencies such as AlphaGalileo, EurekAlert! and a plethora of less rigorous journals - control much of the science correspondents' output. An onslaught of embargoed, mid-week press releases leaves the Sundays with no choice but to pursue factually thin sensationalism.

USA: Nationwide Biotech Crop Maps Suggested for Monitoring Environmental Impacts

UC Davis, 28 April 2008.

A team of biologists, including a UC Davis plant scientist, is proposing that maps be created showing where all of the billion-plus acres of genetically engineered crops have been grown in the United States.

The comprehensive biotech mapping system, modeled after one now in use in Arizona, would permit much-needed studies of the positive or negative environmental impacts of genetically engineered crops, the researchers suggest in a Policy Forum piece published in the April 25 issue of the journal Science.

"Such maps would enable scientists to better analyze the effects of genetically modified crops on wildlife, water quality, insect pests and beneficial insects," said UC Davis Professor Paul Gepts, an expert on the evolutionary processes that have shaped the evolution of crop plants.

In Arizona, farmers routinely share maps of biotech cotton fields with scientists at the University of Arizona, enabling detailed analyses of the effects of this technology. That information is collected and stored in such a way that the privacy of the farmers is protected.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture already is collecting data at the individual farm level, but that information is only made available to researchers at the scale of entire states. In this forum piece, the authors maintain that such information needs to be made available at the county and township level in order to be useful in analyzing the impacts of biotech crops.

Lead author on this paper is Michelle Marvier of Santa Clara University. The other authors, in addition to Gepts, are Peter Kareiva of Santa Clara University and The Nature Conservancy, Norman Elstrand of UC Riverside, Yves CarriËre and Bruce Tabashnik of the University of Arizona, Emma Rosi-Marshall of Loyola University Chicago, and L. LaReesa Wolfenbarger of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

USA: UCD researchers alter goats with human genes

Sacramento Bee, 28 April 2008. By Chris Brennan.

UC Davis professor James Murray knows his experiments with human genes and goats give some people the creeps.

Crossing anything human with four-legged hoofers evokes images of mythical half-man, half-animal centaurs from ancient Greece.

In reality, genetically altered goats look and behave no differently than regular ones -- both are just as eager to gnaw Murray's sleeves and untie his shoes at the university goat barn.

"Could you get your grubby paws off?" Murray asked of his inquisitive test subjects during a recent tour.

Murray and fellow animal scientist Elizabeth Maga engineered a small herd of Alpine and Toggenburg dairy goats to produce high levels of a human antibiotic-like protein in their milk.

Just as mother's milk helps protect infants from germs, the researchers figured, humanized goat's or cow's milk would better defend dairy animals and their offspring from illness. Germ-fighting milk might also slow spoilage, prolonging the shelf life of dairy products.

The big question

The scientists' ultimate question, though, is a humanitarian one:

Could the same procedure produce fortified powdered milk and, eventually, genetically modified goat herds for poor regions of the world?

The beneficial protein, lysozyme, destroys bacteria that cause intestinal infections and diarrhea, which every year claim more than 2 million impoverished young lives. That's a toll among children under age 5 higher than from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, according to the World Health Organization.

"If we can prevent some of that, I think we should do it," Murray said, mindful of long-standing protests from animal rights activists, ethical concerns and fears of messing with Mother Nature.

The goat's milk represents one of the first genetically engineered food products designed to improve human health, though none has been approved for human consumption.

Scientists have been manipulating animal genes for nearly 25 years. They've changed properties of milk for human food and as raw material for pharmaceuticals -- turning animals into virtual medicine factories. Murray himself has changed the genes of cows, sheep, pigs and mice.

The goat's milk experiments, however, are among the few to transfer human genes to animals, said Michael Fernandez, former director of the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology.

"It's certainly not the predominant practice right now," Fernandez said. Private biotechnology companies and universities usually obtain genetic material from microbes or plants, not humans, he said.

Concerns about technology

Sacramento's Ventria Bioscience is a prominent exception. The company is growing genetically altered rice that contains lysozyme and another antibacterial ingredient in human breast milk. The company aims to produce an over-the-counter rehydration solution made from the fortified rice.

Ventria recently found a place to farm their patented rice in Junction City, Kan., after running afoul of Sacramento Valley and Missouri growers who fear medical rice might mix with their grains.

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a biotechnology specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists advocacy group, said he has similar concerns about transgenic goats.

Should the goats get into the wild -- their altered genes indeed make them more fit to survive -- they could more easily multiply and over-browse a landscape, threatening native species and causing erosion, he said.

"We don't have a regulatory system that addresses these kind of environmental issues in this country, let alone developing countries," Gurian-Sherman said.

Allergy protection

Why human genes for goats?

Goats, humans and all other mammals have lysozyme in milk, saliva and tears. Human breast milk, however, carries at least 1,600 times more than goat's milk.

UCD dairy goats born with the human gene that regulates lysozyme in mammary glands have far more lysozyme in their milk than they would naturally -- 67 percent of human levels compared with 0.06 percent, Murray said.

While other animals carry high levels of the protein, Davis researchers chose to inject the human gene to minimize chances of an allergic reaction, should people ever drink the modified goat's milk.

"You drink lysozyme every day in your saliva, so the chances of you reacting to it are pretty small," said Maga, a research biologist in the animal science department.

Several more studies are needed to satisfy food safety regulators in the United States and elsewhere that this medicinal milk would be safe to drink, researchers said.

The latest findings, published in the May issue of the Journal of Nutrition, show altered goat's milk helps fend off common E. coli-related illnesses in pigs, which have human-like digestive systems.

Pigs fed the lysozyme-rich milk from transgenic goats had significantly lower levels of harmful bacteria in their small intestines than those raised on regular goat's milk.

Dr. Miriam Aschkenasy, a public health doctor with the nonprofit humanitarian aid group Oxfam America, doesn't share Murray's optimism that the goat's milk would provide comparable protection for children.

While human breast milk is considered beneficial to infants, "there is, as far as I know, very little evidence that if you feed it to an older child these same affects apply," Aschkenasy said.

Said Murray: "The absence of evidence does not mean it isn't so, it just means we do not yet know. Hopefully studies with our transgenic goat's milk will help to answer this question."

The UCD Academic Federation Committee on Research funded the experiment with pigs. Murray is seeking additional funding from philanthropies interested in improving health in developing nations.

For the next experiment, Murray wants to see whether modified goat's milk not only prevents intestinal illness in pigs but also treats it.

"We'll make them sick and see if they get better," he said.

USA: Higher feed costs contributed to loss at Tysons

Reuters, April 28 2008 [shortened]

Chicago -- Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. meat company, on Monday posted a small loss for its fiscal second quarter due to higher feed costs and charges related in part to plant closings.

Tyson, like other livestock producers, has been hurt by the high price of corn and soybean meal. Corn prices have skyrocketed due to strong demand for exports, ethanol production and as a livestock feed.

"For the year, corn and soybean meal increases are likely to approach $600 million," Richard Bond, Tyson president and chief executive, said in a statement.

For full story see http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/28/business/28tysons.php

Australia: Petrochemical Replacement Plants Closer, Scientists Say

The Epoch Times, 28 April 2008.

CANBERRAóAustralian researchers say they are a step closer to turning plants into "biofactories" capable of producing oils which can be used to replace petrochemicals.

Biofactory plants could provide farmers with new, high-value crops bred to suit growing conditions, they say.

Scientists working within the joint CSIRO/Grains Research and Development Corporation crop biofactories initiative (CBI) claim a major advance by accumulating 30 per cent of an unusual fatty acid (UFA) in the model plant, Arabidopsis.

UFAs are usually sourced from petrochemicals to produce plastics, paints and cosmetics.

CBI is developing new technologies for making a range of UFAs in oilseeds, to provide Australia with a head start in the emerging so-called bioeconomy.

"Using crops as biofactories has many advantages beyond the replacement of dwindling petrochemical resources," CSIRO team leader Dr Allan Green said in a statement.

"Global challenges such as population growth, climate change and the switch from non-renewable resources are opening up many more opportunities for bio-based products."

The production of biofactory plants could be matched to demand and would provide farmers with new, high-value crops bred to suit their growing conditions, Dr Green said.

"The technology is low greenhouse-gas generating, sustainable and can reinvigorate agribusiness.

"We are confident we have the right genes, an understanding of the biosynthesis pathways and the right breeding skills to produce an oilseed plant with commercially-viable UFA levels in the near future."

The team is expected to announce the successful completion of the first stage of the CBI at a world biotechnology conference in Chicago today.

The selection of safflower as the target crop will also be announced by the team.

"Safflower is an ideal plant for industrial production for Australia," Dr Green said.

"It is hardy and easy to grow, widely adapted to Australian production regions and easily isolated from food production systems."

The CBI is a 12-year project which aims to add value to the Australian agricultural and chemical industries by developing technologies to produce novel industrial compounds from genetically modified oilseed crops.

World: Making a killing from the food crisis

A new report by GRAIN http://www.grain.org/2/?id=39, 28 April 2008.

The world food crisis is hurting a lot of people, but global agribusiness firms, traders and speculators are raking in huge profits.

Much of the news coverage of the world food crisis has focussed on riots in low-income countries, where workers and others cannot cope with skyrocketing costs of staple foods. But there is another side to the story: the big profits that are being made by huge food corporations and investors. Cargill, the world's biggest grain trader, achieved an 86% increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year. Bunge, another huge food trader, had a 77% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67% per cent increase in profits in 2007.

Nor are retail giants taking the strain: profits at Tesco, the UK supermarket giant, rose by a record 11.8% last year. Other major retailers, such as France's Carrefour and Wal-Mart of the US, say that food sales are the main sector sustaining their profit increases. Investment funds, running away from sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, are having a heyday on the commodity markets, driving prices out of reach for food importers like Bangladesh and the Philippines.

These profits are no freak windfalls. Over the last 30 years, the IMF and the World Bank have pushed so-called developing countries to dismantle all forms of protection for their local farmers and to open up their markets to global agribusiness, speculators and subsidised food from rich countries. This has transformed most developing countries from being exporters of food into importers. Today about 70 per cent of developing countries are net importers of food. On top of this, finance liberalisation has made it easier for investors to take control of markets for their own private benefit.

Agricultural policy has lost touch with its most basic goal: that of feeding people. Rather than rethink their own disastrous policies, governments and think tanks are blaming production problems, the growing demand for food in China and India, and biofuels. While these have played a role, the fundamental cause of today's food crisis is neoliberal globalisation itself, which has transformed food from a source of livelihood security into a mere commodity to be gambled away, even at the cost of widespread hunger among the world's poorest people.

The angry hungry

The Guardian online, April 28 2008.

The food crisis is no 'silent tsunami': the world's poor have been making a noise for decades, but the development industry hasn't been listening

If Josette Sheeran, head of the United Nations World Food Programme, is to be believed, the current food crisis is "a silent tsunami which knows no borders, sweeping the world".

That's just wishful thinking.

If the tsunami were really silent, then it'd be much easier for cretins to propose trade liberalisation as a remedy, or for Gordon Brown to support genetically modified crops as a way of responding to the disaster.

If the tsunami were silent, these ideas would float unopposed and uncontested. Indeed, it'd be far more convenient for the governments and aid agencies involved if the catastrophe of hunger and poverty were silent, and especially if the hungry didn't keep piping up with their own ideas about what they'd like to see happen. But they do, and their ideas are often at odds with those proposed by the development industry.

If the tsunami were really silent, the fairytales of the international development cabal could be told in nothing louder than a whisper. In these stories, the world's poor people aren't very articulate, and it requires an almost magical skill to divine their needs. The poor like are puppies with tummy aches, whose mute suffering is knowable only to those trained in the art of looking into those big brown eyes and feeling their pain.

I should know. As a graduate student, I participated in just such an exercise for the World Bank as a contributor to a publication entitled The Voices of The Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?

Billed as a way of "gathering the voices of 40,000 people from the Bank's own assessments", and favourably blurbed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the document is an attempt at an epistemological get-out-of-jail-free card, for no one knows the poor like the World Bank.

It is, of course, an execrable piece of work and one that gets savaged in a number of places, including here (by one of the report's other co-authors and me).

But the tsunami has been noisy for decades. Some of the poorest people on earth have been extremely vocal, ever since the dawn of modern development policies. Via Campesina, one of the world's largest movements of poor people with membership estimates as high as 150 million, has been warning of the dangers of handing over agriculture to the private sector ever since its inception in the early 1990s.

They've long been campaigning for things that aren't on the policy table at the moment - things like state-led land reform. Like grain stores and income support for the poor. Like equal access to natural resources. Like government investment to develop new and sustainable agro-agricultural technologies, as opposed to GM crops - a position recently vindicated by a venerable panel of experts at the IAASTD.

Above all, they demand democracy so that their voices might count. Those voices are articulate and audible. The International Day of Peasants' Struggle happened last week, with protests in over 60 countries, commemorating the massacre of 19 landless people by government forces in Brazil in 1996. Those protests were rich with ideas for food sovereignty.

But the voices have so far been ignored. The most common agricultural response to the demands of landless people and the hungry urban poor is for officials to plant their fingers in their ears.

Meanwhile, the private sector is rubbing its hands at the prospect that this crisis too might be an arena for them to practice a new brand of disaster capitalism.

The tsunami is loud and clear. Perhaps the global wave of food riots their policies have engendered will help to clear the soil out of the development industry's ears.

CSIRO: Compounds from oilseeds could be used to make plastics and other products. Boost for 'green plastics' from plants; Australian researchers are a step closer to turning plants into 'biofactories' capable of producing oils which can be used

Calibre MicroWorld, April 28 2008.

Australia -- Scientists working within the joint CSIRO/Grains Research and Development Corporation Crop Biofactories Initiative (CBI) have achieved a major advance by accumulating 30 per cent of an unusual fatty acid (UFA) in the model plant, Arabidopsis.

UFAs are usually sourced from petrochemicals to produce plastics, paints and cosmetics. CBI is developing new technologies for making a range of UFAs in oilseeds, to provide Australia with a head start in the emerging 'bioeconomy'.

"Using crops as biofactories has many advantages, beyond the replacement of dwindling petrochemical resources," says the leader of the crop development team, CSIRO's Dr Allan Green.

"Global challenges such as population growth, climate change and the switch from non-renewable resources are opening up many more opportunities for bio-based products." "Safflower is an ideal plant for industrial production for Australia," Dr Green, CSIRO Plant Industry Division.

The production of biofactory plants can be matched to demand and will provide farmers with new, high-value crops bred to suit their growing conditions. The technology is low greenhouse gas generating, sustainable and can reinvigorate agribusiness.

"We are confident we have the right genes, an understanding of the biosynthesis pathways and the right breeding skills to produce an oilseed plant with commercially viable UFA levels in the near future," Dr Green says.

The team will announce the successful completion of the first stage of the CBI on 28 April during the Fifth Annual World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology & Bioprocessing (WCIBB), being held in Chicago, Illinois, from 27-30 April 2008. The team's selection of safflower as the target crop will also be announced.

"Safflower is an ideal plant for industrial production for Australia," Dr Green says. "It is hardy and easy to grow, widely adapted to Australian production regions and easily isolated from food production systems."

The CBI is a 12-year project which aims to add value to the Australian agricultural and chemical industries by developing technologies to produce novel industrial compounds from genetically modified oilseed crops.

The project focuses on three key areas; Industrial Oils, Complex Monomers and Protein Biopolymers. CBI project leaders will present the latest research findings in each of these three areas at the WCIBB in Chicago which will showcase innovations in the convergence of biotechnology, chemistry and agriculture.

Download image at: Boost for 'green plastics' from plants.

Read more media releases in our Media Centre.

Fast facts

* The production of biofactory plants can be matched to demand and will provide farmers with new, high-value crops bred to suit their growing conditions

* The technology is low greenhouse gas generating, sustainable and can reinvigorate agribusiness

* The project focuses on three key areas; Industrial Oils, Complex Monomers and Protein Biopolymers

CONTACT: Dr Allan Green, CSIRO Plant Industry Tel: +61 2 6246 5154 Fax: +61 2 6246 5192 e-mail: Allan.Green@csiro.au Mrs Julie Carter, (BSc GradDipEd), Communication Manager, CSIRO Entomology Tel: +61 2 6246 4040 Tel: +61 4 3903 3011 Fax: +61 2 6246 4177 e-mail: enquiries@csiro.au

UK: A new era of food politics

National Farmers Union, 28 April 2008. By Katy Lee, BAB Parliamentary and Communications Coordinator.

The issue of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) is in need of urgent examination by the EU. This was the message pushed by MEPs at a debate in Strasbourg last week.

On behalf of the European Parliament's powerful Agriculture Committee Neil Parish MEP (SW, Cons) asked the European Commission to assess the consequences of GMO reluctance from the EU on international trade and animal feed prices. The EU's current GMO policy has been problematic because there are countries outside of Europe such as the US who have approved the use of GMO cereals such as varieties of maize and soya where the EU hasn't.

The slower pace at which the EU authorises GMO compared to the rest of the world is known as "asynchronous authorisations", it has caused problems in trade and in food availability because a small trace of US approved GMO in an export destined for the EU would mean the withdrawal of the whole batch.

Mr Parish suggested that a tolerance threshold might be the way forward for scientifically approved GMOs, in order to avoid further threats to EU grain supply and in particular to animal feed.

In the same Strasbourg session the EU Commissioner for Development, Louis Michel, said "We won't see food prices going back down to former levels".

27 April 2008

Is corn overplanting responsible for soaring food costs?

Athens Banner Herald (USA), April 27 2008. By David A. Ridenour.

WASHINGTON - Move over "Bridge to Nowhere," there's a new poster child of congressional waste and avarice - ethanol, the "Fuel to Nowhere." Ethanol leads only to higher food prices and greater greenhouse gas emissions.

Anytime Congress can find an excuse for shoveling out billions of dollars in pork, it's a safe bet there'll be a stampede of Democrats and Republicans to vote "Aye." Such has been the case with ethanol ever since Congress latched onto the idea that it could be sold as a means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Congress already has authorized billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies for farmers who grow corn and the producers who turn it into the fuel that's pumped into your car.

Never mind that ethanol is helping spike food prices. Corn prices already have increased by 70 percent since 2005, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects they will rise an additional 10 percent to 20 percent this year.

But that's not the half of it. Corn-dependent livestock also are increasing in price. The USDA estimates that corn feed price increases added nearly 9 percent to the price of beef last year. But this doesn't include the indirect costs. U.S. beef cattle herds declined by 338,000 in 2007, increasing beef prices further, in part, due to higher prices for feed, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Ethanol advocates claim that rising corn costs have contributed only modestly to the overall increase in food prices. They're not being entirely honest, as they're only counting the direct costs of ethanol. They don't count, for example, increases in soybean prices resulting from farmers switching to the more lucrative corn crop. Soybean crops dropped by 11 million acres last year - much of it used to produce corn.

The corn growers and Big Agriculture, flush with new-found cash, have generously increased their campaign contributions, making everyone happy - everyone, that is, but consumers and taxpayers.

As the world begins to starve it's time to take GM seriously
With the Earth's population continuing to soar, it will be the poor who go hungry, not the eco-warriors destroying modified crops

The Observer (UK), Sunday April 27 2008. By Robin McKie.

As front pages go, the cover of Nature is scarcely a stunner. It depicts two rows of trees facing each other across the page. One row is tatty, the other clean and healthy. And apart from a few grubby bushes in the background, that's your lot. It makes a gardening catalogue look exciting.

But this restrained imagery rewards closer inspection. Those trees, bearing papayas, are growing in a Hawaiian plantation and the difference between the two rows has critical importance to the world's mounting food crisis.

It transpires that the stunted trees on the right, each bearing only a handful of fruit, are victims of papaya ringspot virus, a disease that devastates yields and is endemic in Hawaii. By contrast, the papaya trees in the other row, on the left, are healthy and disease-free, because they have been genetically modified to resist ringspot.

As a demonstration of the potential of modern plant technology, the image speaks volumes. Transgenic crops may be disparaged and dug up every time scientists grow them as part of their trials in the UK, but as Nature's cover shows, the technology seems ripe to help feed a planet whose population will rise from 6.5 billion people, many of them already hungry, to around nine billion by 2040.

It is a point stressed by crop experts such as Professor Chris Pollack of the University of Wales. 'To stop widespread starvation, we will either have to plough up the planet's last wild places to grow more food or improve crop yields. GM technology allows farmers to do the latter - without digging up rainforests. It is therefore perverse to rule out that technology for no good reason. Yet it still seems some people are willing to do so. That picture of transgenic papaya plants on Nature's cover shows how wrong they are.'

The trouble is that GM crops represent everything that the environment movement has come to hate, though it was not the technology itself that originally made greenies froth at the mouth. It was its promotion and marketing by international conglomerates such as Monsanto a decade ago that raised the hackles. As a result, GM crops have become a lightning rod for protests about globalisation. 'GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them,' claimed campaigner George Monbiot.

Perhaps he is right. However, it is questionable to go one step further and insist, as some campaigners do, that because GM technology has been misused by biotechnology conglomerates, it is therefore justifiable to ignore its usefulness completely. The science can still help feed the world, particularly through the introduction of drought and disease resistance to staple crops such as potatoes and rice. 'Britain and Europe have isolated themselves from the rest of the world over transgenic crops,' says Bill McKelvey, principal of the Scottish Agricultural College, in Edinburgh. 'We have decided the technology, for no good reason, is dangerous. The rest of the world doesn't thinks so and has got on with using it. For example, GM soya is grown throughout America and Asia. It doesn't worry people there for the simple reason that no one has ever died of eating GM food. On the other hand, a lot of people could soon die because they have no food of any kind.'

Tough luck, you might say. That's not Europe's problem. It's the developing world that will get it in the neck. Why should we care? What have we got to gain by turning to GM? These are interesting questions to which there are several answers and one of the most important concerns climate change.

The world is warming and is destined to do so for decades to come as cars, factories and power plants continue to pump out carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. As a result, many grain-producing regions - in North America, Australia and parts of Africa - are expected to suffer significant changes in climate that will devastate crop production. By contrast, other regions - northern Europe and Canada, in particular - will find weather changes will boost crop growing. They will become the world's food stores, an issue highlighted by Professor Les Firbank of North Wyke Research Station in Devon.

'Our best knowledge suggests Canada and countries in Europe will have to take on an even greater share of world food production,' he says. 'It is therefore important to ask now if we have the moral right to continue to ignore technologies, including the genetic manipulation of crops, that in a few years could insure this food production reaches an absolute maximum and will help the planet provide enough food for the nine billion people who will be living on it.'

Britain and many other European countries have considerable expertise in plant and crop biology research, it should be stressed. But that work is constantly frustrated. Crop trials are dug up and funding is blocked by governments embarrassed to be seen backing such work. The effects are rarely beneficial. Consider the example of potato blight. Its prevalence rose rapidly last year, threatening a crop that is a staple foodstuff for many people round the world.

Yet scientists insist it would be relatively easy to introduce a basic gene construct into potatoes that would make them resistant to blight. Europe has the expertise but is thwarted by gangs of men and women who trash GM crop fields. As Sir Robert May, the government's former chief scientific adviser, once remarked, these individuals display 'the attitude of a privileged elite who think there will be no problem feeding tomorrow's growing population'. May was speaking, with remarkable prescience, at the turn of the century.

This is not to say that transgenic crops alone will save the world from starvation. Major improvements in transport, which will allow fresh food to be taken to market without rotting, are needed, for example. Simply bringing political stability to a country would also help. 'Zimbabwe's food problems won't be helped through GM crop technology,' admits McKelvey. 'It needs a political solution. Nevertheless, the technology has a key role to play in tackling the overall problem of global food shortages - but only if we let it.'

That is the crucial issue. Is society ready to change its attitude to GM crops? Major companies - Debenhams is the latest - still announce GM bans, no doubt under pressure from protest groups. But given the science's growing role in helping world food shortages, such decisions should really be seen as acts of shame, not pronouncements of pride. And some scientists believe they can now detect shifts in public attitudes. 'I think we are approaching a tipping point when society will start looking at this as a science that is not going to damage the planet but actually help it,' says McKelvey.

I hope he is right, though I am not so confident. Environmental campaigners, although they do great work, can often display remarkable intransigence. For example, they remain committed to the idea that nuclear energy has no role to play in helping to combat global warming. They react with equal scorn to GM crops. The latter is certainly not a panacea for the ills we will face. On other hand, it certainly has a role to play in helping to save people from starvation, a fact that is worth repeating now and again.

Robin McKie is The Observer's science editor.

Comment by GM-free Ireland

The above article's failure to mention the scientific evidence reveals its bias:

•

The recent International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology (IAASTD) found that GM crops have little, if any, role to play in increasing crop yields or alleviating hunger. Released on 15 April 2008, the report represents a three-year effort by about 400 experts around the world working under the auspices of 30 governments and 30 representatives of civil society. The report was sponsored by the United Nations, the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), the U.N. Education, Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). For details see http://www.agassessment.org

•

The recent University of Kansas study by Prof. Barney Gordon, published in the Better Crops journal, found that GM crops do NOT have higher yields, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis. The study - carried out over the past three years in the US grain belt - found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields. See "Exposed: the great GM crops myth Major new study shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent" published by the UK Independent newspaper on 20 April (see article under this date below).

This study confirms a number of previous findings:

An April 2006 report from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that "currently available GM crops do not increase the yield potential of a hybrid variety. [Ö] In fact, yield may even decrease if the varieties used to carry the herbicide tolerant or insect-resistant genes are not the highest yielding cultivars". (Fernandez-Cornejo, J. and Caswell, 2006)

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's 2004 report on agricultural biotechnology acknowledges that GM crops can have reduced yields (FAO, 2004). This is not surprising given that first-generation genetic modifications address production conditions (insect and weed control), and are not intended to increase the intrinsic yield capacity of the plant.

A 2003 report published in Science stated that "in the United States and Argentina, average yield effects [of GM crops] are negligible and in some cases even slightly negative". (Qaim and Zilberman, 2003). This was despite the authors being strong supporters of GM crops.

Comment by "Lion4":

Who said that McKie is a scientist? This is a classic piece of junk science, full of unsupported and unsupportable assumptions and assertions. Are we supposed to take this piece of GM propaganda seriously, when it starts with an invitation for us to take seriously a juxtaposition of two pictures, one saying "GM good" and the other "non-GM Bad." Any fool can put two carefully selected pictures side by side -- I can do the same, by showing a lousy and stunted field trial of GM maize in the FSE programme alongside a fine upstanding crop of non-GM maize on the adjacent control site. I choose not to do that, because you would rightly ask me about the circumstances in which the pictures were taken, and about management regimes, socio- economic factors and so forth.

McKie is trying to do what was done not so long ago in the "Wormy Corn" scandal, where pictures were used selectively (and fraudulently) in a crude attempt to show that people, given a choice, would prefer to eat GM food rather than non-GM food.

And for McKie to trot out quotes from Chris Pollock and Bill McKelvey accusing people of opposing GM "for no good reason" is both patronising and disingenuous. The fact that McKie chooses not to mention any of a whole host of perfectly good reasons (supported by sound evidence) why GM technology is both dangerous and unsuited to the solving of the world's food problems suggests that he has lost touch with reality and has been swept up in the flood of pro-GM propaganda currently emanating from the GM industry. For a start, he might care to look at the Ecologist's recent summary of Ten reasons why GM won't feed the world: www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1185

That piece is soundly based and well referenced, and McKie might find it instructive.

The global food system feeds gluttonous corporations first

Philadelphia Enquirer (USA), 27 April 2007. By John Nichols (Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine).

The only surprising thing about the global food crisis to Jim Goodman is the notion that anyone finds it surprising.

"So," says the Wisconsin dairy farmer, "they finally figured out, after all these years of pushing globalization and genetically modified seeds, that instead of feeding the world we've created a food system that leaves more people hungry. If they'd listened to farmers instead of corporations, they would've known this was going to happen."

The food shortages, suddenly front-page news, are not new. Hundreds of millions were starving and malnourished last year; the only change is that as the crisis has grown, it has become more difficult to "manage" the hunger that a failed food system accepts rather than feeds.

The current global food system, designed by U.S.-based agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced into place by the U.S. government and its allies at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, has planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here and abroad to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow healthy food for local consumption and regional stability.

The only smart short-term response is to throw money at the problem. George W. Bush's release of $200 million in emergency aid to the United Nation's World Food Program last week was appropriate, but Washington must do more. Rising food prices may not be causing riots in the United States, but food banks here are struggling to meet demand as joblessness grows. Congress should answer the call of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) to allocate $100 million more to domestic food programs and make sure, as Rep. Jim McGovern (D.Mass.) urges, that an overdue farm bill expands programs for getting fresh food from local farms to local consumers.

Beyond humanitarian responses, the cure for the global food system - and an unsteady U.S. farm economy - is not more of the same globalization and genetic gimmickry. That way has left 37 nations with food crises while global grain giant Cargill harvests an 86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reaps record sales from its herbicides and seeds. For years, corporations have promised that problems would be solved by trade deals and technology - especially genetically modified seeds, which University of Kansas research suggests reduce food production and the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development says won't end global hunger. The "market," at least as defined by agribusiness, isn't working.

We "have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror," says Jean Ziegler, the U.N. right-to-food advocate. But try telling that to the Bush Administration or to World Bank president (and former White House trade rep) Robert Zoellick, who's busy exploiting tragedy to promote trade liberalization.

"If ever there is a time to cut distorting agricultural subsidies and open markets for food imports, it must be now," says Zoellick.

"Wait a second," replies Dani Rodrik, a Harvard political economist who tracks trade policy. "Wouldn't the removal of these distorting policies raise world prices in agriculture even further?" Yes. World Bank studies confirm that wheat and rice prices will rise if Zoellick gets his way.

Instead of listening to the White House or the World Bank, Congress should recognize - as a handful of visionary members like Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio) have - that current trends confirm the wisdom of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's call for "an urgent rethink of the respective roles of markets and governments." That's far more useful than blaming Midwestern farmers for embracing inflated promises about the potential of ethanol.

We should, however, re-examine whether aggressive U.S. support for biofuels is not only distorting corn prices but also harming livestock and dairy producers who can barely afford feed and fertilizer. Instead of telling farmers they're wrong to seek the best prices for their crops, Congress should make sure farmers can count on good prices for growing the food Americans need. It can do this by providing a strong safety net to survive weather and market disasters and a strategic grain reserve similar to the strategic petroleum reserve to guard against food-price inflation.

Congress should also embrace trade and development policies that help developing countries regulate markets with an eye to feeding the hungry rather than feeding corporate profits. This principle, known as "food sovereignty," sees struggling farmers and hungry people and says, as the Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal observes, that it is time to "stop worshiping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the principle [that] every country and every people have a right to food that is affordable." As Mittal says, "When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that has to give."

John Nichols (jnichols@madison.com) is proprietor of the political blog The Beat and is also editor of the Capitol Times.

The new economics of hunger
Amid brutal convergence of events to hit global market, poor suffer most

Washington Post, 27 April 2008. By Anthony Faiola.

The globe's worst food crisis in a generation emerged as a blip on the big boards and computer screens of America's great grain exchanges. At first, it seemed like little more than a bout of bad weather.

In Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City, traders watched from the pits early last summer as wheat prices spiked amid mediocre harvests in the United States and Europe and signs of prolonged drought in Australia. But within a few weeks, the traders discerned an ominous snowball effect -- one that would eventually bring down a prime minister in Haiti, make more children in Mauritania go to bed hungry, even cause American executives at Sam's Club to restrict sales of large bags of rice.

As prices rose, major grain producers including Argentina and Ukraine, battling inflation caused in part by soaring oil bills, were moving to bar exports on a range of crops to control costs at home. It meant less supply on world markets even as global demand entered a fundamentally new phase. Already, corn prices had been climbing for months on the back of booming government-subsidized ethanol programs. Soybeans were facing pressure from surging demand in China. But as supplies in the pipelines of global trade shrank, prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof.

At the same time, food was becoming the new gold. Investors fleeing Wall Street's mortgage-related strife plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into grain futures, driving prices up even more. By Christmas, a global panic was building. With fewer places to turn, and tempted by the weaker dollar, nations staged a run on the American wheat harvest.

Foreign buyers, who typically seek to purchase one or two months' supply of wheat at a time, suddenly began to stockpile. They put in orders on U.S. grain exchanges two to three times larger than normal as food riots began to erupt worldwide. This led major domestic U.S. mills to jump into the fray with their own massive orders, fearing that there would soon be no wheat left at any price.

"Japan, the Philippines, [South] Korea, Taiwan -- they all came in with huge orders, and no matter how high prices go, they keep on buying," said Jeff Voge, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Trade and also an independent trader. Grains have surged so high, he said, that some traders are walking off the floor for weeks at a time, unable to handle the stress.

"We have never seen anything like this before," Voge said. "Prices are going up more in one day than they have during entire years in the past. But no matter the price, there always seems to be a buyer. . . . This isn't just any commodity. It is food, and people need to eat."

Beyond hunger

The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world's poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75, when world food prices rose 78 percent. By comparison, from the beginning of 2005 to early 2008, prices leapt 80 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men -- distributors, processors, even governments -- but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.

The convergence of events has thrown world food supply and demand out of whack and snowballed into civil turmoil. After hungry mobs and violent riots beset Port-au-Prince, Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis was forced to step down this month. At least 14 countries have been racked by food-related violence. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for political survival after a March rebuke from voters furious over food prices. In Bangladesh, more than 20,000 factory workers protesting food prices rampaged through the streets two weeks ago, injuring at least 50 people.

To quell unrest, countries including Indonesia are digging deep to boost food subsidies. The U.N. World Food Program has warned of an alarming surge in hunger in areas as far-flung as North Korea and West Africa. The crisis, it fears, will plunge more than 100 million of the world's poorest people deeper into poverty, forced to spend more and more of their income on skyrocketing food bills.

"This crisis could result in a cascade of others . . . and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.

The new normal

Prices for some crops -- such as wheat -- have already begun to descend off their highs. As farmers rush to plant more wheat now that profit prospects have climbed, analysts predict that prices may come down as much as 30 percent in the coming months. But that would still leave a year-over-year price hike of 45 percent. Few believe prices will go back to where they were in early 2006, suggesting that the world must cope with a new reality of more expensive food.

People worldwide are coping in different ways. For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara's edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian desert village of Maghleg, is confronting wheat prices that are up 67 percent on local markets in the past year. Her solution: stop eating bread. Instead, she has downgraded to cheaper foods, such as sorghum, a dark grain widely consumed by the world's poorest people. But sorghum has jumped 20 percent in the past 12 months. Living on the 50 cents a day she earns weaving textiles to support a family of three, her answer has been to cut out breakfast, drink tea for lunch and ration a small serving of soupy sorghum meal for family dinners. "I don't know how long we can survive like this," she said.

Countries that have driven food demand in recent years are now grappling with the cost of their own success -- rising prices. Although China has tried to calm its people by announcing reserve grain holdings of 30 to 40 percent of annual production, a number that had been a state secret, anxiety is still running high. In the southern province of Guangdong, there are reports of grain hoarding; and in Hong Kong, consumers have stripped store shelves of bags of rice.

Liu Yinhua, a retired factory worker who lives in the port city of Ningbo on China's east coast, said her family of three still eats the same things, including pork ribs, fish and vegetables. But they are eating less of it.

"Almost everything is more expensive now, even normal green vegetables," said Liu, 53. "The level of our quality of life is definitely reduced."

In India, the government recently scrapped all import duties on cooking oils and banned exports of non-basmati rice. As in many parts of the developing world, the impact in India is being felt the most among the urban poor who have fled rural life to live in teeming slums. At a dusty and nearly empty market in one New Delhi neighborhood this week, shopkeeper Manjeet Singh, 52, said people at the market have started hoarding because of fear that rice and oil will run out.

"If one doesn't have enough to fill one's own stomach, then what's the use of an economic boom in exports?" he said, looking sluggish in the scorching afternoon sun. He said his customers were asking for cheaper goods, like groundnut oil instead of soybean oil.

Even wealthy nations are being forced to adjust to a new normal. In Japan, a country with a distinct cultural aversion to cheaper, genetically modified grains, manufacturers are risking public backlash by importing them for use in processed foods for the first time. Inflation in the 15-country zone that uses the euro -- which includes France, Germany, Spain and Italy -- hit 3.6 percent in March, the highest rate since the currency was adopted almost a decade ago and well above the European Central Bank's target of 2.0 percent. Food and oil prices were mostly to blame.

In the United States, experts say consumers are scaling down on quality and scaling up on quantity if it means a better unit price. In the meat aisles of major grocery stores, said Phil Lempert, a supermarket analyst, steaks are giving way to chopped beef and people used to buying fresh blueberries are moving to frozen. Some are even trying to grow their own vegetables.

"A bigger pinch than ever before," said Pat Carroll, a retiree in Congress Heights. "I don't ever remember paying $3 for a loaf of bread."

Ill-equipped markets

The root cause of price surges varies from crop to crop. But the crisis is being driven in part by an unprecedented linkage of the food chain.

A big reason for higher wheat prices, for instance, is the multiyear drought in Australia, something that scientists say may become persistent because of global warming. But wheat prices are also rising because U.S. farmers have been planting less of it, or moving wheat to less fertile ground. That is partly because they are planting more corn to capitalize on the biofuel frenzy.

This year, at least a fifth and perhaps a quarter of the U.S. corn crop will be fed to ethanol plants. As food and fuel fuse, it has presented a boon to American farmers after years of stable prices. But it has also helped spark the broader food-price shock.

"If you didn't have ethanol, you would not have the prices we have today," said Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. "It doesn't mean it's the sole driver. Prices would be higher than we saw earlier in this decade because world grain supplies are tighter now than earlier in the decade. But we've introduced a new demand into the market."

In fact, many economists now say food prices should have climbed much higher much earlier.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world seemed to shrink with rapidly opening markets, surging trade and improved communication and transportation technology. Given new market efficiencies and the wide availability of relatively cheap food, the once-common practice of hoarding grains to protect against the kind of shortfall the world is seeing now seemed more and more archaic. Global grain reserves plunged.

Yet there was one big problem. The global food trade never became the kind of well-honed machine that has made the price of manufactured goods such as personal computers and flat-screen TVs increasingly similar worldwide. With food, significant subsidies and other barriers meant to protect farmers -- particularly in Europe, the United States and Japan -- have distorted the real price of food globally, economists say, preventing the market from normal price adjustments as global demand has climbed.

If market forces had played a larger role in food trade, some now argue, the world would have had more time to adjust to more gradually rising prices.

"The international food trade didn't under