Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

88 Hope Not Hype
The traditional small scale farms are store houses of diversity managed by men and women
sharing the responsibilities. Farmers (men and women) play a conscious and determinant
role in the generation and maintenance of diversity through dynamic interaction with the
biotic and abiotic factors within the agro-ecosystem. In order to understand and enhance the
traditional practices of farmers, it is necessary to acknowledge and learn more about the
complex and diverse nature of the indigenous resource exploitation system. Conserving
biodiversity also needs conservation of these traditional farming systems that have nurtured
the presently existing diversity (Tsegaye, 1997, p. 225).
These approaches require ongoing active engagement at all levels to introduce,
maintain and grow their effectiveness.
[P]romoting and supporting participatory technologies have limited impact when no attention
is paid to participatory policy development and implementation (de Jager, 2005, p. 57).
Furthermore, unless reward structures also reflect the value of ecosystem services, there
will be little incentive for the private sector to invest in sustainable agricultural methods
(Tilman et al., 2002, p. 676).
In summary, biodiversity and agrobiodiversity are best maintained, even promoted,
in agroecosystems composed of small-scale farming wherein multiple crops are grown
using many different pest control and soil restoration practices. While some industrialscale
technologies can have lower negative impact than other conventional methods, these
technologies appear to only slow and not reverse the ecological impacts of agriculture and
any benefits may be short-term. Social equity and national capacity-building goals are
best achieved by policies that involve the farmer, often women, in ongoing innovation
and secure the benefits of that innovation for the farmer and local community. In this
regard, there has been no obvious benefit of genetic engineering technologies which are
dominated by a small number of mega-corporations. Agroecological methods may not
only better suit the social structures and agroecosystems of developing countries, they
may in time out-produce the present industrial conventional methods of developed
countries.
Target: increased yield and disease resistance
GMOs have not been designed to directly increase yield, although yield gains might
be derived indirectly from more effective pest management in some cropping systems
(see Chapter Five). On the whole, any such yield and financial return gains have been
sporadic and highly crop- and year-dependent, with researchers concluding (e.g., for Africa)
that there “is still not enough evidence to generalize about the returns to GM crop
improvement research” (Eicher et al., 2006, p. 523).
This is the good news: biotechnologies not based on transgenics remain technically
capable of meeting our food needs (UNEP/UNCTAD, 2008). However, this will not be
achieved by simply eliminating modern biotechnology. We cannot rely on agroecological