Hope Not Hype - Third World Network

54 Hope Not Hype
The plant science industry cares passionately about abating hunger and supporting rural
development. Higher-yielding plants and protection against insects and crop diseases
are critical in helping farmers produce the food the world needs (Keith, 2008, p.
17).
The Assessment text
Executive Summary of the Synthesis Report
(p. 8)
[D]ata based on some years and some
GM crops indicate highly variable 10-
33% yield gains in some places and yield
declines in others.
Synthesis Report (p. 40)
[L]ingering doubts about the adequacy
of efficacy and safety testing
Some controversy may in part be due to
the relatively short time modern biotechnology,
particularly GMOs, has existed
compared to biotechnology in general.
The pool of evidence of the sustainability
and productivity of GMOs in different
settings is relatively anecdotal, and the
findings from different contexts are variable,
allowing proponents and critics to
hold entrenched positions about their
present and potential value. Some regions
report increases in some crops and positive
financial returns have been reported
for GM cotton in studies including South
Africa, Argentina, China, India and
Mexico. In contrast, the US and Argentina
may have slight yield declines in
soybeans, and also for maize in the US.
(From Agriculture at a Crossroads: The
Synthesis Report by IAASTD, ed.
Copyright © 2009 IAASTD. Reproduced
by permission of Island Press,
Washington, D.C.)
The above statement was made by a
representative of the commercial genetic engineering
giant Syngenta. In fact, however,
commercial GM crops at the end of the first
decade of development are nearly exclusively
either herbicide-tolerant/resistant
(HT/HR) or insect-resistant (IR), or both
(Qaim and Zilberman, 2003), but they are
not yield-enhancing. Amongst the few exceptions
to the crops listed above are disease-tolerant
crops such as GM papaya, but
again these are not direct yield-increasing
traits. Yield enhancement is not being effectively
transferred to the world’s poor farmers
because of how we apply genetic
engineering.
[T]here is also sufficient evidence to suggest
that the institutional design of the
emerging agbiotech era falls short in several
areas that are critical to the diffusion
of yield-enhancing and poverty-reducing
technologies (Spielman, 2007, p. 198).
GM crops simply have not been designed
to directly increase yield. The yield
gains are meant to be indirect (Appendix
Two).
According to USDA’s Agricultural and
Resource Management Surveys (ARMS)
conducted in 2001-03, most of the farmers
adopting GE corn, cotton, and soybeans
indicated that they did so mainly to increase
yields through improved pest control
(Fernandez-Cornejo and Caswell,
2006, p. 9).