Zambian cotton grower sitting on his bales. Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market. Credit: Nebert Mulenga/IPS

By Haidee Swanby
MELVILLE, South Africa, Jun 15 2015 (IPS)

Genetically modified (GM) cotton has been produced globally for almost two decades, yet to date only three African countries have grown GM cotton on a commercial basis – South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan.

African governments have been sceptical of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) for decades and have played a key role historically in ensuring that international law – the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety – takes a precautionary stance towards genetic engineering in food and agriculture.

They have also imposed various restrictions and bans on the cultivation and importation of GMOs, including on genetically modified (GM) food aid.

But now resistance to GM cultivation is crumbling as a number of other African countries such as Malawi, Ghana, Swaziland and Cameroon appear to be on the verge of allowing their first cultivation of GM cotton, with Nigeria and Ethiopia planning to follow suit in the next two to three years.“Scrutiny of actual experiences [with GM cotton] reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production”

Some African governments and local cotton producers have high hopes that GM technology will boost African competitiveness in the dog-eat-dog world that characterises the global cotton market.

At the moment African cotton productivity is declining – it now stands at only half the world average – while global productivity is increasing. The promise of improving productivity and reducing pesticide use through the adoption of GM cotton is thus compelling.

However, African leaders and cotton producers need to take a close look at how GM cotton has fared in South Africa and Burkina Faso to date, particularly its socioeconomic impact on smallholder farmers.

Scrutiny of actual experiences reveals a tragic tale of crippling debt, appalling market prices and a technology prone to failure in the absence of very specific and onerous management techniques, which are not suited to smallholder production.

As stated by a farmer during a Malian public consultation on GMOs, “What’s the point of encouraging us to increase yields with GMOs when we can’t get a decent price for what we already produce?”

In Burkina Faso, the tide turned against GM cotton after just five seasons as low yields and low quality fibres persisted. In South Africa, GM cotton brought devastating debts to smallholders and the local credit institution went bust. Last season, smallholders contributed to less than three percent of South Africa’s total production.

In Malawi, Monsanto has already applied to the government for a permit to commercialise Bollgard II, its GM pest resistant cotton, to which there has been a strong reaction from civil society and an alliance of organisations has submitted substantive objections.

Even Malawi’s cotton industry, the Cotton Development Trust (CDT), has publically voiced its concerns over a number of issues, including inadequate field trials, the high cost of GM seed and related inputs, and blurred intellectual property arrangements.

In addition, CDT has expressed unease over the potential development of pest resistance and the inevitable applications of herbicide chemicals.

Regional economic communities (RECs), such as the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), are also key players in readying their member states for the commercialisation of and trade in GM cotton, through harmonised biosafety policies. Together COMESA and ECOWAS incorporate 34 countries in Africa.

The COMESA Policy on Biotechnology and Biosafety was adopted in February 2014 and member states validated the implementation plan in March 2015.

The ECOWAS Biosafety Policy has been through an arduous process for more than a decade now and pronounced conflicts between trade imperatives and safety checks have stalled agreement between stakeholders. However, recent reports indicate that agreement between member states and donor parties has been reached and a final draft of the Biosafety Policy will soon be published.

Experiments and open field trials with GM cotton have been running for many years in a number of African countries and are increasingly at a stage where applications for commercial release are imminent.

However, there are many obstacles to the birth of a new GM era in Africa, chief among them the fact that this high-end technology is simply not appropriate to resource-poor farmers operating on tiny pieces of land, together with fierce opposition from civil society and sometimes also from governments.

Attempts by the biotech industry to impose policies that pander to investors’ desires at the expense of environmental and human safety may be easier to realise at the regional level, through the trade-friendly RECs. This is where many biotech industry resources and efforts are currently being channelled.

Despite whatever legal environments may be implemented to enable the introduction of GM cotton regionally or nationally, the fact remains that Africa’s cotton farmers are operating in a difficult global sector – prices are erratic and distorted by unfair subsidies in the North, institutional support for their activities is often lacking, and high input costs are already annihilating profit margins.

Fighting for the introduction of more expensive technologies that have already proven themselves technologically unsound in a smallholder environment is deeply irresponsible and short-sighted.

It is time that African governments turn their resources to improving the local environments in which cotton producers operate, including institutional and infrastructural support that can bring long-term sustainability to the sector, without placing further burdens and vulnerability on some of the most marginalised people in the world.

Civil society actions will continue to vehemently oppose and challenge the false solutions promised by GM cotton and will insist on just trading environments and true and sustainable upliftment for African cotton producers.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* This opinion piece is based on the author’s more extensive paper titled Cottoning on to the Lie, published by the African Centre for Biodiversity, June 2015

Excerpt:

A bean cleaning plant in the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas. Credit: Courtesy of Secretaría de Agricultura

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jul 14 2014 (IPS)

Bean grower Manuel Alvarado is part of the majority of producers in Mexico who consider it unnecessary to introduce genetically modified varieties of beans, as the government is promoting.

“There is no study showing superior yields compared with hybrid or regional seeds. People are still unaware of what transgenic products are, nor the effects they have, but some of the things that are known about them are not good,” said Alvarado, the head of Enlaces al Campo, a bulk beans sales company in the city of Fresnillo, in the northern state of Zacatecas."There can be no biosecurity with transgenics: they cause genetic erosion (loss of genetic diversity)." -- Silvia Ribeiro

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) may cause a number of problems, among them the possibility that “transgenics will contaminate native and hybrid seeds, which have higher germination rates than transgenics,” Alvarado told IPS.

Bean farmers in Mexico face a context of overproduction, low prices and increasing imports, in a country where there are 300,000 bean producers, half of them small scale farmers.

Alvarado has obtained yields of between 12 and 16 tonnes per hectare from 10 native varieties of beans on 15 hectares of land. He has also tested 28 commercial maize hybrid seeds, obtaining up to 15 tonnes per hectare on 14 hectares of land.

In 2013, beans were grown on an area of 1.83 million hectares in Mexico and 1.28 million tonnes were produced, with overall yields of 1.79 tonnes per hectare, according to the Observatorio de Precios (Price Observatory), an independent group providing information and analysis for food producers and consumers.

The northern states of Zacatecas, Durango and Chihuahua are the main producing areas.

Cultivation of GMO in Mexico is turning away from concentration on maize and soybeans, after various legal appeals in 2013 banned their planting. The Mexican government and the industry are expanding their sights now to include beans and wheat, among other crops.

On Apr. 22, the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (INIFAP) presented an application to the National Service for Agri-Food Health, Safety and Quality (SENASICA) for experimental planting of transgenic beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) on 0.12 hectares in the central state of Guanajuato.

The application is based on the research paper “Resistance to Colletotrichum lindemuthianum in transgenic common bean expressing an Arabidopsis thaliana defensin gene,” funded by the National Council for Science and Technology and the Agriculture ministry and published in 2013 in the Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas.

Producers and activists distribute beans on Paseo de la Reforma avenue in Mexico City on Jul. 3, demanding better conditions for their product. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

The five authors, scientists at INIFAP, engineered five independent lines and 20 transgenic bean plants expressing the defensin gene. These plants proved resistant to two strains of the pathogenic fungus Colletotrichum lindemuthianum, which causes the fungal disease anthracnose. Non-genetically modified plants were not resistant.

Anthracnose, rust, angular leaf spot and root rot are diseases that affect beans in Mexico, which has 70 different varieties of the crop.

Silvia Ribeiro, the Latin America director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group), complained about the use of public funds to promote this kind of research which she views as a new “trick” to take over staple food production.

“The use of public resources for GMO research increases dependence on technology. It would be better to devote these funds to supporting the vast reservoir of wisdom on bean farming among campesinos (small farmers), and to promote preventive pest management and agroecosystems,” she told IPS.

SENASICA has received four applications this year for experimental and pilot plots of transgenic maize in 10 hectares in the northwestern staes of Sonora and Sinaloa from Pioneer, a U.S. seed company.  A further four pilot project applications for 85,000 hectares of genetically modified cotton in different states have been made by U.S. giant Monsanto.

The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre has also presented five applications for experimental planting of transgenic wheat on half a hectare in the central state of Morelos, adjacent to Mexico City.

In 2013, SENASICA received 58 applications for experimental, pilot and commercial planting of transgenic maize on a total of over five million hectares, presented by Monsanto, Pioneer, Syngenta (Switzerland) and Dow Agrosciences (U.S.).

Another 29 applications for experimental, pilot and commercial planting of transgenic cotton were made by Monsanto and Bayer (Germany), which also requested three experimental permits for soybeans on 45 hectares in the southeastern states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán and the southern state of Chiapas.

U.S. company Forage Genetics applied for an experimental alfalfa plantation on 0.38 hectares in the northern state of Coahuila.

“They want to shift the focus of the debate away from the fact that only companies present applications, and show that there is a national research capability,” Catherine Marielle, the coordinator of the sustainable food systems programme of the Group for Environmental Studies, an NGO, told IPS.

In July 2013, 53 individuals and 20 civil society organisations mounted a collective legal challenge against applications to plant transgenic maize, and in September a federal judge granted a precautionary ban on such authorisations.

The Agriculture and Environment ministries and the companies involved presented more than 70 rebuttals of the ruling, but the case “will take time,” according to court sources.

Since March 2014, organisations of beekeepers and indigenous communities have won two further provisional protection orders against commercial transgenic soybean crops in Campeche and Yucatán.

In June 2012, the Agriculture ministry authorised Monsanto to plant transgenic soybean commercially on an area of 253,000 hectares in seven Mexican states, including Campeche.

“We have perfected technological packages on how to prepare the soil, what seed to use and what fertilisers to apply. In the medium term we want to move to using organic fertilisers. All this would be scuppered if transgenic beans are imposed,” producer Alvarado said.

At present farmers sell beans for 30 to 45 cents of a dollar per kilo. With a state subsidy of a similar value, growers can recoup their production costs.

In Alvarado’s view, farmers could compete with U.S. imports “if we organise in the production zones, and the state stockpiles, provides credit to producers and value is added” to beans.

Although GMOs have been commercialised since the mid 1990s, nearly all transgenic crop production is concentrated in 10 countries: United States, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, India, China, Paraguay, South Africa, Pakistan and Uruguay, in that order.

Most transgenic crops are used for livestock forage, but Mexico wants maize, at least, to be used for human food.

The government supports GMO, according to agricultural officials, because in the medium and long term they are a means of confronting climate effects on food production and guaranteeing food security.

“Mexico does not need transgenics. The country has never produced as much maize as it produces now. Besides, there can be no biosecurity with transgenics: they cause genetic erosion (loss of genetic diversity),” because contamination of conventional crops is inevitable, said Ribeiro of ETC Group.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Fidenato's MON810 maize in Tomba di Mereto 2014. Credit: Leandro Taboga

By Silvia Giannelli
LUCCA, Italy, May 25 2014 (IPS)

“I  want to grow genetically modified organisms (GMOs) because I want to feed my family with biotech products. In no way do I want to eat biological food because I think it’s not so healthy or nutritious.”

This is how Giorgio Fidenato, Italian farmer and President of Agricoltori Federati (Federated Farmers), explained to IPS the reason behind his fight against the Italian ban on Monsanto’s genetically modified MON810 maize.

“I’ve already sown [GMO maize] in three different plots this year and I have self-denounced myself for doing so” -- Giorgio Fidenato, Italian farmer, President of Agricoltori Federati (Federated Farmers)
The Monsanto maize is the only GMO allowed for cultivation throughout the European Union, and the directive that regulates the deliberate release into the environment of GMOs, Directive 2001/18/EC, includes a ‘safeguard clause’ that allows member states to prohibit such cultivation, provided that they “have justifiable reasons to consider that the GMO in question poses a risk to human health or the environment”.

So far, 129.000 hectares of land – roughly the area covered by a city the size of Rome – are being cultivated with genetically modified corn in Europe, 90 percent of which is in Spain, while the rest is spread across Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.

In Italy, three ministers – Health, Agricultural Policies and Environment – signed a decree last year to ban Monsanto’s GMO maize. “There are currently six countries in Europe that have invoked the ‘safeguard clause’ to prohibit GMO cultivation,” Giuseppe Croce, agriculture director of Italy’s environmental organisation Legambiente, told IPS, “namely, Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Germany and Luxembourg.”

“On the other hand,” said Croce, “Italy used an emergency-measure procedure that bans them only temporarily.” The inter-ministerial decree banning GMO maize has a validity of 18 months. “If nothing happens in the meantime, at the end of 2014, Fidenato will be free to grow Monsanto’s genetically modified maize,” Croce explained.

However, Fidenato has no intention of waiting. In the last three years, he has already sown his three hectares of land with MON810, fuelling strong protests by environmentalist groups and sparking a huge debate in the country. “My first harvest, in 2010, was confiscated by the authorities. My farm was under legal possession until May this year, but I’ve already sown in three different plots this year and I have self-denounced myself for doing so.”

Despite the upholding of the national ban by the Regional Court of Lazio, to which Fidenato had appealed in October last year, the farmer is not giving up and has already presented another appeal to the Council of State. “This is my chance to show the arrogance and iniquity of democracy, because here we are facing the pretension that, just because the majority does not want GMOs, I can’t eat them either. What I say is: if you don’t want them, don’t buy my products.”

But not all agriculturists see farming the way Fidenato sees it. Lucca, in Tuscany, is the Italian province with the highest concentration of biodynamic farms. Like the majority of those, Gabriele Da Prato’s ranch farm in the mountain region of Garfagnana, north of Lucca, produces wine. For him, his choices – and the choices of the farmers around him – will determine the future of the territory where he grew up.

His farm covers three and half hectares and he is the only ‘employee’, producing around 14,000 bottles of wine each year. “I decided to take over the family farm in 1998, in the years of heavy chemicals, also in subsistence farming,” Da Prato told IPS.

Farmer showing a clump of soil, with “simply no life underneath”. Photo credit: IPS/Silvia Giannelli

In 2000, he began to realise that his land had problems of soil erosion, lack of potassium and calcium, “but what bothered me the most was to find out, by observing the clumps of soil, that there was simply no life underneath. This was the consequence of years and years of chemical use: artificial fertilisers had impoverished the soil, herbicides had killed all the grass, the butterflies had disappeared, it was a disaster.”

It was then that he took a radical decision and began to apply biodynamic methods, using uniquely natural substances, such as mineral, plant, or animal manure extracts to enhance soil quality. For him, opening the doors to GMOs in Italy is simply nonsense: “First of all, Italy’s surface area isn’t big enough to compete with giants such as North America in the field of GMOs. High quality, inimitable products and our territorial identity, these are our trump cards,” Da Prato stressed.

But beyond the economic factor, threats to the ecosystem seem to be his biggest concern. “On a field sown with GMOs, the water simply slips away. My plot, which is healthy and lively, can hold up to 90 percent of water. Last year we had a big flood, and I can thank my biodynamic vineyard if my house is still intact,” Da Prato said. “Once we are done exploiting our territory to fill up the wallet, and the earth won’t be able to give us food any longer, then maybe people will start asking themselves what happened,” he concluded sadly.

The legal battle between these two points of view is still on, as Croce explained: “The EU is in the process of reforming the directive on GMOs, and this will likely happen during the Italian presidency (July-December 2014). Based on the current negotiations, we are hopeful that the new regulation will include an additional clause allowing member states to ban GMOs also for economic reasons, which is crucial for ‘Made in Italy’ exports.”

Yet, Fidenato remains firm on his position: “When I was a kid, I used to go with my mother to pull out weeds with my bare hands, I know what it means and they won’t make me go back to that. Others can keep doing so if they like, I won’t.”