Here's an interesting commentary I came across regarding GM foods in Southern Africa.
Alisa
Science for food
By Mzati Nkolokosa
The Nation (Malawi) via AgBios
August 23, 2006
The famine of 2001 was a double-edged sword in Southern Africa and Malawi was a typical example.
On one side, people were dying of hunger-related illnesses. On the other, government was being accused of accepting genetically modified (GM) relief maize.
Zambia, which was starving as well, was praised for rejecting GM maize because as Mwananyada Lewanika, a biochemist at the Institute for Science and Technology said “GM maize is risky to people.”
This was bought by a network of international organisations. Here, the Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN) brought 10 African countries to a conference where GM foods were condemned, saying people were supposed to be warned of the dangers of consuming such foods and that Malawi was supposed to reject the maize.
Government was compelled to mill the maize to prevent people from planting the seed because, as people speculated, GM maize had the ability to kill other crops.
But GM crops are not that bad as I discovered on a fact finding mission in South Africa where I went about the country, visiting GM maize and cotton farmers. In fact, the right name is genetically improved (GI) or biotechnology—applied biology that uses any living system to produce something useful using the latest tools and techniques.
“Science is for the benefit of people,” said Professor Diran Makinde of AfricaBio, an independent, non-profit biotechnology stakeholders association whose role is to provide accurate information and create awareness on biotechnology in South Africa and the region. “A scientist cannot give people something that will destroy them. That is not science.”
Makinde was speaking when he introduced biotechnology to parliamentarians, journalists and scientists from Malawi and Kenya.
The audience was all silent, marvelling at the presentation. Biotechnology, said Makinde, is the science of improving crops and animals by taking genes from any source into another organism.
This technology, although known to most Malawians a couple of years ago, has been around for decades and been useful in sewerage and compositing, making of bread, wine, beer, medicinal plants and vaccine.
A typical example is medicinal trees.
If a medicinal tree in North Pole cannot grow in Malawi, scientists can take the genes to a specie in Malawi, put that gene in a miombo, to produce the same effect as the medicinal tree of the North Pole. That is how biotechnology works.
That is what scientists have done with maize and cotton, for example. It is working in South Africa, the continent’s only country growing GM crops at commercial level.
In Soweto I met a group of women growing BT maize. Their field trials were educative. One of them, Ella Baloyi, was speaking reasonable Chichewa.
“Amuna anga anali a ku Malawi [My husband was from Malawi],” she said. “Look up for him [name withheld] in Lilongwe. He left three years ago.”
She talked of how BT maize is helping them, commercially. She belongs to a club that planted BT maize on one plot and non-BT maize on another. Both were mature and dry.
But there was difference. BT maize cobs were big and healthy, not attacked by insects while non-BT maize cobs were small and partly suffering from weevils and such other insects.
This means more maize has been harvested from a BT crop than non-BT crop from two identical plots. And the differences are remarkable, huge that one wouldn’t go for non-BT maize once they try BT crop.
But it is at Makhathini in Kwazulu Natal where the power of BT crops manifests itself. The place is hot, like Malawi’s lakeshore, typical of cotton growing areas. Farmers here have been growing cotton for years.
But once they tried BT cotton, they vowed never to look back to non-BT cotton.
“I don’t think I will ever grow non BT cotton,” said Rejoice Mkhabela, a farmer at Makhathini where a club of farmers is growing cotton. “With non-BT cotton we used to spray every week for three months, now we spray four times.”
This is possible because BT cotton is a combination of genes that, among other things, make grow leaves that scare insects.
So is maize. Biotechnology is able to produce insect and drought resistant yet nutritious maize.
“Food biotechnology is a way to improve food, crops and animals by selectively giving plants and animals new qualities, such as more vitamins and minerals and better nutritional value.
Traditional breeding methods combine thousands of traits from two plants while with biotechnology, only the desired characteristic is added to a plant.
This means food may be enhanced to contain additional nutrients or other traits to make them taste fresh. Farmers also benefit by having new ways to fight pests and disease and grow food in a more environmentally friendly way.
BT farming is working in South Africa. President Thabo Mbeki has got biotechnology right.
He says his government will increase funding for agricultural research to promote the continuous improvement in competitiveness and leadership in ...biotechnology that is vital to South Africa’s agriculture.
This fired up the fact finding mission. Journalists and MPs realised “we were cheated that GM foods are bad when in true sense they are meant to end hunger in our countries”.
Malawi, too, was ready. Former Deputy Minister of Agriculture Henry Mumba said so. The country has a Biosafety Act to ensure safety imported of BT foods.
Our immediate enemy is not the Israel-Hizbollah war in Lebanon but hunger, disease and envy as the national anthem rightly suggests.
One African, Cryrus Ndiritu, has understood Mbeki correctly.
“It is not multinationals that have a stranglehold on Africa. It is hunger, poverty and deprivation. And if Africa is going to get out of that, it has got to embrace GM technology,” says Ndiritu.