GMO promoters winning as major opponent switches camp and Ghana digs heels

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

It could be described as a battle to control food security. It could even be seen as a game in which the best and skilful players are maneuvering to take over the entire food production and supply chain with multinationals with all the money, power and influence to do so in the lead.

It could also be seen as major scientific breakthroughs in food production to ensure global food security, but the debate over the safety and sustainability of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) has seen some drama in recent months.

Major turn-around

One of the world’s leading critics of GMO has now become a supporter. The man, Mark Lynas, who is a known climate change campaigner, is now calling on some African countries to embrace biotechnology as a tool to ensure food security.

Lynas is the author of the globally acclaimed book, ’60 Degrees’, which has been translated into 26 languages.

Lynas was reported to have said at Makerere University in Uganda that he changed his mind to stop opposing GM when he realised that scientists, upon whom he depended for climate information, were united in supporting GM technology.

According to him, GM technology offers more benefits to humanity and the environment than dangers.

What is GMO?

The non-profit organisation NON-GMO describes GMOs  “genetically modified organisms,” as plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.

Ghana speeds up GMO efforts

Ghana is one of the African countries that is embarking on a GMO crusade. The country quietly passed the biosafety law on December 31, 2011. Information available to ghanabusinessnews.com says officials of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture were not even consulted before the law was rushed and passed. They made no input into the law.

The Law, from the Biosafety Act, 831, 2011 will enable Ghana to allow the application of biotechnology in food crop production involving Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to enter food production.

And  less than two years after passing the law Ghana has started digging its heels in pursing GMOs. The country has started field trials of some crops. According to the Ministry of Environment, Science and Technology, the country has approved four crops to undergo GMO confined field trials (CFTs).

A Director at the Ministry, Mr Eric Amaning Okoree, has said that rice, sweet potato, cotton and cowpea have so far been approved for CFTs. He was speaking in a presentation at a panel discussion organised by the US Embassy in Accra.

Limited field trials for genetically modified cotton and rice crops in selected areas of the country have already started.

Field trials for Bt. rice which commenced in June is taking place in Fumesua in the Ashanti Region, while field cultivation for Bt. cotton, which also started June 30, 2013, are still ongoing at six locations in six districts of the country.

The sites and districts are Kpalkore in the Mion District, Natagu in the Saboba District; Walewale, West Mamprusi District; Pieng, Sissala East District; Pulima, Sissala West and Yobzeri in the Tolon District, all in Ghana’s Northern Region.

Confined on-station field trials have also been approved in Ghana and structures already put in place for Bt. Cowpea as well as for High Protein Sweet Potato, although planting is yet to start, according to Dr. Emmanuel Chamba, Plant Breeder and Principal Investigator for Bt Cotton research at the CSIR-Savanna Agric. Research Institute (SARI), Nyankpala in Tamale.

The US debates

While in Ghana, there is insignificant opposition and debate about GMOs, in the US, there are worries and intense discussions.

Prof. Jeff Wolt, Professor of Agronomy and Toxicology, Biosafety Institute for Genetically Modified Agricultural Products, Iowa State University has said in 2011 that there are no known dangers from GMOs.

He said in the United States 93% of soybean and over 70% of corn are genetically modified and he said the country has regulatory mechanisms that regulate the safety of GMOs. He indicated that the US started commercializing GMOs in 1996, arguing that scientists have evaluated GMOs and they cannot find any risks. He was of the view that questions about safety are a judgement concerning the perceived risks of GMOs. According to him, scientists have done evaluations and can see no reason that GMOs that are grown in the US and other parts of the world cannot be considered as safe.

He said “there are negligible risks in GMOs, because there are no risks to the population.”

On it’s front page of today August 6, 2013, the Epoch Times of New York reports that the city has joined the GMO labeling debate. The paper starts the report in these words, “No one today can tell if the food they buy is made from genetically modified organisms(GMOs), unless they buy organic food.” In other words organic products are labeled but GMOs are not.

According to the paper three quarters of processed foods on store shelves in the US contain GMO based ingredients, adding that no scientific consensus exists on the safety of GMOs.

The paper adds that while some independent studies claim they are safe, others have identified a range of hazards, including cancer, infertility, and birth defects.

There are some Americans who even believe that GMOs might be responsible for the country’s obesity challenges.

Some even believe that the promotion of GMOs are a subtle attempt to control the world’s population.

“Most genetically modified foods also contain the herbicides they were engineered to resist, the health effects of which are likewise uncertain,” the paper says.

The paper citing a Washington-based non-profit, Food & Water Watch reports that despite overwhelming public support for GMO labeling as shown in dozens of surveys conducted in more than a decade, the effort to get GMOs labeled has met with resistance at the federal level with support of over half a billion dollars spent on lobbying by biotechnology giants like Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow Chemical.

So far in the US, only Connecticut and Maine have passed GMO labeling laws.

Meanwhile, GM corn or maize now makes about 81% of the trade in crops globally and 89% of the soybean supplied between 2009 and 2010 was from GM corn countries, available data shows.

Data also shows that international trade in GM seeds has grown to about $42 billion.

Data from the Iowa State University indicates that more than 70 countries in the world have harmonised their seed policies and regulations since 1992.

As the battle goes on, it is clear that promoters of GMOs are winning, but for how long?

Scientist warns against global rush into biofuel cultivation

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi


A US scientist, Thomas R. Sinclair has warned countries that are rushing into cultivating biofuels in their efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels to take into consideration the multiple limits to plant production on earth.

In an article titled “Taking Measure of Biofuel Limits” published in the “American Scientist,” the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, he said, “before nations pin big hopes on biofuels, they must face some stark realities, however. Crop physiology research has documented multiple limits to plant production on Earth. To ramp up biofuel crop production, growers must adapt to those limits or find ways around them.”

Professor Sinclair who is a visiting professor in agronomy at the University of Florida and an adjunct professor in crop science at North Carolina State University was also raised on a farm in Indiana.

He writes “in a justified rush to cut fossil fuel consumption, some nations are embracing biofuels as a petroleum alternative at the gas pump. Using sugarcane, Brazil already produces 24.5 billion liters of ethanol a year to fuel car and truck engines.”

“In the United States, annual ethanol production has reached 40 billion liters, or 10 billion gallons. The U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act calls for 144 billion liters of ethanol per year in the U.S. transportation fuel pool by 2022. That equals 25 percent of U.S. gasoline consumption today. No more than about 40 percent is to be produced with maize, an important food and export crop. Non-grain feedstock is supposed to supply the rest,” he added.

In Professor Sinclair’s view there are no means by which humans could bypass the limits of crop production, arguing that “such advances may not be as simple as some predict. Plants and their evolutionary ancestors had hundreds of millions of years to optimize their biological machinery. If further improvements were easy, they would probably already exist.”

He insists that no matter what techniques are developed to expand biofuel feedstock, some basic physical and physiological limitations will still apply.

“Plants cannot be grown without three crucial resource inputs: light, water and nitrogen. Each of those inputs will be needed in substantial quantities, yet their availability in the field is limited. As important, so far plants make use of those resources only at established rates,” he says.

He further states that no matter what techniques are developed to expand biofuel feedstock, plants cannot be grown without three crucial resource inputs: light, water and nitrogen. Each of those inputs will be needed in substantial quantities, yet their availability in the field is limited. As important, so far plants make use of those resources only at established rates. In fact, the close relationship between the available amounts of these resources and the amount of plant mass they can produce—not human demand—will determine how much biofuel the world can produce.

Citing the US as an example he writes, “light, water and nitrogen will be essential for growing biofuel feedstocks. The availability of these resources will be critical to achieving ethanol production goals set by the U.S. Energy and Security Act. Even if the current increase in maize yield can be sustained at 0.1 tonne per hectare per year, the equivalent of 40 percent of today’s U.S. maize crop will be required for ethanol production while other domestic and export demands for maize also must be met.”

Professor Sinclair is emphatic that identifying land area for cellulosic plant production will be even more challenging. Depending on the efficiency of ethanol production from cellulosic feedstock, somewhere between 25 and 50 million hectares of new land must be brought into high and sustainable agricultural production to achieve the required yields.

“Since this land-use conversion would need to take place roughly over a decade, it would be the most extensive and rapid land transformation in U.S. history,” he says.

To complicate matters, land used for cellulosic feedstock must be in regions with sufficient rainfall to achieve needed yields. The amount of water transpired by those crops could be large enough to influence the hydrologic balance of farming regions. An unanswered question is whether stream and aquifer flows from these areas would also remain adequate to meet all local freshwater needs, he writes.

Professor Sinclair’s arguments obviously are worth looking at by biofuel advocates. Besides, it also calls for a critical and objective look in view of the fact that biofuels are competing for scarce land for food cultivation in the face of a global food crisis.

Source: ghanabusinessnews.com