You would think that someone holding the post of environment
secretary would actually have concerns about, well, the environment. Such is
our topsy-turvy world, however, that the opposite is true when it comes to Owen
Paterson.
The free marketeer ConDem environment secretary, is a
climate change sceptic despite mountains of evidence (as well as casual
observation of increasingly erratic weather patterns) to the contrary. No
concern for the environment there.
Now Paterson
is launching a campaign to get the European Union to dump its ban on
genetically-modified (GM) crops that have caused severe problems around the
world. Still no concern for the environment, although plenty for the GM
corporations.
If the EU does not drop its policy, Paterson
wants the United Kingdom
to go it alone. He says the government has "a duty to the British public
to reassure them GM is a safe, proven and beneficial innovation".
Those are certainly big claims - almost as big as the giant
ragweed strangling corn crops in farms across the United States . US farmers are
finding that after four or five years growing Monstanto's Round-up ready corn,
weeds develop resistance. Up to 15 million acres of crops are now affected.
The farmers must then switch to a different herbicide, and
therefore a different GM seed. Monsanto competitor Dow has produced a one with
resistance to 2,4-D. This is one of the two components of Agent Orange, the
defoliant the US
army sprayed on crops and forest during the Vietnam war.
However, we are assured that it is not the component that
caused the birth defects – just the one that stripped the land bare. So that’s
alright then.
Which brings us to the tiny rootworm, which prevents corn
from absorbing water and nutrients from the soil and leaves corps in ruins. The
US Environmental Protection Agency reports rootworms have been found in Illinois and Iowa
that are resistant to the Bt gene bred into Monsanto seed corn.
Insecticide sales are surging after years of decline, and
profits are up. Farmers who already paid through the nose for supposedly
resistant GM seed are now buying pesticide to kill the rootworm. Dow/Monsanto
competitor Syngenta is cashing in with pesticide sales doubling in 2012.
Pesticides are bad for farmers' health, water supplies and
the health of whole populations. As well as killing the rootworm, they wipe out
beneficial insects, including bees.
Whilst GM makes lots of money for corporations, it doesn't
work in the long term. A herbicide will kill weeds for a time, but eventually a
rogue gene will appear that has resistance. That weed will survive spraying,
and spread. It will have adapted.
The claims made for GM are based on bad biology, bad botany,
bad genetics – just bad science really. Bad
science but big profits, and Paterson
doesn't want corporate farmers and the agri-chemical companies missing out on
the European market.
He even stooped so low as to repeat the claim that GM is the
answer to world hunger. But if the problems faced by US farmers were repeated
across the globe the effect would be disastrous.
Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett says GM will
make it harder, not easier, to feed the world. "In fact GM is the cuckoo
in the nest. It drives out and destroys the systems that international
scientists agree we need to feed the world.”
Systems like the one practised by Suman Kumar, who holds the
world record for rice yield on his one-acre plot in Bihar in northern India . He achieved
22.4 tons per hectare, where big rice farmers get on average 8 tons.
Kumar and his neighbours are achieving these great yields using
a modest amount of inorganic fertiliser and no pesticides or herbicides. They
are working with the System
of Rice Intensification, where instead of focusing on killing pests and
force-feeding, all the effort goes into creating the best possible conditions
for the rice plants to flourish.
As Melchett concludes: "We need farming that helps
poorer African and Asian farmers produce food, not farming that helps Bayer,
Syngenta and Monsanto produce profits."
A revolution in farming on that scale will require a
revolution on a political and economic scale too.
Penny Cole
Environment editor
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