Food Shortage Pulls Genetically Modified Grains Into Formerly Closed Markets
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 04.21.08
With world grain inventories running low, grain buyers who once were choosy are eying GM wheat and corn and rice sources as a cheap way to rebuild inventory. New York Times covers the story in depth. Of course, supporters of GM food can (some did) use famine as an argument to have governments and food distributors drop bans on GM food planting or sale. The logic is flawed.
And a new international assessment of the future of agriculture, released last Tuesday, gave such tepid support to the role genetic engineering could play in easing hunger that biotechnology industry representatives withdrew from the project in protest...Hans R. Herren, co-chairman of the project, said providing more fertilizer to Africa would improve output much more than genetic engineering could. “What farmers really are struggling with are water issues, soil fertility issues and market access for their products,” he said.
GM food supporters also conveniently overlook the evidence that GM grain growing practices can cause up to a 10% reduction in yield. See "Common BioFuel Myth: Corn-Based Ethanol To Blame For Global Food Shortages."
Via::New York Times, "In Lean Times, Biotech Grains Are Less Taboo" Image credit::Baking Industry Research Trust.
The argument that GM crops would give a smaller yield is just absurd. If the price of seed is higher and the yield is lower, how can you explain that GM crops are substantially cheaper than non-GM crops. This is just the classic hyper-liberal environmental fear mongering that has alienated everybody who isn't hyper-liberal to the environmental movement.
=== author's response follows ===
This is not a matter of ideology.
Commodity grains are purchased on a futures market and delivered by the shipload. What an individual farmer experiences in yield (bushels/acre or Kg/Hectare) does not necessarily correlate with market price in a direct manner.
Consider that if non-GM grains are in greater demand in Japan and Europe, as they have been, that increased demand would tend to bouy the price of non-GM grain over GM grain. In other words, this is basic supply and demand.
Now that both forms of grain are in short supply, the respective prices can be expected to normalize - that's indeed what is happening.
I don't want to sound like a Luddite but I have real issues with the GM manufacturers pushing GM so quickly and so aggressively before anybody can run research on the long term effects on production, ecology and health.
The short-sightedness of investors wanting quick money out of GM strikes me as very dangerous.
This is very interesting. I just want to hope that people are not moving to GM crops out of despair: they are doing it because they know there is value in these crops. There is no justification to deny people from criticizing GM crops. Such criticism, however, needs to be constructive. It needs to be grounded in science. Blogger James, in his blog,GMO Africa, discusses why a sober debate is important. He calls on scientists to play the leading role in the debate about genetically modified organisms. James argues against futility of demonizing biotech companies, such as , a href="http://www.monsanto.com/biotech-gmo/">Monsanto and Dupont. that are involved with GM crops. James says doing so distracts the public from real issues