Facing starvation, yet refusing food
Zimbabwe turned away a U.S. donation of 10,000 tons of corn last month, even as the southern African nation faces a dire food shortage. The country refused the shipment because the corn was not certified as free of genetic modification.
Better that a quarter of its 12.5 million people quietly perish from hunger, reasoned the government of Robert Mugabe, than allow genetically modified corn to creep into Zimbabwe’s food supply. Against that backdrop, Mugabe, along with the leaders of about 80 developing countries, descended on Rome this week for the United Nations World Food Summit.
Much of the four-day assemblage focused on concern that not enough progress has been made toward the target set forth during the last U.N. food summit in 1996, to halve the number of the world’s hungry people, from 800 million to 400 million by 2015.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan lamented that, in “a world of plenty,” 24,000 people die each day from starvation or diseases made fatal by malnutrition.
And nowhere is that tragedy more pronounced than in southern Africa, where, according to Annan, a host of countries – including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique – “face a risk of outright famine over the coming months.”
Yet, it seemed all of Rome was plastered with posters decrying genetically modified foods, which hold out great promise for feeding the world’s hungry and malnourished. Foes of the biotechnology crops that are producing genetically modified foods were well represented among both official government delegations and non-government organizations participating in the U.N. food summit. Ana Bravo, biotech coordinator for the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth, demanded that the World Food Program refuse biotech food donations. Fred Kalibwani, an ecology activist from a Zimbabwe-based NGO, said that development of genetically modified seeds “will be tragic for Africa in the next few years.”
But biotech foods and genetically modified seeds may very well be the salvation for Africa in coming years — and for hungry, malnourished populations throughout the world.
Indeed, roughly a quarter of global food aid already comes from seeds genetically modified to withstand herbicides or to fend off destructive insects. That proportion could rise to more than three-quarters in the next several years or so as biotech companies introduce genetically modified wheat.
The promise of biotech foods is exemplified by a genetically modified strain of rice developed several years ago by researchers in Switzerland. “Golden rice,” as it is called, generates enough beta carotene for the body to manufacture the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A. This could be extremely healthful for the millions of children throughout the developing world who are at risk of vitamin A deficiency and are vulnerable to any number of chronic ailments, from weakened immune systems to blindness.
Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, who was in Rome this week for the World Food Summit, promised that the United States would provide a third of the 1.2 metric tons of food aid needed to forestall famine in southern Africa.
But the agriculture secretary made an even more important promise, one that offers the developing nations of Africa a means to address the long-term food needs of their peoples — a 10-year, $100-million “collaborative agricultural biotechnology initiative.” The aim is to boost research on varieties of crops better suited to the growing conditions found in developing countries.
That’s not to say that biotechnology will end hunger as they know it in Africa and the developing world. Only that it holds out the very best hope of halving the ranks of the world’s hungry by 2015.
(Joseph Perkins is a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune and can be reached at [email protected].)