Food is essential to the sustenance of life, and ensuring food sufficiency has been a major preoccupation of humanity. Different cultural and scientific strategies to ensure food adequacy and food sustainability have therefore been adopted at different times. One of such measures is to genetically modify existing foods in order to create new varieties. This involves extracting the genetic features or DNA of one crop or animal and inserting it into another, such that the genetic make-up of the recipient crop or animal is altered. Such genetic engineering is usually targeted at achieving a specific outcome. For example, it could be done to achieve crop insect resistance, to increase crop yield or animal size or to achieve new colour features in the genetically modified product.
The United-States-based Center for Food Safety (CFS), which self-describes as “a national non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy organization working to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture,” is a particularly significant voice with respect to GMO products. According to a 2024 report of CFS, “currently, up to 92% of U.S. corn is genetically engineered (GE), as are 94% of soybeans and 94% of cotton (cottonseed oil is often used in food products). It has been estimated that upwards of 75% of processed foods on supermarket shelves – from soda to soup, crackers to condiments – contain genetically engineered ingredients.”
CFS avers that a number of studies have shown that these engineered foods can pose serious risks to farmers, human health, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment. The Center further observes: “Right now a debate is raging in the U.S. about genetically engineered (GE) ingredients in our food. The biotech industry claims that GE food crops will save the environment and solve the hunger crisis. But a growing number of scientists, doctors and consumers consider them a threat to the planet, and organizations like Christian Aid and the Institute for Food and Development Policy say GE food crops are likely to increase world hunger.”
CFS also notes: “In 1998, African scientists at a United Nations conference strongly objected to Monsanto’s promotional GE campaign that used photos of starving African children under the headline “Let the Harvest Begin.” The scientists, who represented many of the nations affected by poverty and hunger, said gene technologies would undermine the nations’ capacities to feed themselves by destroying established diversity, local knowledge and sustainable agricultural systems. Genetic engineering could actually lead to an increase in hunger and starvation. Biotech companies like Monsanto force growers to sign a technology use agreement when growing their patented GE crops which stipulates, among other things, they the farmer cannot save the seeds produced from their GE harvest. Half the world’s farmers rely on saved seed to produce food that 1.4 billion people rely on for daily nutrition.”
Such patents, according to New African magazine of 17 December, 2014, in an article by Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah and Chris Walker, titled, “Ghana’s battle for food sovereignty”, creates a situation in which “seed companies would be able to claim ownership of varieties that have adapted through millennia of indigenous seed breeding but which have been finely altered in a lab, possibly through … genetic modification.” With respect to this tendency which has been called “bio piracy”, the magazine notes: “Across the world, farmers have got into dangerous levels of debt at the hands of companies which have promoted ‘improved seeds’ and come to control their supply.” The authors also point out: “’The origin of food is seed,’ says Food Sovereignty Ghana. ‘Whoever controls the seed controls the entire food chain.’” It has also been observed that none of the patented-seeds companies is owned by any African one, but are predominantly owned by a few American companies.
In a 13 October, 2022 article by Claire Nasike, under the auspices of Greenpeace.org, titled “GMOs: A neo-colonial technology undermining food and seed sovereignty in Kenya,” it is noted: “GMOs aggravate food insecurity and threaten food and seed sovereignty. They do so by holding farmers in debt cycles that reduce their ability to produce more food for consumption. … In November 2021, cotton farmers in Busia were asking the Kenyan government to subsidise the price of Bt cotton seed which was retailing at KSh2,200 a kilo. In March 2022, there was an outcry from cotton farmers in Kenya because of the unavailability of Bt cotton seed, which the chief executive officer of the National Biosafety Authority attributed to the multiplication challenges experienced by the sole company given the task – companies fronting the GM crops, such as Mahyco, in which Monsanto has a 26 per cent stake, control the production and multiplication of these crops.”
Nasike also notes: “Farmers in Burkina Faso abandoned the cultivation of Bt cotton that was introduced by Monsanto, now Bayer, citing the higher prices of Bt cotton seed and its poor quality compared to their indigenous cotton seed which produced a superior quality of cotton. Their adoption of Bt cotton caused them to lose their niche in the international cotton markets. Yet the same Bt cotton (MON 15985) that failed in Burkina Faso has been introduced in Kenya following national performance trials undertaken by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate (KEPHIS) with the approval of the National Biosafety Authority (NBA). This begs the question whether the Kenyan government is trying to enslave its people to biotechnology companies.”
In addition, Nasike observes: “GM seed is patented and this could land the farmers on whose farm GM crops have grown without their knowledge into intellectual property disputes. These farmers are likely to be forced to pay royalties for GM crops that contaminate their farms through pollination or cross breeding. In the United States, Monsanto (now Bayer) sued hundreds of farmers to protect its patent rights on its GM seeds. In Brazil, Monsanto won a $7.7 billion lawsuit against farmers after the court ruled that farmers cannot save and replant Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready soybeans. In India, the manufacturer of Lays Potato Chips, Pepsico before withdrawing the case had sued four farmers for about KSh15 million for illegally growing its potatoes.”
In a 27 January, 2020 article by Jean Claude Habimana, titled, “A Rwandan farmer’s son: Why I advocate for GMO crops in Africa,” published in Alliance for Science, it is claimed: “Due to the special interests of certain people, especially those in the pesticide industries, GM crops have been misrepresented, leading to bad assumptions among the public. Truthfully, the pesticide companies know the potential of GM crops and they are afraid of it. To limit the general public from adopting these agricultural technologies, ‘paid people’ are coming up every day and they call themselves ACTIVISTS.” Contrary-wise, as part of its activism for the past 25 years, CFS reports that, in 2024, it has won a legal battle to overturn Monsanto’s GMO-seeds-complementing harmful pesticide dicamba. Specifically, CFS states: “Sprayed on GE crops, dicamba was touted as the ‘future’ for the ag biotech industry. Yet we have now succeeded in having courts strike down its approvals not once but twice! The victorious series of decisions protects farmers, the environment, and endangered species from pesticide drift.”
Some critics of GMO foods are of the view that some experts, scholars or regulators are being funded to organise and attend conferences where they are teleguided to promote and carry out pro-GMO research to guarantee a steady flow of funding. Million Belay, the coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, put the point this way in a 10 June, 2020 article for Commondreams.org, titled “Africa Says, ‘I Can’t Breathe’: An African Civil Society Perspective on Systemic Racism”: “A cohort of actors including philanthrocapitalists, aid agencies, governments, academic institutions, and embassies are all working to make this narrative a reality. They talk about transforming African agriculture but what they are doing is creating a market for themselves cleverly couched in … nice sounding language.”
The romanticisation and robust defence of GMO foods by some influential African experts, scholars, policy makers, media and even regulatory agencies – instead of exercising necessary caution – are reminiscent of the fascination with and zealous marketing of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), by experts, as the silver bullet for Nigeria’s economic challenges in the mid-1980s. The eventual adoption of SAP by the country in 1986 mangled the nation’s economy and has resulted in seemingly intractable socio-political dislocation. This appreciably validates the profound view that “on the big issues, the experts are very rarely right.” This view is held in the 1987 book, Spy Catcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer, written by Peter Wright (with Paul Greengrass).
The view resonates largely with Nigeria’s Senator Adams Oshiomhole who said as follows at a public lecture in Abuja on 6 July, 2024: “the dictatorship of experts can be very, very dangerous; sometimes, more dangerous than the dictatorship of military generals. … [T]hey have the power to influence the way you think … even on issues where they are wrong. Because you don’t have the command of [their] jargons, the debate is closed and it’s limited to few of them alone.”
Opponents of GMO seeds have argued that seed availability or even seed quality has not been the major challenge of Nigerian farmers, but the problem of produce storage – which has resulted in food waste – and insecurity – which has undermined food cultivation. Therefore, they insist that to prevent surreptitious introduction of GMO products and facilitate enlightened choice, appropriate labeling should be mandated. Regarding the partial success of its own legal challenge of the non-labeling of GMO foods in the United States, CFS reports: “The court agreed with us that ‘QR code’ labeling alone was unlawful, securing the requirement of on-package labeling of GMO foods. But we aren’t stopping there, and currently are challenging the loophole excluding “highly refined” GMO products from any mandatory disclosure.”
There are at least three major dimensions of the GMO foods debate – the science of GMO foods, the economics of GMO foods, and the politics of GMO foods. The hegemonic dimension seems to be the most problematic; and it is by no means frivolous, because just as who pays the piper dictates the tune, who feeds the nation runs the government. When it is remembered that history is replete with instances in which some human societies have not been averse to economic asphyxiation and genocidal conduct, the political concerns about GMO foods are genuine. African nations, as such, ought to be circumspect about adopting GMO crops and those who, out of infatuation or irresistible pressure or inducement, have adopted such foods or who, due to lack of or inadequate regulation, have allowed GMO foods to be distributed or grown, have the moral obligation to take remedial or countervailing action.
