Science is essential to improving human life. But its involvement in genetically enhancing food production is enmeshed in controversy, writes Joe Agbro Jr.
Food is essential to man. Having survived the Malthusian damnation that the human race would overrun resources – food, being one of them – in the 18th century, with the advent of industrial revolution, the agrarian revolution tottered on replacing old practices with new and efficient methods. Farming became a race to get the most possible from either plant or animals. There had to be an efficient way to achieve that. It was a question of time before science set in.
Welcome to the world of genetic modification (GMO). Applied to plants, the science behind GMO involves gene mutations to get desirable qualities from crops.
With a global population of over seven billion people and a shortage of food on the planet, there is an awning need to produce more food on limited arable land. According to livescience.com, in the United States of America, at least 90% of the soy, cotton, canola, corn, and sugar beets sold in the country are genetically engineered.
In 2012, about 17.3 million farmers grew GM crops in 28 countries. And 20 developing countries accounted for 52% of the total GM harvest that year. At the moment, about 16 African countries have adopted GMO farming.
And in December last year, the Director-General of National Biotechnological Development Agency, Prof. Solomon Bamidele, said Genetically Modified seeds were inevitable to ensuring global food security.
And despite global resistance against the GM seeds, the DG said the process was compatible with nature.
”We are not God,” he said, “we are only using the knowledge God has given to us to make the world a better place.”
Early this year, Jose Manuel Madero, the president and managing director of Monsanto, a United States bio-technology firm and the world’s largest GMO manufacturer, said that if Nigeria adopts bio-technology, the country could earn additional $11.6 billion. According to Madero, the company is present in African countries and “in South Africa, 95 per cent of farmers are into biotech.”
Any crop can be subjected to GMO but it is the commercially attractive ones like cotton, maize, rice, vegetable, and also cassava, that are usually enhanced. Aside from bountiful yields, qualities such as ability to include added nutrients, drought resistance, resistance to pests and diseases, and other beneficial traits are some reasons that make GMO crops desirable. However, these enhancements do not augur well with everyone.
How safe are GMOs?
That seems to be a knotty issue. While scientists claim GMO foods are safe, to the anti-GMO activists, these foods, which were first commercialised in the mid-1990s, are just a no-go area. Not just for human consumption but also for environmental issues.
“Genetically modified foods have been linked to toxic and allergic reactions, sick, sterile and dead livestock, and damage to virtually every organ studied in lab animals,” according to the Institute for Responsible Technology, a group of anti-GMO activists.
However, many scientific organisations believe the fear-mongering that runs through discussions of GMO foods is more emotional than factual. “Indeed, the science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe,” the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) said in a 2012 statement.
Monsanto and other global players in the biotech seed industry like Syngenta, DuPont, Bayer and CropScience toe this line.
“Since GM crops were first commercialised in 1996 … regulatory agencies in 59 countries have conducted extensive scientific reviews and affirmed the safety of GM crops with 2,497 approvals on 319 different GMO traits in 25 crops,” according to a statement on the website for Monsanto, the world’s largest manufacturer of GMOs. “The majority (1,129) of approvals on GM crops have been on the food safety of the product.”
But, some Nigerians do not agree with this.
GMO controversies
One of those spearheading the campaign against the introduction of GMO into the country is Gbadebo Viour-Rhodes, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained architect.
According to a report by Vivour-Rhodes: “In order to access a $300 million fund from the G8, the agriculture minister and the federal government are in the process of opening our country to genetically Modified foods and seeds.”
And he is among those on a facebook group, Nigerians Against GMO. There is also a campaign on change.org towards the cause. Next week, the group intends on going on a protest for their cause.
Condemning the GMO practice, Gbadebo Vivour-Rhode,s who trained as an architect at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, said, “all this information is out there. You don’t need to be a farmer to understand when something negative is going to happen to your country.
“The umbrella that these GM people wrap the world in is that they want to help poor people that cannot eat. But, if you notice all the countries that these people are coming into, all of them are on the path of economic boom. They didn’t go to Sudan. The only place that is poor is Ethiopia. That is the first thing that makes you question why.”
Also citing government’s inability to fund subsistence farmers which he says produce the bulk of food eaten in the country. “Their farming is not mechanised,” he said. “So, when a farmer plants on his farm, half of the things go bad while he is harvesting. So, before they (government) say they want to do GM, let our farmers get to a stage where our farmers are operating at maximum capacity. If at that point, Nigeria is not a net exporter of food, then we can be having a conversation about GM. But I assure you, our land is fertile. The people that need this GM thing are people that are living in land that is dead.”
Another argument for pro-GM activist is that increasing population would need an increased production of food.
However, Vivour-Rhodes contends that “Global amount of food produced in the world today can feed an extra two billion people.” There is excess amount of food being produced in this world. The people that cannot eat don’t have money to eat. So, what they are trying to do is a quick-fix solution. But the real intent of these GM companies is to enslave.
“Now, imagine a company that is in control of your food supply.”
According to Rhodes-Vivour, GMO seeds kill the soil. “And you cannot take seeds from the plant,” he said. “Which means that every year, go back and buy some more seeds. Normal agricultural practice says that when you plant, the best crop that you get that year, you save and that is what you plant that year. In India, 250, 000 farmers committed suicide because they would go and buy these expensive seeds and the problem of these seeds is that they promise all these high yields but this doesn’t always work. “
The All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) said the association was not aware of moves to introduce GMO seeds into the country.
“We hear but we have not been really informed about it,” said AFAN’s national president, Chief Femi Coker. “Until when the information comes from the minister and the association actually sits and sees the merits and demerits of it.
“We would want to listen to the advice of the minister of agriculture what he feels about it because our interest is not only personal, our interest is national. What effects would it have on Nigerian agriculture? What as it done in other countries where it has been adopted. We don’t want to rush into adopting anything that is not going to be of interest to Nigerian agriculture and Nigerian farmers. So, we would wait for the advice of the minister of agriculture and ministry of agriculture before we adopt anything and recommend it to our farmers because once we adopt it and start to promote it, it means we are getting our farmers involved. And once our farmers take to it, it would affect Nigerian farmers because they trust us, they believe us, and they do what we say. And so, we have to be extra careful.”
These criticisms have forced the minister of agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, to recently refute that the GMO crops were not in the country.
“What we have in Nigeria is biotechnologically improved crops to raise yields for farmers and not genetically modified crops as being speculated,” the minister said.
Vivour-Rhodes, however, thinks the minister is being evasive. “It is his choice of words that he is using to describe what he is doing,” he said. “If he is saying that it’s not happening at the moment it does not mean it will never come in.
“Our country is too fragile to be dealing with companies like Monsanto. Let us first build ourselves. Can these seeds regenerate themselves? Or are we going to be having to pay a corporation to get these seeds every year?”
GMO seeds when planted do not breed viable seeds that can be planted again. And farmers have to buy them. There have also been claims by antagonists of GMO that opening Nigeria to such technology will damage the soil, produce varieties of resistant weeds and bacteria and also link it to cause cancer, obesity, and death of animals.
However, apart from just producing food, Vivour-Rhodes believes that the introduction of GMO crops in the country may be counter-productive.
“If anybody has experienced what good healthcare is, you’ll know that Nigeria does not have good health care,” he said. “So, you cannot now bring something that has its link with so many negative things such as cancer, sterility, sudden death – all these things that researchers have seen in France that are linked to eating GMO foods, you now want to bring them into the country. It doesn’t make sense. And even if you want to do that, you’ll spend 10 years to create the proper infrastructure to make sure you can monitor and understand on a bio-molecular level what these people are doing. Not that you’ll plant it and you don’t know what is going on.”
Engineer Yakubu Atar, the CEO and Managing Director of Da-Allgreen seeds, which is based in Zaria, Kaduna, does not support the introduction of GMO crops and shares Vivour-Rhodes’ sentiments.
“In Europe, there are a lot of controversies that people are kicking against,” he said. “So, the question is: With their level of education and exposure, why are they kicking against it. There must be something that is not known to the world very well. So, when you look at our level of education that is not up to theirs, you begin to ask, are we not going to run into problems with those kind of technology?
“By the time it is brought in, can we separate them from our natural crops? And at the end of the day, would they not even subdue our natural crops? Now, if there is a long term problem, do we have the technology and the wherewithal to contain it like in America? So, in as much as it is good, we should look at the technology that is available to us?
“Don’t mind that there are people in government who are advocating for high technology. Some of them are surrogates of these companies.”
It was reported last year that farmers at the Bakalori irrigation project in Mfara, Zamfara State suffered a heavy loss when they planted rice seedling given them by Maslaha Seed Company. According to the report, the rice germinated but failed to produce.
“We have never seen such a thing,” said Alhaji Sahabi Mafara, a spokesman of the farmers, at that time.
“It was after a very long period that some of the rice started producing, but we could not get much from it.”
But according to the Managing Director of Maslaha Seeds Company, Alhaji Ibrahim Abdullahi, whose company supplied the seeds free of charge to the farmers, the problem was environmental and had nothing to do with the foundation seeds given to the farmers. He said the planting of the seeds was done at the wrong time.
Other parties claim that such is the likelihood that could stem from biotechnology.
The foundation seeds which are procured from research institutions are meant to breed certified seeds which are what the farmer plant. In the case of Bakalori, the rice seedlings were meant to produce certified but this wasn’t achievable.
But with a global value of US$13.2 billion in 2011, the biotech seed industry is significant. And it is no doubt seeking to extend its presence.
Recently, Michael Frank, the vice-president, International Raw Crops and Vegetables, announced that over 40 hybrid seeds will be introduced into Nigeria, while the company MONSANTO would focus on maize, soybean, cotton and oil-grape seed. But bracing question ns about the safety of GMO food, he said biotechnology helps farmers farm efficiently and in an environmentally sustainable way. He also said that as per embracing GMO foods, “that is a decision the people and government have to make.”
An academic, Professor Dele Fapohunda, the founder and president of Safe Food and Feed Foundation, believes that more Nigerian scientists need to get on the debate on GMO. “I am not sure of the stand of Nigerian government, scientists and the business group on this,” he said. “And this loud silence, to me is scandalous, when one considers the high possibility of having these foods flooding Nigeria, when one considers porous boundaries and fairly lax regulations. I hope the Biosafety law will take care of this.
And the Chairman, Senate committee on science and technology, Prof. Robert Boroffice, expressed optimism in the signing, the Bio-Safety bill by President Goodluck Jonathan.
“I can speak authoritatively that Mr. President will be anxious to enact a Bio-safety law, when he gets the passed bill before him, for the interest of the country, he will sign,” Boroffice had said. “So that Monsanto and other countries can come to Nigeria to assist us in boosting agricultural production not only in food but also in area of cotton, cowpea, maize, tomatoes.”
Hence, the embrace of GMO in Nigeria, like in other countries, has pitted scientists against non-scientists, government against the governed, and the well-fed against the hungry.
