The Republic of South Africa has been
farming GMO food crops (especially maize) for seventeen consecutive years now.
This type of food has been very beneficial
to many of us who, the truth is, without its invention by biotechnologist and
adoption by some flagship-type African states, African Agriculture would be
very tough.
My father used to farm the more traditional
type of maize it would grow very tall in the summer rain and after a very long
time-about four to five months - have a colorful maize cob with not so uniform
sized seeds that I enjoyed eating but loathed the black, maroon or red seeds my
little greedy mouth had to jump over to avoid. I hated them and I was not
alone-father never included such seeds for the next coming harvest, no matter
how insistent our poor not so modern neighbors be on this matter.
I unfortunately have just recently learnt
that I and my very industrious father were the ones who were in fact the stupid
poor neighbors; poor ignorant us did not know how right Mr. Vilakati was in his
advice.
All we wanted were nice looking white maize
corps for the next summer. Not this corpse that spoilt everything for us. We
did not know that nature strives not on uniformity but on variety:
individuality is in its every expression, not uniformity. It is just that
nature prefers all its variety in small doses until they are just right.
Nothing more.
The advent of GMO food crops takes this one
very important manifestation of old Mother Nature away.
The problem with yesterday's people and traditionalists
is that they often are very wary and resistible to change. They do not want it
even when it is to their own very own benefit that they resist change not and
go on allowing progress-science- better their lives.
Lives, for me that is just right where the
problem begins. This pro-GMO people forget that for one to live one first has
to have not a life but life. For us to have lives we have to first have life
first and then and only then can we live. Can it be then that we go and meddle Mother
Nature’s calculated, over millennia tried and tested life giving food? Is it
really wise of us to go fix what's not broken just because we cannot use our
own traditional and common sense ways to prove science wrong?
It is not true that we traditionalist do
not want progress. We are just wary of what we are to use to facilitate the
progress these modern people are talking about. You see, like traditions, if
you have enough people agreeing with your idea anything under the sun can be
perceived differently.
-Egypt once upon a time murdered Israel's
future leader but one just because the rulers of Egypt were able to convince
their subjects to have slave's children killed just because there too many of
them around, enough of them that they would soon rise and have their Egypt
masters killed.
-The German ruler Hitler very recently
convinced a whole live and well thinking nation to go ahead hating and killing
because they (the Germans) were a master race and in order to be true to their
race's rank they can report and have the Jews killed like cockroaches, no harm
done.
-The Afrikaner of yesterday today carry a
bad name because Dr Verwoerd, a psychologist used his rank and brilliancy to
convince a whole generation that separate development-commonly known as
Apartheid-was the most moral thing they could conceive and use to relate with
their siblings by love of South Africa, the blacks.
-A certain soft drink company once had
cocaine in its product because science deemed it safe and vital to health and
mental vigor.
-There are also a number of car companies
that have, because of human era, been recalled back by their makers.
A sound often ignored question to the above
mentioned examples is where on earth was sound science when all the above now
shame ridden happenings were let and sometime even led to happen were
happening?
The truth is it was there…Science was there
and men who had their own interests at heart raped it to achieve what they so
to be more important than today's shame, the horrible cost that we today-the
innocent generation are forced to reap.
Should who learn no from the past and not
only hope but work at not repeating the past's mistake now keep silent because
should we speak we will have our continent starving and dying?
We Africans take great care to learn from
our past. We Nguni, for example have attached to our surnames very long
histories that narrate both our past pride and shame. These help remind us not
to repeat the mistakes committed by our ancestors. It is because of this
principle that I am worried of this “progress” science is bringing us.
In the Opinionated African’s last article on
the issue of genetically modified organisms, I tried to bring about the
researches that find GMO food crops questionable as ideal food resources. The
main focus was on maize and not the more Africa centered food crops that we
southern Africans still enjoy eating today.
In this article I wasn’t trying to be
scientific in my approach. I am only trying to simply question soundness of
rapidly adopting a food source barely older than my father just because in its
availability we are promised the end of poverty.
As I said before, my problem is not
progress. It is rather the nature of this progress.
1.
The science is too
young. GMOs
have been around for a very short period; fifteen years in Africa and less than
sixty if not forty years around the world. The research used to back GMO food
crops are very recent and too controversial for me to trust and some of them
are still ongoing and thus unwise of me to trust. Example of these are the
Golden rice still under development in China and the dry weather (DT) resistant
rice being worked on in South Africa.
Even
the success of pest resistant maize (BT Maize) worries me because the variety
is still too young in the real world. How sure can we be that this food crop
will remain harmless even two hundred years into the future?
Well
I am not.
2. There is too much vested interest. GMO food crops
research and science is funded by big very powerful agri-businesses. Many of
them, like Monsanto are too politically connected for me to trust them. The
investments thrown in by these foundations are not only science targeted but it
also targets rural farming communities as well. Why should there be such a hype
around GMO crops? The answer is simple. For a sport man to make profit for his
sponsors, he first has to generate a following and encourage people to get
behind him. The idea is-and it often works-the more followers he gets the more
customers are made available to the sponsors. Why then shouldn’t the same
technique work when it comes to GMO crops? By introducing GMO Bt maize into
Africa Monsanto is not just helping to save Africa from its food problems but
it is actually presenting its invention as the winner and crown prince of all
food crops. It is saying-without actually saying-that conventional food crops
are a waste of investment and should be left in the past. It is a known fact
that pollination cannot be controlled. What then will we do when these GMOs run
into the real world through pollination and contaminate the natural food crops.
A scarier happening would once the teasing is done we will have no alternative
to GMO farming because they would have destroyed all native food crops and we
will be forced buyers of new seeds for each coming farming season.
3. Questionable outcome. The results used to backup GMO’s
claim to the number one spot are themselves questionable. Africa Center for
Biodiversity points out that: The
hype around the current wave of GM
research
into non- commercial crops in Africa
is
purposefully ahistorical and deceitful. It
does
not mention past failures involving the
demise
of Wambugu’s/Monsanto’s GM sweet
potato
research in Kenya (DeGrassi, 2003;
GMWatch,
2015), or the quiet recognition by the
-Danforth
Research Centre in 2006 that the GM
cassava
it had developed had lost resistance
to
African cassava mosaic virus (ACMV) (ACB
and
GRAIN, 2006). The recent case of Burkina
Faso’s
reversal on GM cotton, due to the Bt
cotton
crop’s declining quality, is instructive
for
Africa. Burkina Faso’s cotton companies
have
committed to phasing out Bt cotton and
returning
to the exclusive use of conventional
cotton,
by the 2017/18 seasons. The sector is
seeking
compensation from Monsanto for
the
losses incurred and this is also extremely
telling
(Dowd-Uribe and Schnurr, 2016).
(African
Centre for Biodiversity)
4.16
European Countries banning GMO food crop farming. While
South Africa and many other African countries are busy being hyped to farm GMO
food crops, countries in the North are continuously not only questioning this
‘new food’ but are now effectively banning them from their lands. Scotland(as
of August 2015 has applied that it be excluded from farming MON 810 maize and a
host of other GMO food crops), Germany(In 2009, Ilse Aigner, Germanys’ Federal
Minister stopped the farming and marketing of the MON 810 maize because of
expert advise that mentioned a number of dangers related with MON810),France(17
September 2017 France opted out of the farming of MON810 and a string of nine
other strains of maize because they questioned its safety),Bulgaria(Announced
its opt out in October 2015),Northern Ireland(August 2015)…Other news sites
mention as many as 28 European countries that banned GMO crop production and
marketing. Of the thirty eight worldwide countries that have banned GMOs only
two are African, namely Madagascar and Algeria.
It should be noted that the threat of
sleeping on an empty stomach on my continent is very real, this is Africa and
as such things just happen. We are continent faced with war, drought, and human
made and natural. It is therefore very hard for our leaders to refuse the help
that is offered by pro-GMO people in times of trouble. Swaziland is a very good
example of this. The countries has little agricultural land, as such it often
fails to produce food to help it through drought season. Commercial farming is
very difficult because of the terrain and its labor intensiveness. In short my
mother’s country has no food and therefore, my mother’s king-Mswati 111 cannot
afford to say no to food aid and Agricultural advancements championed by pro-GMO
organizations.
South Africa is not like Swaziland. It has
the luxury of choice. The country boast of very Agriculture friendly land, has
good infrastructure and a very good history when it comes to research and
innovation. Why they do not get rid of the whole lot of GMO food crops is
beyond me. I do however suspect that the leaders cannot afford to ban GMOs
because doing such a brave thing would chase away investors-at least for the
short term, alienate the farmers from government and generally invite the
country into turmoil because people will be hungry. Oh and if you know how
Mbeki was ousted you will know how best not to get your head onto the
executioner’s chopping board.
What is the solution? We need no fancy solution;
a simple return to traditional food farming will do us a much greater good than
harm.
One thing that is
often overlooked in African soil tilling is the fact that it was rather soil
friendly and ecologically beneficial. Our Afrikaner brothers came to Africa and
had hoes no better than our own. We both could till the land no deeper than a
hand. We were limited and this limit benefited the soil and ourselves because
no damage was done beyond what was needed. The Boers taught us maize and we
taught them sorghum and millet...food diversity is a good thing. The crops we
farmed were friendly to the soil. Millet for example needs little rain and can
be farmed even in dry poor soil areas. Sorghum can serve not only as food but
can be used for building too. The legumes we used to farm together with maize
ensured nitrate soil availability to maize and the pumpkins protected our lands
from evaporation. Many of the now so called weeds-ligusha, imbuya and umajozi
and chuchuza used to be our veggies and kept us strong and food secure-Roundup
weed killer now kills them all off and leaves us nothing to eat but a cloned
maize variety and meat. No wonder we so sick!
If you have
Africa at heart, you are African. Let us not be fed these GMO poisons. Let’s
join our voices, call for and farm natural organics.
 |
| Mastsapha; a Swazi marshland root crop similar to sweet potato in nature and cooking method. It is nice with salt instead of sugar. |
Sources
Target China
Seeds of
Destruction
Wikipedia
Africa Centre for
Biodiversity
Bug Life and Soil
Association
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