Bill Gates has praised the British Government for ‘leading
the way’ by giving £655 million to tackle child hunger. £43 million of this will be
given to the CGIAR in order to biofortify the staple food crops that are said
to predominate the diets of the rural poor.
HarvestPlus will receive the bulk of these funds, in order to use ‘the best traditional breeding practices and modern biotechnology’ to develop new
varieties of common bean, cassava, maize, rice, sweet potato and wheat that are
higher in essential nutrients, especially vitamin A (β-carotene), iron and
zinc. It is estimated that costs
associated with breeding each new variety will average about $400,000 per year
over a 10-y period, globally.
Is our money being well spent?
Orange-flesh, sweet potato lines, that contain over 20,
000 μg of β-carotene per 100 g of edible portion, have already been
identified by HarvestPlus scientists.
Their GM ‘Golden Rice’ contains 3, 100 μg of β-carotene per
100 g. Either of these food crops can
protect adults and children from night blindness if they form part of a
regular diet. ‘Ongoing transgenic
research is exploring the use of an endosperm-specific promoter to deposit iron
within the endosperm of rice so that it is not milled away’. Pregnant women need to consume at least 28 mg
of iron per day to prevent anaemia.
Although higher zinc-retaining crop cultivars are also being
developed, such crops will be unable to take advantage of this trait if they
are growing in zinc-deficient soils. Fortunately, zinc is cheap and easy to apply
as a seed dressing.
According to HarvestPlus scientists, ‘to work, the biofortification strategy requires widespread adoption by farmers’ So another essential part of their work is to
promote ‘behaviour change’ on the part of subsistence farming families in order
to create demand for these new, biofortified seeds and planting materials. This
means developing additional seed multiplication and delivery systems, leading
to ‘new market opportunities for seed processors and retailers’.
Enter Bill Gates and his Monsanto-supported Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) that is spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform Africa into a GMO-friendly continent...
This approach to reducing malnutrition among the rural poor
is seriously flawed:
- Subsistence farmers depend on their own saved seed, if they are obliged to buy new seed and the associated inputs, they will be forced to sell part or all of their harvest in order to cover costs.
- It assumes that poor people will eat a narrow diet, based on a single food staple.
- It encourages a ‘Green Revolution’ approach, i.e. monoculture + high input technologies, rather than promoting crop diversity, carbon sequestration and de-linking farming from fossil fuels.
There is a much cheaper alternative that only requires
educating women in nutrition and facilitating local seed exchange!
 |
| Pigeon pea - drought-tolerant crop, high in iron and protein |
Many subsistence farmers are already cultivating a wide
range of nutritious food crops that can be harvested year-round, using a method
known as ‘permaculture’. This is an agroecological
farming system (preferred by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food)
that emphasises the use of perennial crops. This includes fruit trees and
vegetable gardens around homesteads and field-grown grain crops, intercropped
with pumpkins and legumes. Such
diversity assists pest management and ensures a sustainable supply of
nutritious food. For example, mangos,
amaranth leaves, pumpkin and papaya all contain high levels of β-carotene. Similarly, amaranth leaves, bulrush millet,
pigeon peas and sesame seeds contain high levels of iron - 200g of pigeon peas
per day would provide sufficient iron to satisfy the needs of a pregnant woman,
see Table below:
Nutrient content of unimproved, indigenous food crops
Essential
nutrient
|
Recommended
adult daily intake
|
Crop/source
|
Content
per 100g of edible portion
|
β-carotene
|
750-1,000 µg
|
Amaranth leaves
|
5, 176 µg
|
Mango
|
3, 200 µg
|
||
Papaya
|
950 µg
|
||
Pumpkin flesh
|
3, 100 µg
|
||
Iron
|
9-28 mg
|
Amaranth leaves
|
8.9 mg
|
Bulrush millet
|
20.7 mg
|
||
Pigeon pea
|
15 mg
|
||
Pumpkin seeds
|
8.8 mg
|
||
Sesame seeds
|
8.1 mg
|
||
Zinc
|
15-20 mg
|
Pumpkin seeds
|
10.3 mg
|
These indigenous food crops are also high in other essential nutrients, such as Vitamin C, B Vitamins (Thiamine, Riboflavin and Niacin) and protein.
So why do we need to spend so much money on biofortification?
Many Africans are already suspicious and think that biofortification is just another term for ‘genetically modified’.
It seems that our taxes are being used to support the multi-billion dollar, biotech industry in its efforts to get the rural poor hooked on GM crops, under the guise of reducing child malnutrition.
