Can we feed our world without Monsanto?

Every minute of every day, our global family welcomes 255 babies into the world. That’s 134 million new mouths to feed every year, for a total population increase of 2.2 billion in the next thirty years.

Hugh Grant, the CEO of agricultural giant Monsanto, often cites the world’s booming population as the core reason global citizens should embrace the genetic engineering of plants to make them resistant to herbicides, pesticides or bestow them with other traits that theoretically permit higher crop yields. Grant, and many others, seem quite certain that without genetic intervention, the world population is destined to starve.

Upon closer inspection however, this ‘get-on-board-or-perish’ position is not as solid as it might seem. The Union of Concerned Scientists reminds us that there exist traditional ways to boost crop yield, and further, that more productive crops are only a small part of the solution to the world’s food woes. Even more key are things such as lack of income to buy food, trade policies that disadvantage farmers in the developing world and lack of inputs such as fertilizer or water.

Indeed, on the ground, there is evidence that Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) crops are not guaranteed salvation. When they fail to produce the yields promised by the company’s advertising, and with farmers not permitted to save seeds due to the company’s patent, entire communities in places like India can be pushed to the brink of starvation.

Feeding the world’s hungry aside, genetically modified products have been the target of various concerns. The World Health Organization summarises those regarding biodiversity, as follows:

“Current investigations focus on: the potentially detrimental effect on beneficial insects or a faster induction of resistant insects; the potential generation of new plant pathogens; the potential detrimental consequences for plant biodiversity and wildlife, and a decreased use of the important practice of crop rotation in certain local situations; and the movement of herbicide resistance genes to other plants.”

[On that last point, it has recently come to light that there are weeds and pests that have grown resistant to Monsanto’s continued attempts to subdue them. ]

Human health questions too still remain. Studies have blamed damage to the kidneys, livers and reproductive systems of lab mice on diets containing Monsanto’s GM corn.

For all these reasons and more, activists often cry foul against Monsanto, using words such as ‘evil’, and ‘deceptive’. To this proponents of Monsanto respond that, just like any other company, it exists to make money for its shareholders.

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