By Mark Lynas
Friday, April 24, 2015
NAIROBI, Kenya — Mohammed Rahman doesn’t know it yet, but
his small farm in central Bangladesh is globally significant. Mr. Rahman, a
smallholder farmer in Krishnapur, about 60 miles northwest of the capital,
Dhaka, grows eggplant on his meager acre of waterlogged land.
As we squatted in the muddy field, examining the lush
green foliage and shiny purple fruits, he explained how, for the first time
this season, he had been able to stop using pesticides. This was thanks to a
new pest-resistant variety of eggplant supplied by the government-run
Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute.
Despite a recent hailstorm, the weather had been kind,
and the new crop flourished. Productivity nearly doubled. Mr. Rahman had
already harvested the small plot 10 times, he said, and sold the brinjal
(eggplant’s name in the region) labeled “insecticide free” at a small premium
in the local market. Now, with increased profits, he looked forward to being
able to lift his family further out of poverty. I could see why this was so
urgent: Half a dozen shirtless kids gathered around, clamoring for attention.
They all looked stunted by malnutrition.
In a rational world, Mr. Rahman would be receiving
support from all sides. He is improving the environment and tackling poverty.
Yet the visit was rushed, and my escorts from the research institute were
nervous about permitting me to speak with him at all.
The new variety had been subjected to incendiary coverage
in the local press, and campaign groups based in Dhaka were suing to have the
pest-resistant eggplant banned. Activists had visited some of the fields and
tried to pressure the farmers to uproot their crops. Our guides from the
institute warned that there was a continuing threat of violence — and they were
clearly keen to leave.
Why was there such controversy? Because Mr. Rahman’s
pest-resistant eggplant was produced using genetic modification. A gene
transferred from a soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (more commonly known
by the abbreviation “Bt”), produces a protein that kills the Fruit and Shoot
Borer, a species of moth whose larvae feed on the eggplant, without the need
for pesticide sprays. (The protein is entirely nontoxic to other insects and
indeed humans.)
Conventional eggplant farmers in Bangladesh are forced to
spray their crops as many as 140 times during the growing season, and pesticide
poisoning is a chronic health problem in rural areas. But because Bt brinjal is
a hated G.M.O., or genetically modified organism, it is Public Enemy No.1 to
environmental groups everywhere.
The stakes are especially high because Mr. Rahman is one
of only 108 farmers in Bangladesh currently permitted to try out the new
variety. Moreover, this is among the first genetically modified food crops to
be grown by farmers anywhere in the developing world. Virtually every crop, in
every other country, has so far been blocked.
In neighboring India, green campaigners managed to secure
a nationwide moratorium against the genetically modified eggplant in 2010. In
the Philippines, a Greenpeace-led coalition has tied up the variety in
litigation for two years. Greenpeace activists took the precaution of wrecking
field trials first, by pulling up the plants.
I, too, was once in that activist camp. A lifelong
environmentalist, I opposed genetically modified foods in the past. Fifteen
years ago, I even participated in vandalizing field trials in Britain. Then I
changed my mind.
After writing two books on the science of climate change,
I decided I could no longer continue taking a pro-science position on global
warming and an anti-science position on G.M.O.s.
There is an equivalent level of scientific consensus on
both issues, I realized, that climate change is real and genetically modified
foods are safe. I could not defend the expert consensus on one issue while
opposing it on the other.
In Africa, however, countries have fallen like dominoes
to anti-G.M. campaigns. I am writing this at a biotechnology conference in
Nairobi, where the government slapped a G.M.O. import ban in 2012 after
activists brandished pictures of rats with tumors and claimed that G.M. foods
caused cancer.
The origin of the scare was a French scientific paper
that was later retracted by the journal in which it was originally published
because of numerous flaws in methodology. Yet Kenya’s ban remains, creating a
food-trade bottleneck that will raise prices, worsening malnutrition and
increasing poverty for millions.
In Uganda, the valuable banana crop is being devastated
by a new disease called bacterial wilt, while the starchy cassava, a
subsistence staple, has been hit by two deadly viruses. Biotech scientists have
produced resistant varieties of both crops using genetic modification, but
anti-G.M.O. groups have successfully prevented the Ugandan Parliament from
passing a biosafety law necessary for their release.
An eminent Ghanaian scientist whom I met recently had
received such a high level of harassment from campaigners that he was
considering taking a dossier to the police. Activists in his country have also
gone to court to stall progress in biotech development.
The environmental movement’s war against genetic
engineering has led to a deepening rift with the scientific community. A recent
survey by the Pew Research Center and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science showed a greater gap between scientists and the public
on G.M.O.s than on any other scientific controversy: While 88 percent of
association scientists agreed it was safe to eat genetically modified foods,
only 37 percent of the public did — a gap in perceptions of 51 points. (The gap
on climate change was 37 points; on childhood vaccinations, 18 points.)
On genetic engineering, environmentalists have been
markedly more successful than climate change deniers or anti-vaccination
campaigners in undermining public understanding of science. The scientific
community is losing this battle. If you need visual confirmation of that, try a
Google Images search for the term “G.M.O.” Scary pictures proliferate, from an
archetypal evil scientist injecting tomatoes with a syringe — an utterly
inaccurate representation of the real process of genetic engineering — to
tumor-riddled rats and ghoulish chimeras like fish-apples.
In Europe, leaders in Brussels propose to empower all
member states of the European Union to ban genetically modified crops, if they
so wish. Hungary has even written anti-G.M.O. ideology into its Constitution.
Peru has enacted a 10-year moratorium.
As someone who participated in the early anti-G.M.O.
movement, I feel I owe a debt to Mr. Rahman and other farmers in developing
countries who could benefit from this technology. At Cornell, I am working to
amplify the voices of farmers and scientists in a more informed conversation
about what biotechnology can bring to food security and environmental
protection.
No one claims that biotech is a silver bullet. The
technology of genetic modification can’t make the rains come on time or ensure
that farmers in Africa have stronger land rights. But improved seed genetics
can make a contribution in all sorts of ways: It can increase disease
resistance and drought tolerance, which are especially important as climate
change continues to bite; and it can help tackle hidden malnutritional problems
like vitamin A deficiency.
We need this technology. We must not let the green
movement stand in its way.
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