GM crop efficacy may be jeopardised by pest mutations

This is AN ADDITION to the many or, better, now seething VERY CRYSTAL-CLEAR EVIDENCES of the FAILURE of genetic RE-engineering and Bio-Ballistic-Technolgy applications to agriculture. Biotechnology companies and their R&D staff and consultants KNOW this BUT will NOT revel it to the public. Rather than do so, they pretend that it does not exist and even lie that GM crops are doing very well making "high yield" and high income- earning by farmers possible. Take note that it is in order to make GM crops endure the effects of the practice longer that they recommended that natural or organic crops should be cross-bred with GM crops of the same species. But this means transferring pathogenic and deadly viruses and bacteria, foreign DNAs and genes, and foreign genetic CONSTRUCT of also harmful and deadly consequences into the cells of the natural or organic crops and, hence, into the foods that they produce. Therefore, our natural and organic crops are made GM crops. The G.M foods--both liquid and solid--produced with them are as deadly as original GM foods.

The genetic resistance phenomenon as described in the Chinese/US article is likely to be a consequence of a NATURAL selection process and a NATURAL mechanism by which organisms survive under changing environmental conditions (cf Darwin). What is it about GMOs which you maintain makes them DEADLY? The fact that monitoring and other detailed studies are being carried out to investigate the genetic implications of GM crops on the potential infestation status of pests through open scientific dialogue is a sign of a sustainable approach to acknowledging the real situation in the field and avoidance of assumptions that what pertains in the lab extrapolates to the field. It is by doing such research work it enables more appropriate crop management strategies and enables the benefits of GM technology to be realised. Remember that organic production of foods and other biological produce on a large field scale might only be possible in the future using GM technology (enabling production within reasonable quality boundaries without incurring the need for agrochemical inputs). There is insufficient land for everyone on the planet to produce their own food in a totally organic way. So the question is reiterated: what evidence do you have to state categorically that GM foods are DEADLY? Where is the evidence for that assumption? One had better get the hard factual evidence first before persuading a hungry world the pervading deadliness of GM crops.

The Green Revolution displaced pulses, an important source of proteins, and oilseeds, thus reducing nutrition per acre.

Hunger and malnutrition are man-made. They are hardwired in the design of the industrial, chemical model of agriculture. But just as hunger is created by design, healthy and nutritious food for all can also be designed, through food democracy.

We are repeatedly told that we will starve without chemical fertilisers. However, chemical fertilisers, which are essentially poison, undermine food security by destroying the fertility of soil by killing the biodiversity of soil organisms, friendly insects that control pests and pollinators like bees and butterflies that are necessary for plant reproduction and food production.

Industrial production has led to a severe ecological and social crisis. To ensure the supply of healthy food, we must move towards agro-ecological and sustainable systems of food production that work with nature and not against her. That is what movements that promote biodiversity conservation, like our NGO Navdanya, are designing on the ground.

Industrialisation of agriculture creates hunger and malnutrition, and yet further industrialisation of food systems are offered as a solution to the crisis. In the Indian context, agriculture, food and nutrition are seen as being independent of each other, even though what food is grown and how it is grown determines its nutritional value. It also determines distribution patterns and entitlements. If we grow millets and pulses, we will have more nutrition per capita. If we grow food by using chemicals, we are growing monocultures — this means that we will have less nutrition per acre, per capita. If we grow food ecologically, with internal inputs, more food will stay with the farming household and there will be less malnutrition among rural children.

Our agriculture policy focuses on increasing yields of individual crops and not on the output of the food system and its nutritional value.