By M.S. Somasundar
The war against human deprivation has to be waged at many levels and in many arenas, one of which is food. What is done with new crop seeds has much to do with who controls the entire food system.
Control over new crop varieties can determine what crops will be grown, what inputs shall be used, who will buy the grain and how it may be marketed. This control can threaten the very sovereignty of developing nations.
The recombinant DNA-based biotechnology is one area with promise to solve the problems of hunger and malnutrition of the Third World. But the multinational corporate involvement in crop biotechnology research threatens this.
Last year a California-based multinational seed company, Calgene, introduced a new tomato into US supermarkets that made headline news around the world. It was the first transgenic (genetically engineered) plant variety to reach consumers. The company introduced an artificial gene into a tomato plant which stopped it from synthesising an enzyme required for rotting, thereby increasing its shelf life.
Genetic engineering is revolutionising the science of plant breeding and changing the face of modern agriculture. Today it is possible to design and tailor crops according to our requirements. A better understanding of the genetic code and molecular processes in a cell have made it possible to tinker with the basic mechanisms of plant life.
The specific gene(s) that, say, are responsible for drought tolerance, can be located on the plant chromosomes, and can be sequenced, transferred and introduced to plants belonging to unrelated species. As in the human genome project, in every crop where molecular genome is being unravelled, genetic maps are constructed and complete genetic information, hitherto hidden in the chromosomes, is being revealed. This knowledge promises to increase the efficiency of plant breeders' efforts to evolve better varieties.
Diseases, insects, weeds, drought and salinity take their toll on crops. Farmers in the developing south are losing 40-70% of their produce in the fields and during storage due to the onslaught of pest and diseases. Almost 50% of total insecticides used in agriculture is consumed on crop plants trying to control caterpillars, stem borers and moths belonging to the Lepidoptera family. The new varieties developed in cotton, soybean and tomato plants contain a bacterial gene, Bacillus thuringinesis, that produces an endotoxin that protects the plant from these pests.
There are also new grain legumes with genes incorporated to protect them from storage pests (in Africa and India farmers lose nearly 50% of grain from pests during storage); the virus-resistant banana, sweet potato, papaya and other herbicide-resistant crops are some examples.
Dr Asis Dutta of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi has recently come up with a protein-rich pulse crop with altered amino-acid content. The enormous benefits of these nutritious crops with high protein content in combating the malnutrition of the developing world are beyond doubt.
Likewise, plants are being designed to tolerate harsh environments like drought and salinity and acid soils in mine sites. Similarly, work is being done on designing plants with new genes that can produce human pharmaceuticals, growth hormones and blood clotting agents for human consumption.
The new biotech pest- and disease-resistant transgenic plants are not only economical for Third World farmers (saving the money spent on pesticides) but also eco-friendly, because they lessen environmental pollution.
Since these new crops do not require insecticides, the profits of the agrochemical companies stand to shrink. The Food and Agricultural Organisation estimates that the total Third World consumption of insecticides and herbicides stands at 900,000 tonnes per year and is likely to increase; substantial quantities of fertilisers are being imported from the industrialised north.
Sensing the danger of a shrinking agrochemical market, many multinationals with interests in petroleum, fertiliser and agrochemicals have jumped into crop biotechnology research.
The worldwide agricultural biotech industry is already attracting many billions of investment dollars; Pioneer, Hibred, Calgene, Bayer and others have pumped 70-80% of their total investments into crop biotechnology research.
DNA-based biotechnology research requires sophisticated and well-equipped laboratories and highly skilled scientific personnel, all of which is very capital intensive. Public sector crop research institutions such as IRRI (Philippines), Tropical Agricultural Research Institute (Nigeria) and ICRISAT (India) are unable to compete with the well-funded multinational biotech research. Unable to survive the project funding crunch, many universities have set up "cooperative research centres" with multinationals, making the universities virtually cater to the latter's needs.
All multinational biotech companies have initiated plant genome projects and are developing new molecular DNA technologies and new crops. To date, plant breeders and biotechnologists working around the world in crop research have exchanged information and crop germplasm and interacted freely through the scientific media. Now, new scientific and technological information and crop varieties developed by these multinationals are becoming the property of the multinationals, thus restricting the flow of information across the scientific community.
The US-based Monsanto Corporation has developed pest-resistant transgenic cotton plants and patented the whole range of pest-resistant varieties in cotton. This means that any plant breeder working in India or Egypt has to seek permission from, and pay, the Monsanto Corporation to improve their native cotton crop. As has happened with fertilisers and insecticides, the developing south will be made dependent on agribusinesses and will continue to pay heavy royalties on the new biotech crop varieties.
The new stipulations on patenting agricultural crops that have come into force under GATT will threaten the survival of Third World farmers. They will be forced to depend on the agribusiness multinationals to decide what crops to grow, further endangering the food security of these nations.
Although much is said about the advent of pest-resistant transgenic cotton and tomato varieties, this is not the priority research area for the multinationals. Today 50% of research funding is spent on producing pesticide-tolerant crops — genetically engineered crops which can withstand the heavy dumping of weedicides into the soil. This has been done to promote multinationals' products and to safeguard the existing agrochemical industry.
The increasing influence of the private agrobiotech companies is not aimed at providing real or enduring solutions to the problems of world hunger, malnutrition and environmental pollution.
The mobilisation of public opinion against the growing multinational corporate influence in crop biotechnology research is urgently required, as is increased government funding to public sector research in universities (in both developed and developing world) and the international crop research institutions.
[Dr Somasundar is a sugarcane breeder at the Regional Agricultural Research Station at Anakapalle in India.]