June
2015
COTTONING
ON TO A LIE (PART 2)
Genetically
modified cotton will harm, not help, African smallholder farmers.
(Second of a 2-part article)
By
Haidee Swanby
RESISTANCE
AND OBSTACLES IN AFRICA
KENYA
In 2012 Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) in
partnership with Monsanto was on the brink of commercialising Bt cotton,
having concluded field trials and submitted the results to the National
Biosafety Authority (NBA). However, in the same year, a Parliamentary
Decree that banned the import of GMOs into the country was passed.
This caused Monsanto to withdraw its funding and interest in the project,
due to the uncertain environment the Decree had created.
In May 2015 a national taskforce, mandated to advise the Kenyan Parliament
on how to proceed with the ban, recommended that the ban be lifted
on a case-by-case basis but only after new legislation dealing with
the health impacts of GMOs has been implemented. The report found
that safety data on GMOs and health is completely lacking and that
the country has limited capacity to regulate and monitor GMOs. Parliament
has yet to announce how it will take up the recommendations of the
taskforce, but its decision will have an impact on Monsanto’s willingness
to invest further in GMOs in that country.
GHANA
Multi-location field trials with Bt cotton began in 2013
and further trials with herbicide resistant cotton began the following
year. Ghanaian authorities have expressed eagerness to commercialise
GM cotton in the immediate future. There are plans to expedite the
risk assessment and approval process by ‘domesticating’ research results
from Burkina Faso, as the two countries share very similar ecological
conditions.
However, the biotech industry faces a hostile environment
in Ghana. In April 2015 a local activist group, Food Sovereignty Ghana
(FSG), sought an injunction against the government in the Ghanian
courts to stop the commercial release of GM crops, noting that decisions
on GM activities were being made illegally — the National Biosafety
Committee had not yet been constituted as required by their Biosafety
Act of 2011. A temporary injunction was granted by the court and further
proceedings are being delayed due to Ghana’s largest farmer association,
Ghana National Association of Farmers and Fisherfolk (GNAFF), having
applied to join on the side of the defence.
Prior to these events, a report written in 2014 by the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) stated that the US Programme for
Biosafety Support (PBS) had sought to neutralise the growing anti-GM
campaigns in Ghana by arranging for GNAFF to come out in support of
GM crops. The report said that going forward, “PBS in collaboration
with the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) and the African
Biotechnology Network of Expertise (ABNE) are planning to have other
farmer groups come out publicly in support of GM crops in Ghana. They
also intend to buy space in key print media to highlight the benefits
of GM technology; assist key farmer groups to make positions on the
introduction of GM and identify individuals who will promptly respond
to issues of GM on radio and in the newspapers”.
UGANDA
In 2009 open field trials on Bt cotton and herbicide resistant
cotton were initiated and in 2010 field trials of ‘stacked varieties’
(combining both traits in one plant) started. These trials were run
by Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organisation (NARO) and
funded by Monsanto and USAID. The trials were supposed to run for
three seasons but after just two seasons funding was withdrawn by
Monsanto who, instead, concentrated its efforts in Burkina Faso.
Monsanto said that the company withdrew due to “the lack of a favourable
legal environment to protect its interests in the country” but that
it would consider returning to Uganda “if the legal environment improves,
such as passing the proposed law on regulation of biotechnology”.
In May 2015 Uganda’s Parliamentary Caucus gave the green light to
the National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill, signalling that it
would soon be adopted. The passage of the Bill has been long, arduous
and full of conflict, which no doubt fuelled Monsanto’s discomfit.
Legal issues aside, the trials also did not go well. According to
a lead researcher the “results were quite inconclusive; morphologically
and chemically the GM plants expressed themselves in unexpected ways.
Hence, management became intensive at times, especially due to secondary
pests”. (Secondary pests have often been a challenge with Bt crops,
where non-target pests that were previously not a problem increase
and need chemical applications to control them.)
Recommendations were made that more research be undertaken to determine
how to manage Bt crops effectively at the smallholder farmer scale.
Other topics of concern included how small scale farmers could manage
the onerous insect resistant management strategies that must be employed
with Bt crops, plus issues such as the difficulty of small family
labour teams handpicking uniform cotton bolls that all ripen at the
same time.
CAMEROON
Cameroon began greenhouse experiments on GM cotton in
2012, field trials followed in 2015 and the country hopes to commercialise
a crop as early as 2017. However the Managing Director of a local
cotton company, Sodecton, has said that the country is “far from the
stage of widespread cultivation,” and that much more experimentation
is still needed to ascertain safety.
CONCLUSION
Experiments and open field trials with GM cotton have
been running for many years in a number of African countries and are
increasingly at a stage where applications for commercial release
are imminent. However, there are many obstacles to the birth of a
new GM era in Africa, chief amongst them being the fact that this
high-end technology is simply not appropriate to resource-poor farmers
operating on tiny pieces of land, together with fierce opposition
from civil society and sometimes also from governments.
Attempts by the biotech industry to impose policies that
pander to investors’ desires at the expense of environmental and human
safety may be easier to realise at the regional level, through the
trade-friendly Regional Economic Communities. This is where many biotech
industry resources and efforts are currently being channelled. However,
despite whatever legal environments may be implemented to enable the
introduction of GM cotton regionally or nationally, the fact remains
that Africa’s cotton farmers are operating in a difficult global sector
— prices are erratic and distorted by unfair subsidies in the north,
institutional support for their activities is often lacking, and high
input costs are already annihilating profit margins. Fighting for
the introduction of more expensive technologies that have already
proven themselves technologically unsound in a smallholder environment
is deeply irresponsible and short-sighted.
It is time that African governments turn their resources
to improving the local environments in which cotton producers operate,
including institutional and infrastructural support that can bring
long-term sustainability to the sector, without placing further burdens
and vulnerability on some of the most marginalised people in the world.
Civil society actions will continue to vehemently oppose and challenge
the false solutions promised by Monsanto and its GM cotton and will
insist on just trading environments and true and sustainable upliftment
for African cotton producers. – Third World Network Features.
-ends-
About
the author: Haidee Swanby is Senior Researcher, African Centre for
Biodiversity (ACB).
The above article is reproduced from Pambazuka News, 19 June 2015
Issue 731. For the complete article
with references go to http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/94939
When
reproducing this feature, please credit Third World Network Features
and (if applicable) the cooperating magazine or agency involved in
the article, and give the byline. Please send us cuttings. And
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