Food for all

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

Published on Wednesday, June 27, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times
People, Not Technology, Are the Key to Ending Hunger
The debate over biotechnology is a tragic distraction
by Frances Moore Lappe

Biotechnology companies and even some scientists argue that we need
genetically modified seeds to feed the world and to protect the Earth
from chemicals. Their arguments feel eerily familiar.

Thirty years ago, I wrote "Diet for a Small Planet" for one reason. As
a researcher buried in the UC Berkeley agricultural library, I was
stunned to learn that the experts -- equivalent to the biotech
proponents of today -- were wrong. They were telling us we'd reached
the Earth's limits to feed ourselves, but in fact there was more than
enough food for us all.

Hunger, I learned, is the result of economic "givens" we ourselves
have created, assumptions and structures that actively generate
scarcity from plenty. Today this is more, not less, true.

Throughout history, ruminants had served humans by turning grasses and
other "inedibles" into high-grade protein. They were our four-legged
protein factories. But once we began feeding livestock from cropland
that could grow edible food, we began to convert ruminants into our
protein disposals. Only a small fraction of the nutrients fed to
animals return to us in meat; the rest animals use largely for energy
or they excrete. Thirty years ago, one-third of the world's grain was
going to livestock; today it is closer to one-half. And now we're
mastering the same disappearing trick with the world's fish supply. By
feeding fish to fish, again, we're reducing the potential supply.

We're shrinking the world's food supply for one reason: The hundreds
of millions of people who go hungry cannot create a sufficient "market
demand" for the fruits of the Earth. So more and more of it flows into
the mouths of livestock, which convert it into what the better-off can
afford. Corn becomes filet mignon. Sardines become salmon.

Enter biotechnology. While its supporters claim that seed
biotechnology methods are "safe" and "precise," other scientists
strongly refute that, as they do claims that biotech crops have
actually reduced pesticide use.

But this very debate is in some ways part of the problem. It is a
tragic distraction our planet cannot afford.

We're still asking the wrong question. Not only is there already
enough food in the world, but as long as we are only talking about
food -- how best to produce it -- we'll never end hunger or create the
communities and food safety we want.

We must ask instead: How do we build communities in tune with nature's
wisdom in which no one, anywhere, has to worry about putting food --
safe, healthy food -- on the table? Asking this question takes us far
beyond food. It takes us to the heart of democracy itself, to whose
voices are heard in matters of land, seeds, credit, employment, trade
and food safety.

The problem is, this question cannot be addressed by scientists or by
any private entity, including even the most high-minded corporation.
Only citizens can answer it, through public debate and the resulting
accountable institutions that come from our engagement.

Where are the channels for public discussion and where are the
accountable polities?

Increasingly, public discussion about food and hunger is framed by
advertising by multinational corporations that control not only food
processing and distribution but farm inputs and seed patents.

Two years ago, the seven leading biotech companies, including
Monsanto, teamed up under the neutral-sounding Council for
Biotechnology Information and are spending millions to, for example,
blanket us with full-page newspaper ads about biotech's virtues.

Government institutions are becoming ever more beholden to these
corporations than to their citizens. Nowhere is this more obvious than
in decisions regarding biotechnology--whether it's the approval or
patenting of biotech seeds and foods without public input or the
rejection of mandatory labeling of biotech foods despite broad public
demand for it.

The absence of genuine democratic dialogue and accountable government
is a prime reason most people remain blind to the many breakthroughs
in the last 30 years that demonstrate we can grow abundant, healthy
food and also protect the Earth.

Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of
democracy. Thus it can never be solved by new technologies, even if
they were to be proved "safe." It can only be solved as citizens build
democracies in which government is accountable to them, not private
corporate entities.

Frances Moore Lappe is a visiting scholar at MIT