Bio-fuels, Food crisis & The Genetically Modified Organism Industry

By, Harsh Doshi

The era of "agrofuels" has arrived, and the scale of the changes it is already forcing on farming and markets around the world is immense. A study conducted at Yale University found out that across the US, 20 percent of the whole maize crop went to ethanol last year. How much is that? --Just 2 percent of US automobile use. A majority of the countries have promised to commit themselves to alternate energy and therefore farmers are rushing to grow profitable crops such as maize, sugarcane, palm oil, all of which can be turned into bio fuels, but that means growing less of other crops.

While bio-fuels may be a good form of alternate energy it is having a considerable effect on food prices. Almost all the maize that was grown until a couple of years ago was used for human and animal consumption, but now most of the maize grown in the US is used for ethanol production. And as US grows most of the world's maize, its price has doubled in a year and the price of wheat has risen by about 50% as per the Yale study.

The increase in demand for agrofuels is hitting the poor the hardest. The United Nations World Food Program, which feeds about 90-million people mostly with US maize, stated that 850-million people around the world are already undernourished. There will soon be more because the price of food has increased by 20% in a year. Even climate change has started to affect the global food supply system tremendously. With unpredictable weather and longer lasting droughts it has become increasingly difficult for farmers to foresee the weather patterns for planning.

A lot of industry experts have pinned their hopes on genetically modified (GM) crops which would be drought resistant and produce higher yields. Even though the GM crops seems like an excellent solution to the increasing food crisis, it can have a negative impact too.

The largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant 'Terminator' or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is a technology by which a patented commercial seed commits 'suicide' after one harvest. This clever genetically engineered seed forces farmers to return every year to these GMO seed suppliers to get new seeds to grow their crops. If broadly introduced around the world, majority of food producers will become dependent on these companies which are backed by the US government. Such control and power over the food chain can create a lot of destruction as these companies on the order of the US government can deny seeds to a nation whose government's policies go against Washington's.

Only time will tell whether such a crisis will ever materialize but God forbid if it does then it definitely seems like a scary world to live in.