• Question: Could GM companies of the world be limited so they cannot control more than a certain amount of the food supply? That seems to be one of the main concerns and if that was eliminated, we could move forward.

    Asked by janelet to Andy, Cathie, Jules, Les, Ricarda on 24 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Cathie Martin

      Cathie Martin answered on 24 Jun 2012:

      Currently none of the companies that are producing crops with traits that have been improved by GM are strictly ‘food companies’. The reasons why a few large companies seem to have a monopoly on crops improved by GM is because the cost of deregulating GM products is so high that public sector organisations can not afford to acquire regulatory approval. The protests against and demands for deregulation of GM products, which far exceed those required for any conventional food, have driven crop improvement by GM into the hands of a few multinationals whose interests are in making money from agroindustry rather than providing consumers with improved foods. The way to avoid monopolies of this type is to reduce the regulatory burden, so that it can efficiently and effectively assess risk, but be affordable for smaller companies and public sector organisations. In this way consumers could gain access to foods with nutritional, taste or storage improvements outside of any trend to globalise the food supply.

    • Photo: Les Firbank

      Les Firbank answered on 24 Jun 2012:

      It’s true that more of our food supply is in the hands of fewer companies, from companies that produce the seeds, to those that sell our food. One of the reasons is that we have all got used to cheap food, making it hard for corner shops and small farmers and small seed producers to survive, while the big producers need to keep costs right down to stay competitive. If we want a more diverse food supply, we should be prepared to pay more, and take a bit more time to buy food from smaller shops.

    • Photo: Julian Little

      Julian Little answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Hi janelet, Interest question. I guess the provision of food and the provision of seeds gets more and more difficult as more people want a wide and varied diet all year round, with an expectation that it will be both affordable and of a very high quality. To do that needs a lot of organisation and costs a lot to do. Big companies can afford it, smaller one tend to have a more limited success.

      When it comes to developing a new seed, the costs of research and development are really high, and when it comes to a GM plant, the chances of it becoming available with 10 years are pretty slim in most cases. In reality, companies have got fewer and bigger as a way of a being able to afford the £100 million or so that is needed to get it to the market. Not a trivial issue!!

      That said, there are smaller companies out there. Take a look at Arcadia BioSciences, for example (http://www.arcadiabio.com/ ). This is a company that doesn’t sell crops but sells useful genes for other companies to put into crops. The gene might be for drought or salt tolerance. In the cases, Arcadia doesn’t have to spend money on commercialising the seed, it can focus it’s energy on the research side of things. We are starting to see spin offs in the UK along the same lines, but it is still early days

    • Photo: Andy Stirling

      Andy Stirling answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Good question! But it’s not just an issue of “the amount” of the food chain that is controlled. It’s also an issue of the degree to which any given part is controlled. This is where conventional forms of GM look most dicey. This is because they tend to concentrate power in fewer hands in a way that other methods do not do to the same extent.

      An example is where a company controls a particular plant, whose value depends on a particular herbicide made by that company. Another example is where a company uses GM to produce a plant from which farmers cannot usefully save seed and share and breed from themselves. These are not just problems with GM. But GM technology can make the problems more serious.

      So the best way to limit the control of particular companies in the way asked about in this question, is to allow a wider diversity of breeding practices to flourish. This includes practices that do not concentrate power in the same way as conventional GM – and which conventional GM tends to suppress.

      Examples of these other methods that would be supported in this way, include using advanced genetics to mark promising new lines for breeding (rather than to directly insert controlled genes). This is called ‘marker-assisted breeding’. Other options are ‘open source’ plant breeding or plant breeding research that involves participation by farmers themselves. Plant breeding an also be done to suit more ‘ecological’ farming practices, rather than strategies that depend on intensive chemical and energy inputs.

      So, steering away from conventional GM technologies can have the effect of allowing other promising innovations to flourish, in ways that address the needs of farmers and world food production – at the same time as limiting the concentration of power in food markets.

    • Photo: Ricarda Steinbrecher

      Ricarda Steinbrecher answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Theoretically yes. But that needs strong political will and action, changes of law -including international treaties- and legally binding regulations.

      Though I am a biologist, the following is from what I have learned through the last 15 years of international biosafety, biodiversity and food security negotiations, the debate around the EU patent directive, patent challenges I have been involved in, direct reports and experience from farmers north and south – just to mention some. The way it looks to me is: The main control exercised by GM companies at present is through ownership of the genetic sequences, for example, for tolerance to a herbicide, which they have developed and which they have inserted into the genomes of crop plants. It is important to realise that this often gives them control of the whole seed of the crop, not just the gene they have developed, through patents taken out by or acquired by the company. Where the same company produces the herbicide and the seeds with the genes for herbicide tolerance, this gives them still more control over the production of these particular crops. The farmers who buy the seed have to pay extra for the GM technology in that seed.

      So although GM companies do not directly control our food supply, they do have considerable control over the farmers that use their seeds. For example, the farmers may have to abide by rules that prevent them from saving any seed from the crop to plant the following year. This means they have to go back to the company to buy new seed each year, which adds to their costs. It also means the farmer has no control over the seed; for example, by saving and replanting seed year after year, the farmer is helping the seed and the plant to adapt to the local conditions – climate, soil-type, pests, diseases, rainfall, even latitude, which influences the length of the day and the growing season and the amount of sunlight. It is therefore important to think about rights over seeds and whether companies should have such rights over seeds and if so, what kind of rights.

      After all, people have been selecting and saving seed over thousands of years, and in this way they have given us the many different kinds of foods we have today. For example, in Mexico, generations of small farmers have bred the original maize or corn plant with only a small seed head (based on teosinte) into thousands of varieties of maize with different qualities, as well as colours, flavours and uses. Here in the UK, farmers have selected and bred literally thousands of different kinds of apple over the centuries – but if you go to a supermarket, you will probably only find a few varieties on sale.

      Today, in many parts of the world, people continue with their practices, exchanging seed, knowledge and ideas with each other. However, such exchange is becoming more difficult because of the control that a few companies have over seed and small farmers and food providers would like to see the end of such control, so that they could freely save and exchange and sell seed as they always did in the past. It is important to remember for example that around 70% of food in the global south is provided by small producers, while family farms produce up to 80% of the food consumed in African countries, much of which does not enter any formal market, or supermarket.

      Another level of control is the ownership of seed companies. Current large agro-biotechnology companies have made great efforts to buy up seed companies on all continents. According to data researched by ETC Group in 2011, the top 3 international seed companies (Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta) alone control 53 per cent of the global proprietary seed market. Partly to gain access to the germplasm of the varieties held in the ownership of that seed company, but also to gain access to the supply chain and pool of customers as an outlet for own seed.

      Yet another aspect is who is running the transport, shipping and the processing. And again it is big, little-known monopolies that have developed to divide up the market, such as Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, usually known as ADM, or Bunge.

      The global commodification of food and feed has become a difficult issue. It has been pushed for by those that now control various parts of the food chain through monopolies and monopsonies – and yet it is also the power of these companies that has been eroding regulation world wide, including laws and regulations concerning biosafety and GMOs.

      An important additional question is this: if the control of the companies involved was limited, as proposed by the question, would GM crops actually continue to be planted? Or would more sustainable and better yielding agro-ecological systems be taken up, which currently have no major lobby as there is no product to be monopolised and marketed such as proprietary seeds, pesticides or large amounts of chemical fertilisers?

Comments