A super race for a super rice

Almost the entire population of east and south-east Asia depend on rice for survival, so technology like this could help solve increasing food shortages. “The new rice was created through public research and should be available to all,” commented Professor Anthony Trewavas, of Edinburgh University in a speech published on the genetics website of The Guardian UK, “For developing and third world countries, it is life and death.”

The new strain, which was produced by inserting maize genes into a rice plant, has increased the rice’s rates of photosynthesis and sugar production. Another GM rice, designed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to produce high levels of beta-carotene (a source of Vitamin A), was announced in January and hailed as a saviour for the world’s 500,000 children who go blind from Vitamin A deficiency every year. Meanwhile, the Monsanto Research Institute in Bangalore is developing a pest-resistant strain of maize which research director Dr T.M. Manjunath claims will help improve the yield of Indian farmers. The local head of operations, S. Chandrapal claimed that “Monsanto research is relevant to India because with the growing population of hungry people, food productivity is very important.”

Sure enough, if farmers near Delhi had accessed a pest-resistant tomato that Monsanto are developing, then this year’s crop might have been saved from the plague of Helthosis insects. Not only would this improve the income of farmers, it would also protect consumers from the toxic pesticides currently used to combat the infestation. From the beginning of the GM crop controversy, the biotech industry has defended itself by stressing their ability to improve `food security’ in the developing world.

But it is not always clear that GM companies have the interests of starving millions at heart. “Having nothing beneficial to offer consumers in the north,” said Dr Sue Mayer, director of GeneWatch UK, in response to the new GM rice, “the industry has been forced to use poverty and malnutrition as a justification for its continued existence.”

At a biotechnology conference in Delhi last month, the GM industry was strongly criticised for failing to produce agricultural strains suitable for developing world farmers. The bulk of GM crops produced to date such as Monsanto’s GM soya which is resistant to the company’s own brand of herbicide Round Up Ready Formula have been designed for cultivation on the huge industrial farms of Europe and the US. These crops generate income for an already affluent Western agricultural industry. The economic incentive of producing seeds for impoverished farmers in countries such as India is minimal.

Along with the vociferous environmentalists in the West who deplore the exploitative and monopolising strategies of large GM companies, farmers from developing countries those who will supposedly benefit from biotechnology investment have also resisted GM technology. Professor M.D. Nanjundaswamy, former head of Karnataka Rashtriya Raita Sangh (KRRS) and protestor against Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Miss World Contest and other “heinous” influences of the West, last hit the headlines when he supervised the burning of a GM cotton crop near Bangalore in 1998. This month, he is planning to evict the Monsanto scientists from their research centre at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

Nanjundaswamy views multinational investment in biotechnology as “pure neo-colonialism”, the second Green Revolution. Knife in cloak like the first, they will cause further damage to agricultural systems, marginalise the majority of India’s small farmers and “double food insecurity.”

Nanjundaswamy may soon find that his Quixotic task of throwing Monsanto out of the country is done for him. Claiming that operations in India have no commercial value, Monsanto are apparently in two minds about continuing research here. Despite all their pious promises, the economics of biotechnology are not yet advantageous in the developing world. It looks like the opportunity for finding a GM solution to world hunger may be going up in smoke. Similarly, the beneficial impacts of the new high-yielding rice variety will always be tied down by economics. Small farmers are rarely able to afford expensive new seed, especially when the Terminator variety obliges them to buy new seeds every year rather than keeping back their own for replanting.

Under this system it is only the large commercial farmers who will be able to improve their income. Meanwhile, environmentalists argue that there is already more than enough food to go round. Food shortage is perpetuated by problems of distribution. “Super rice is unlikely to save the world,” concludes Dr Mayer, “Its role, if any, is likely to be minor, as underlying inequalities can only be addressed by a shift in political and social attitudes.” But in the present political climate, food redistribution is a pie in the sky. The answer has to lie in southern self-sufficiency.

Gautam Vohra, director of the Development Research and Advocacy Group (DRAG), claims that the future of India’s food-security lies in the revival of traditional farming practices. Much of the current soil exhaustion, consequent low yields, and migration of agricultural communities to urban areas has its root, Vohra claims, in the chemical intensive farming. Eighty per cent of India’s farmers manage 2-3 acres of land. DRAG are determined to prove that for them, organic (`traditional’) techniques are the only cost-effective solution. But the debate is critically unresolved. How the opposing camps will forge a path to the future remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, India’s food secure future hangs in the balance.