I’m glad that Margaret Wente can see the agricultural situation so much better than what she refers to as “organic ideologues” in her latest column in the Globe and Mail. Her argument, which is very simple–perhaps too simple to merit her full column–is that we are hurting Africa by holding back the miracles of North American industrial and biological technique. African children are starving, all because there are lots of North Americans enamored with romantic “peasant” agricultural notions.
I always know a Margaret Wente article because it always begins on a wide pan of her “friends” who are always effete, out of touch liberals who have absolutely no idea as to how the world works. They are always grabbing on to the next hot topic or issue that soothes their bleeding hearts. Their hearts bleed so much that their brains can’t get enough of it. This time their hearts are bleeding all over the children of Africa, because they’ve been foolish enough to buy into local and organic food as an alternative to the agribusiness model. Africans can’t produce enough food, she argues, so they need genetically modified crops with high yields, less water and less land. They need a good dose of common sense from Dr. Margaret, who’s credentials come not from some ivory tower institution, but from the school of hard-knocks called realism.
Yet, Margaret neglects to mention why Africans don’t have enough food. She does, to her credit, mention how the west has so much food that we are complacent about the situation in Africa. Yet, she doesn’t discuss the fact that Africa was food self sufficient up until mid-century. Since trade liberalization in the 1960’s and lovely regulations by the World Bank and IMF, Africans have been forced to open their borders to trade. This usually means the encouragement of commodity crops over agricultural self-sustenance. They grow crops for export, rather than food for themselves. They produce, we consume. Not to mention the fact that many Africans don’t have access to land thanks to land policies that have always benefited the wealthy and elite who have the resources to purchase their own food, and land to sell to foreign interests so they can grow even more for their home markets.
If we ignore systemic imbalances in the world food system, the practicality of a world GMO system is still in dispute. Despite the underlying assumption that there isn’t enough space to grow all the food they need, Wente also assumes that Monsanto (unjustly vilified, in her opinion) and their ilk’s technologies are uniquely beneficial and outperform traditional agricultural methods. Studies have also suggested that the yields promised by GMOs have yet to come to fruition and have not significantly reduced the amount of pesticides or fertilizers required for cultivation. None of this even takes into account that a worldwide industrial food system would require gargantuan resources, burned carbons, decreased biodiversity and genetic contamination to accomplish in the first place. None of which we can possibly compromise on any more thanks to climate change and other ecological threats.
Even if they did, Wente disregards any ethical problems that have arisen related to the patenting of living organisms, as Monsanto has done with varieties such as their “Roundup Ready” corn variety. No one can save Monsanto seeds or plant without a license because they contain Monstanto’s intellectual property. This was illustrated in our own country when Monsanto sued Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser because his crops were contaminated with Monsanto’s canola genes thanks some seeds that blew off a truck on to his land. Just think of what might happen to a poor farmer in Burkina Faso if the same happens there and he doesn’t have the resources nor the Canadian legal system to defend himself through.
The fact is that Wente is the real ideologue who buys into the notion that the advances of the human race are inherently good, and that the western lifestyle is a universal one that will provide all people around the world with the happiness that they so deserve. When she says that women and children who do the majority of agricultural work in Africa should “be in school,” she’s really saying that they should be living like us, and that farming is for chumps. Unfortunately, the way we do things now just doesn’t work–despite how much columnists for old media pimp the plight of African children for them. Those latte-drinking libs, ever the target of Margaret’s maliciousness, appear to be on the right side of history.
