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RE: Why current industrial GM crops are bad for africa's agriculture
You should change your title to be "Why current industrial GM crops are bad for africa's agriculture."
None of your qualms are with GM crops themselves, but rather the corporate interests which are designing and pushing those currently available.
GM technology can benefit agriculture in africa substantially as crops can be engineered to be significantly more drought resistant, which can allow for small farmers living in more drought prone areas to grow more food and provide more for their local communities.
In reality the advantages that can be derived from GM crops, don't extend only to Africa, but to any region with specific conditions that make the growth of food crops difficult.
As a technology, GM Technology has several benefits, that much is true. Some of which can - putting aside the multiplicity of poverty and hunger causative political and economic conditions - indeed benefit Africa or for that matter any part of the world with conditions such as make crop growth difficult.
And just so you know, my opposition in regard to the technology itself, is not an absolute and definite one but is rather dependent on more scientific research, on more improved procedures being developed, on more guarantees in regard to human and environmental safety or otherwise in the future. Which is why i am in agreement with your suggestion about the title (Thanks for the cue!)
The problem, in either case, is that these corporate interests are clutching the handle of GMO technology as it is, and as i know it thus far. The evolution of GM technology to encompass 'Traitor and Terminator ' seed concepts for example, is, in my opinion purely financially motivated and driven by the Mosantos'...whose interests and the like, bring the technology itself into disrepute.
Conspicuously, the majority of these GMO technological products are being promoted in the developing world, with multi-national corporations, whose bank balances, often several times bigger that the size of most African economies empowers them to act and influence in ways that are for the most part, always above the law, certainly outside the legal and moral maze in African countries.
In Uganda for example, despite the Parliament still debating the biotechnology bill, which is aimed at legalizing genetically modified crops, unknown to the lay Ugandans, the National Agricultural Research Organization (NARO), the countries research hub, is already, under the auspices of Mosanto the American GMO giant, already running one of the most active GMO research facilities on the African continent, with South African based African Center for Biodiversity, (ACB) revealing that Uganda has the largest number of GM crops under testing. these could be released into the environment long before any solid legal and regulatory policy in even in place.
And when you consider my agro-related fears above, and the absence of yet verifiable risks, the lack of awareness for informed consent among the peasantry and all that....any such move is obviously unethical.
The technology itself, to cut my ramble short, hold s powerful potential. All gene related technologies do. But as is the case for all of them, extensive testing and quality controls need to be in place, given how their flip side can be devastating.
Well... I think current testing on these technologies is more than sufficient for keeping human lives safe. That said we can't protect against unknown unkowns. Aka you can't test for a problem you don't know.
As always I think concerns over this technology is overblown. With regards to the basis of the technology of course. Concerns over multinational business practices are reasonable.
Anyway, keep up the content.