Food is a right as set out by the Declaration of Human Rights. Although this means that people should be able to make decisions about what they consume, I believe that the true spirit of the right is that people should not go hungry and should not be malnourished. Unfortunately, many people in the wealthy and well fed nations are making conscious, misinformed decisions about the food they eat, and these decisions are infringing on the rights of poorer, hungrier people. The decisions I am taking about are people’s desire for organic foods and their mistrust of genetically modified (GM) foods. By championing organic foods and protesting GM foods, the wealthy nations of the world are not only driving up the price of food, but also limiting the crop yield and nutritional value of food grown in poorer regions. This is causing the needless deaths of millions of people every year and producing a generation of children who do not get the proper nutrients from the food they do eat. People should realize the effects of their decisions and take a much more skeptical and critical view of the propaganda surrounding organic and GM foods.
The most important point I must make is that no farming of any kind is natural. Farming is an invention of mankind and never existed before 10,000 years ago. The second we started selectively growing and breeding crops from the wild we began to interfere and change the natural process by which the Earth has grown food for millions of years. There is not doubt that the ecology of Earth was dramatically changed when we began farming, and today crops grown on farms, no matter how organic they are, do not resemble their distant relatives that grew in the wild. I realize that often the biggest problem people have with modern farming is the use of evil chemicals on their plants. Many see pesticides and herbicides as foreign and dangerous invention of science. The fact is that we invented no such thing. The majority of pesticides and herbicides are merely purified versions of chemicals created in the laboratory of life. Plants have been fighting off pests and competing plants for millions of years and have done a much better job at developing these chemicals that we ever could; we merely harness their power. Many of the same chemicals are likely in use in organic farming, albeit in lower concentrations and from natural sources. It is this low efficiency and the lower success rate that comes with using natural techniques that is the biggest issue with organic farming. It makes food more expensive and this is the last thing food should be. Perhaps if it was healthier then this would be a good choice, but to date there has been no clear-cut evidence that this is true either. In summation organic foods are not natural, more expensive and not appreciably healthier.
The fight against GM foods is part of the fight against non-organic foods, but a much more damaging agrument. GM foods promise (and deliver) higher crop yields, more robust crops, crops that use less water and deplete the soil at a slower rate and food that is, unequivocally, healthier. Although GM foods are currently more expensive, the higher efficiency and increased nutritional value easily offset the cost and with wide-spread adoption, costs would undoubtedly fall. Unfortunately many people are scared of frankenfood with little to no reason other than ignorance and fear. When first introduced 20 years ago, many people were afraid of the unknown affects of GM foods, but those fears have been laid to rest with no evidence of adverse effects. GM foods have been embraced in North America and are currently gaining traction in South America and East Asia, much to my pleasure. Unfortunately, there are millions of people in North America who have decided they are evil and Europe still refuses to give up the fight (the EU does not allow GM foods to be sold). Although you can argue that this is their choice, you cannot argue that it does not have repercussions worldwide. For instance, because the EU does not allow GM foods, and because much of Europe’s food is imported from Africa, many African farmers as a result will not use GM foods. This is putting needless strain on a woefully malnourished continent and surely causing millions of avoidable deaths. Wealthy countries also gives billions in aid to poor countries, much of it to fight hunger, and people’s political fight against GM foods in Europe and North America means not enough of this money goes toward buying better GM seeds for hungry farmers. It may be an easy choice for us to make, but to force it upon a person dying of hunger is deplorable. Furthermore, GM foods are not even significantly different from farming practices 1000’s of years old. Reproductive engineering, which includes selective breeding and cross breeding of plants and animals, has been a common farming practice for millennia and are just a more rudimentary processes by which farmers modify the genetic code of organisms to produce a better crop.
The point I hope to make is that although making a poor decision based on ideology and superstition may be fine if you can afford it and helps you sleep at night, but it is morally wrong when the repercussions are felt the world over. It would be nice if we lived in a world where there was food for everyone and we could take our time and all the resources we wanted in growing it, but we do not live in that fantasy world. The fact is that millions die every year from malnutrition. The population is growing, but the Earth isn’t. Not only must we make better use of our arable land, but 100 years of poor land and water use, combined with the specter of global warming, means that we will likely lose some of our arable land in the coming decades. We must make informed decisions about our food choices and choose those that are more efficient and most sustainable. Regardless of the propaganda, organic foods are not a sustainable solution for the world. There are not enough resources and money to feed everyone with organic food and the reasons to do so would be suspect at best. GM foods could prove to be a scientific saviour of the worlds disenfranchised just as sanitation, vaccines and antibiotics brought vastly improved health and unbelievably lower fatality rates to millions worldwide. There are a multitude of sustainable farming techniques and the most sustainable of those are ones which involve GM foods and not organic ones. We should strive to feed the world sustainably and not give into our ignorance and our bourgeois tastes.
DG
