Green attacks on GM reveal contempt for human life
Gerard Jackson
I've said too many times to recount that the last thing greens want is to see ThirdWorld peasants well fed and prosperous. Why else would these nature-loving fanatics oppose every scientific advance that would lift these peasants out of poverty?
We now have Dr Gyorgy Scrinis — a research associate in the Globalism Institute at RMIT University — trying to rationalise why it is preferable to allow peasants to suffer poverty and malnutrition rather than allow them access to life-improving genetically modified crops (GM crops will not help feed the world, The Age, 8/7).
Scrinis begins by telling us that "Public opposition to genetically modified foods has been a stumbling block to the commercialisation of GM crops and animals." What he does not say is that this is only true to the extent that greens have successfully lied to the public about the nature genetic modification. If any corporation or multinational had behaved as dishonestly as greens they would have been hounded by the media, hunted by green ideologues, and probably have landed in court for false advertising.
According to the brilliant Scrinis "the new genetic technologies will largely be used to feed the power and profits of agri-food corporations." This is just leftwing humbug. That companies are out to make profits is neither surprising nor immoral, unless you are a leftwing bigot. That companies are out to accrue "power" just reveals the poverty of leftwing thought and shows that it sees all relationships in terms of power. No wonder lefties are incapable of understanding market economics. No doubt that's why Scrinis never once mentioned markets in his article.
He argues that genetically modified food stuffs "are primarily being developed to fit into large-scale, chemical-intensive, mechanised and capital-intensive farming systems." Rubbish. These crops are being developed to increase yields in the hope of earning profits — and Scrinis does not provide a scrap of evidence to suggest otherwise.
Demonstrating a marvellous grasp of economic history as well as a profound understanding of economic theory, Scrinis confidently assured readers that these companies are designing their products to fit "the requirements of the global food industries", citing the production of "non-softening fruits for long-distance transportation so well-off consumers can have access to year-round supplies of out-of-season fruits" as evidence for his assertion.
How diabolically fiendish. Only greedy, callous capitalists would develop processes that enable peasant farmers to increase productivity and raise their incomes by exporting to wealthy consumers.
Note well that Scrinis is claiming that increased yields must go abroad at the expense of the producing country. But Why? Scrinis does not say. Perhaps that's because it would have required a little thought, and thought is definitely a painful process for the great majority of lefties.
However, I'm a charitable chap, so I'll try and help Scrinis out. His argument against technology that lowers the cost of exporting food stuffs could just as well have applied to those late nineteenth century developments in transport that massively reduced the cost of shipping wheat from the US to Europe. (From 1870 to 1900 the cost of shipping bulk cargo dropped by about 90 per cent). Is Dr Scrinis going to argue that the technology that made these exports possible caused famine in America?
The transport revolution also encouraged innovations in refrigeration techniques. By 1877 the Argentine was shipping frozen mutton to France, no doubt creating a shortage of mutton in Argentina. In 1880 Britain started to import frozen mutton and beef from Australia. Twenty years later Australia and New Zealand were transporting millions of carcases a year to Britain. A process that caused the Great Australiasian Famine.
In short, history demonstrates that significant improvements in agricultural productivity and transport systems led to increased output, lower prices and improved living standards. So what's different now? Absolutely nothing. And yet Scrinis misleadingly states that "Any increase in yields of crop and animal products will be headed for its usual destination: well-off consumers." Yeah, just like in the nineteenth century.
Scrinis's view could only hold any water if it is assumed that the poor country's agricultural output remains unchanged while transport costs fell so low that it paid farmers to export their produce rather than sell it on the domestic market. (Other assumptions are also necessary for his argument to hold).
However, Scrinis admits that productivity will increase. In other words, agricultural prices will fall. (Before some economic illiterate of a greenies starts jumping up and down, let me point out that falling prices in this situation means rising incomes). But how can malnutrition be aggravated by increased food exports if prices are falling due to increased productivity? They can't, unless you believe that increased productivity raises prices. Talk about topsy-turvy economics.
Thinking he had another string to his bow, Scrinis claimed that more food means malnutrition! Yep, the more there is the worse it is. He states that "countries with the greatest incidence of poverty and hunger are net exporters of food." Funny thing though, he does not name a single country where food exports have caused hunger.
India, for example, has managed to increase its per capital consumption of food and still create a surplus, thanks to the kind of technological and business developments that Scrinis would kill. In his book India Unbound (published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2001) Gurcharan Das relates how the green revolution — the one the greens still vilify — increased agricultural productivity, raised the demand for labour and lifted real incomes all round.
But India does not seem to be on the doctor's radar screen, neither is South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore or Malaysia. Come to think of it, the only countries I know of that exported food while letting their people starve where socialist states. (Things are so bad in socialist North Korea the people have been reduced to eating grass and the bark from trees. I bet they would just love a small dose of the kind of "food insecurity" that free markets generate and the moralising Scrinis condemns).
Thinking only of the welfare of Third World peasants Scrinis argued that new technologies will destroy agricultural jobs. This is the old discredited machinery-destroys-jobs fallacy in new garb. So long as there is sufficient land and capital to employ labour there can be no lasting mass unemployment. (See India Unbound on technology and agriculture)
This bring us back to the last quarter of nineteenth century Britain when massive imports of cheap food stuffs caused a significant drop in rural incomes, part of the result of which was that from 1870 to 1900 about a million farm labourers left the land for the cities, where they found work. During that period real incomes approximately doubled, despite the fact that between 1871 and 1911 the population of England and Wales increased by 13,358,000.
Third world people are poor because they live in capital scarce countries. The only way for these people to lift themselves out of poverty is through capital accumulation — otherwise known as economic growth. But economic growth is something that the greens oppose. Isn't that so, Dr. Scrinis?
Trying to cover all of his bets, Scrinis attacked patented seeds. To him they are part of a cunning plot to destroy small-scale farmers. The fact is that patents are not that easily given. Bio-tech companies gain patents because they have applied capital and ingenuity in not only obtaining the genetic sequence of plants but also in manipulating it to create a superior product.
Even if one concedes that patent law may contain grey areas concerning, for example, plant compounds, this problem should be a question of law, not science or ideology. However, the view that such patents will "exacerbate" malnutrition and mass unemployment in the third world is utterly absurd.
Scrinis's attack on golden rice, which he sneeringly called "ideology of genetic precision", inadvertently revealed his complete contempt for those peasants whose wellbeing he publicly professes concern.
Golden rice was developed to save millions of Third World children from blindness or death caused by vitamin A deficiency. According to a UN report something like 140 to 250 million preschool children are vitamin A. deficient. This is because rice, which is a staple food in more than 100 countries, contains virtually no vitamin A. Golden rice would rectify this situation. The report stated that increasing the intake of vitamin A could eliminate about 500,000 annual cases of blindness in high-risk countries and also slash childhood deaths by about 33 per cent.
Isn't odd that the well-informed and terribly caring Dr Scrinis is apparently ignorant of these facts. Or perhaps they just don't cut any ice with him.
According to Scrinis, however, GM is all "about corporations and well-off consumers continuing to feed on the food, the cheap labour and other extractable resources of the Third World." Complete Neo-Marxist claptrap. I haven't seen anything as bad as this since I read that economic idiot George Monbiot's silly article on surplus capital (Too much of a good thing, Guardian 18/2/03).
Scrinis's scientific illiteracy and his indifference to the suffering of the poor was summed up in this sickeningly dishonest statement: "There is an obscene arrogance in the idea that GM crops will "feed the world", or that the poor need to be fed by us. For in reality, poor people and communities around the world will either feed themselves, or they will not feed at all."
I'm sure that there is some young scientist out there only too willingly to expose Scrinis's attack on genetic engineering as nothing but an ideologically motivated assault on science itself — not to mention human life. Marx and Engels must be spinning in their graves.
Finally, it will come as no surprise to learn that the socialist Dr Scrinis is a rabid supporter of the fanatical Friends of the Earth. Perhaps one day someone will set up a Friends of Humanity organisation.
Gerard Jackson is also Brookes' Economics Editor
BrookesNews.Com
Wednesday 8 July 2003