a) Why do we subsidise our farmers?
. Why do we subsidise our farmers? When a Channel 4 reporter asked farmers that question some time ago, those who could think of an answer said, “Because we are the custodians of the countryside”. However, they were not trained for that. What’s the good of doing a bit of symbolic hedgerowing when at the same time they drench the countryside in chemicals, plough land that is too steep to be safely ploughed, and are not welcoming to visitors? Not only does the farm support cost a lot for the more than 90% of UK taxpayers who are not farmers, but it is also very unfair to farmers in the developing countries. Some years ago we and the Americans promised at Doha to scrap our farm support, but there was no time frame, so the promise was meaningless. In the UK the farm subsidies have now been de-linked from production, so they should be moved from the department of agriculture to the departments of social welfare or environment, and then there is no reason for them to be an EU concern any longer. The French can then go on subsidising their farmers, but we would not have to pay for it. Anyhow, to repeat, the question was: why do we subsidise our farmers?
b) The EU still pays more than the world market price for that sugar. Why?
We buy some of our sugar in the
developing countries, and according to reports that I have recently
seen from Swaziland and Guyana, the EU still pays more than the world
market price for that sugar. Why? When I go into a shop to buy an
article, I pay the price, no more. Is it because we want to be kind?
But then it would be better to pay the world market price and to give
the difference directly to the most deserving group in the producer
country, and that group may not necessarily be the sugar producers.
So: why don’t we pay the world market price, and give the rest in
more targeted aid?
Your comments to items a and b to secretary_taaf@taa.org.uk
Mikael Grut
c).Organic Farming in the Tropics:
Date
sent: Thu, 19 Aug 1999
12:40:48 +0100
From:
Bob Orskov <ero@rri.sari.ac.uk>
Organization:
RowettResearch Institute
Organic forming in the tropics.
I think we have to be sure that we do adopt a
rational
attitude to organic farming. I developed countries no doubt the use of
artificial
fertilkizer is and has been totally overdone to the detriment of food
quality
and soil fertility. We have to be sure we do not steer directly into
another
ditch. Organic farming is a luxury that cannot be done by everybody
unless
we ensure that all nutrients are returned to the soil including all
that
now goes down sewers collected in bureal sites and ashed in
crematoriums.
If we have to prevent depletion it has to be
returned if this is best done by artificial
ferlilizers then why not. In many subsistence farming systems in the
tropics it is as
organic as it can be . What we should do of course is by all means to
ensure
that excreta etc is returned to the soil but let us retain a
rationality about
it. The best we can do is to encourage good sustainable resource
management
but if product are exported out something has to come in. Your
sincerely
Bob Orskov
--
Prof. E.R. Ørskov
International Feed Resources Unit,
The Rowett Research Institute,
Greenburn Rd, Bucksburn, Aberdeen
AB21 9SB - Scotland
d). Genetically Modified Crops for the Tropics
From New Scientist 14th August 1999 page 12
The item states that at least a quarter of the World's population suffers from anaemia including 58% of women in South East Asia. Rice contains the least iron of all the cereals and is also rich in phytate which can prevent the uptake of up to 98% of iron in the soil. Genetic engineering is being used to attack this problem and two others, namely to encourage rice to produce more carotene and to encourage plants to absorb more phosphate by:
Each of the first three strategies is claimed to work. the other two
are
still in the experimental stage
Date sent: Thu, 19 Aug 1999
12:57:43
+0100
From:
Bob Orskov <ero@rri.sari.ac.uk>
Organization: RowettResearch Institute
Subject: Genetic
modified
crops in the tropics.
There is no doubt areas in which genetic modification can be
advantageous but for those who feel that this is a method for solving
problems of production are in my opinion tackling the wrong issue and
more concerned with the plight of greedy shareholders than poverty.!
There
are so many possibilities of increasing food production which are
acceptable
for instance using our biomas better. So much
biomas is wasted in the tropics including crop residues that could
enter
the food chain. I have no doubt we could feed twice as many. Look at
China
and Vietnam. China has 7% af the arable land in the world and
feed 22% of the population. North America is probably the other way
round.
Attention to fully utilize the existing biomas is sustainable
environmentally rather that trying to eliminate weed, wildlife etc by
breeding resistance to weedkillers together with many other unknown
when there is no need for it.
--
Prof. E.R. Ørskov
International Feed Resources Unit,
The Rowett Research Institute,
Greenburn Rd, Bucksburn, Aberdeen
AB21 9SB - Scotland
tel: +44 (0)1224 716614
fax: +44 (0)1224 716687
e.mail: ero@rri.sari.ac.uk
http://www.rri.sari.ac.uk/ifru
Contribution from Mr Roger Smith to the Debate on GMOs
4th April 2000
What are we playing at?
Genetic modification is a modern tool which is being used by agricultural scientists, and plant breeders in particular, to speed up the improvement of crop plants. The genetic modification of crops by traditional selection and plant breeding, using crossing methods, has had an enormous effect in raising the actual and potential yields and the quality of crops- but it has its limitations. Wide crossing, both inter-specific and inter-generic, has been developed to overcome some of these limitations, particularly where desirable characteristics absent in the crop can be found in closely related species. We can now incorporate salt tolerance into rice and wheat as a result of such wide crossing research programmes. Special techniques, such as embryo rescue, have been devised to allow even wider crosses to be developed into new crop varieties. In tree crops, combining two (or more) species into a commercial variety has long been practised through grafting commercial scion varieties on to rootstocks of other species. Propagation using tissue culture technology is also now commonplace, permitting the rapid multiplication of elite clones of many species.
The development of tissue culture technology has also provided opportunities to screen cultures by exposing them to various treatments (such as antibiotics, disease causing organisms and physiological factors), and to improve the use of chemical and radiation mutagenic agents. Genetic transformation of cells in culture, using either biological agents ( e.g. Bacillus thurigensis) or the "gene gun" is now also a commonly used technology for genetic transformation and the production of genetically modified crops.
These technologies now offer the plant breeders tremendous opportunities to overcome the barriers which traditional plant breeding has found impossible to deal with. Science now has the wherewithal produce crops which have even greater potential for higher yield and quality than hitherto. This is possible by incorporating genes coding for improved adaptation to adverse environments (drought and infertile soils for example), for incorporating resistance to biotic constraints imposed by diseases and pests and for improving nutritional quality and shelf life. Soon, given continued research funding, it will be possible to incorporate biological nitrogen fixation into cereals and other non-leguminous crops, and to overcome the limitations on productivity imposed by the inefficiency of the process of photosynthesis and to incorporate deep rooting and other drought resistance physiological mechanisms into crops which are currently not tolerant to drought.
The development of such new crop varieties is however being hampered by ill informed public opinion, fuelled by the scaremongers who are often embodied in many of the non -government organisations, which claim that the technologies present threats to the environment and human health. There is very little scientific evidence to support these claims. Development is also being thwarted by some of the commercial companies which are using the technologies primarily to generate corporate profits, through the imposition of intellectual property rights and the raising of prohibitive patents.
Turning now to the food security situation in many developing countries, and indeed for the World as a whole. Today we see the Horn of Africa facing yet another major famine. Aid agencies, good at providing humanitarian relief aid are doing less and less to support long term sustainable development Agricultural development projects which introduce, develop and test modern technologies hardly exist today. Support for agricultural research is declining rapidly. (see the TAA position paper on this subject) There is no substantial aid for the provision of agricultural inputs, for helping to develop the indigenous production of inputs, or for support of market development. Trade barriers continue to discourage foreign exchange earning opportunities. Financing of basic fundamental research in the Universities and important strategic research by the Advanced Research Institutions of developed and developing countries, including the International Agricultural Research Centres of the CGIAR system, has been reduced to a level which has resulted in many of them having gone out of business or having had to adapt their programmes to the top-down demands of the financiers and policy makers, dominated by economic and social considerations, rather than to respond to the bottom-up needs of farmers and consumers in both developed and developing economies.
Biotechnology alone cannot avert crises such as that now facing the Horn of Africa yet again, but it can, together with the application of much known traditional and new technology, go a long way to provide permanent solutions. What games are we playing? I wonder how many of the "anti GMO foods" consumers in Britain would start to buy and consume foods with GMO ingredients if the supply of traditional non-GMO food in the Supermarkets was at a shortage - for such a shortage is the fact of life in many developing countries, and could be alleviated with the help of high yielding GMO foods with improved nutritional quality produced in high input production systems.
Research on GMOs, producing new varieties of crops, must be increased, if the World is to be fed. There is no sense in sabotaging the research by vandalising research fields of GMO crops, just as there in no sense in vandalising establishments which use animals for research into solving human health problems. If attitudes and policies do not change then famines will continue and poverty will rise among the subsistence farmers who are prevented from becoming commercial and generating funds to escape the poverty trap, and among the poor urban consumers who cannot afford to buy their food. Populations will fall until they are in an ecological balance with the decreased resources available in degraded environments. Let us see whether the Global Forum on Agricultural Research for Development, at its meeting in Dresden in May, will be able to reach a consensus on some of these issues and have the "teeth" to influence the powers that be in Governments and Development Agencies to change their policies to enable their stated objective of eliminating poverty to be achieved.