Writing Sample - Policy Brief

Writing Sample - Policy Brief

• 1.
  Policy brief By TaniaHernandez Introduction One of the most controversial aspects of our food system is the role that should be played by modern agricultural biotechnology in the form of genetically engineered (GE) crop varieties. With global population projections estimated to reach 9.1 billion by the year 2050, proponents of the technology claim that genetic engineering will ensure that our crops are productive and resilient enough to feed a world demand which will require a 70% increase from current food production levels.1 1 High Level Expert Forum-How to Feed the World in 2050. (2009). Global Agriculture Towards 2050. Rome. Available from http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Iss ues_papers/HLEF2050_Global_Agriculture.pdf (Accessed 19 January 2015). However, critics warn against the reliance on a singular technological fix like GE crops to solve the world’s food problems. They argue that modern biotechnology alone cannot address the root causes of global hunger because it is not fundamentally a Executive Summary One of the most controversial aspects of our food system is the role that should be played by modern agricultural biotechnology in the form of genetically engineered (GE) crop varieties. However, critics warn against the reliance on a singular technological fix like GE crops to solve the world’s food problems. This means that the solutions lie in the arena of policy making and in our own ability to change our behaviours. Therefore, GE crops are hardly sufficient to address the hunger problem which requires locally adapted solutions, democratic decision-making and in many cases, the restructuring of food systems. University for Peace Department of Environment & Development Re-thinking the Use of Biotechnology in Our Food System Issue 2015/01 ∙ January 2015
• 2.
  University for PeacePolicy brief ∙ n° 2015/01 technological problem.2 This will be the focus of this brief which aims to critically analyze the use of biotechnology, specifically GE crops, in our food system to determine whether we should rethink the path we have started to walk before it is too late to turn back. This brief proceeds in five sections. First, we outline the merits of GE crop production. Second, we review the fallacy implicated in focusing on food production considering the current discourse of global hunger. Then we examine the issue of food waste followed by a broader look at the problems facing our food system. We then conclude by proposing ways to move forward. Genetically Engineered (GE) Crops Advocates of genetic engineering argue that widespread adoption of the technology will have a significant impact on combating food insecurity in regions in the Global South such as Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where populations are expected to increase the fastest (+114 percent) and where farmers will be hit hardest as a result of changing climatic conditions.3 Drought- resistant varieties that can withstand drier conditions and pesticide- and herbicide- resistant varieties that assuage pest and weed pressures, respectfully, are said to lead to improved yields and thus increased profits for farmers. This can help alleviate 2 Pesticide Action Network North America. (2010). Biotechnology and Sustainable Development. San Francisco, CA. 3 Data from the FAO’S Food Security Indicators, Economic and Social Development department, 24 January 2013 release, available from http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess-fs/ess- fadata/en/ (Accessed 19 January 2015). hunger not only by creating a greater availability of food but an increased food supply will also lead to decreases in prices. This will facilitate increased access to food to food insecure populations.4 Supply is Not the Problem To claim that global food production will need to increase presupposes the idea that there is or will be a shortage of food supply. This is empirically unfounded and inherently problematic considering that the global supply of dietary energy reached 122 percent of the global requirement in 2012- 2014, demonstrating a steady rise from 115 percent only 20 years earlier.5 Over the same span of time, the global population mushroomed from around 5.7 billion to an approximate 7.1 billion, debunking the notion that global food supply is negatively correlated to population growth.6 Even in the midst of concerns surrounding population growth, current projections suggest that average daily energy availability could reach 3050 kcal per person by 2050 (slightly lower at 2970 kcal in the Global South), a marked increase from 2770 kcal in 2003-2005, meanwhile most people only need around 2,100 kcal per day.7 In fact, we are producing so much food that we cannot even eat it all: at the end of the 2014 growing season, 2.5 million 4 Zilberman, D., Kaplan, S., Kim, E., Sexton, S., & Barrows, G. (2014). Biotechnology and Food Security. Journal of International Affairs, 67(2). 5 FAO Food Security Indicators, 2013. 6 FAO Food Security Indicators, 2013. 7 High Level Expert Forum, 2009.
• 3.
  University for PeacePolicy brief ∙ n° 2015/01 tonnes of grain staples were harvested yet only 2.4 million tonnes were consumed.8 Waste amidst Food Insecurity Evidently, the problem of hunger goes beyond the discourse of production in its complexity and thus requires a deeper analysis of local and regional contexts. For example, in the US alone, 40% of total post- harvest food goes to waste.9 That is the equivalent of more than 20 pounds of food being thrown out per person every month - a value of $165US billion a year.10 The paradox lies in the fact that one in six Americans is food insecure. In fact, the number of Americans that are food insecure – that is, any household where at some point during the previous year lacked sufficient food to eat - has grown substantially reaching 48 million in 2012 which is a fivefold increase since the late 1960s.11 If we add to this the fact that more than one-third of adults (34.9% or 78.6 million) in the US are obese, we can be certain that the dynamics of the ‘stuffed and starved’ go beyond a supply and demand dilemma.12 What is even more striking 8 Food and Agriculture Organization. World Food Insecurity and Malnutrition: Scope, Trends, Causes and Consequences. Retrieved from http://ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/ai799e/ai799e 02.pdf (Accessed 19 January 2015). 9 National Resources Defense Council (2012). Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill. Retrieved 25 November 2014, from http://www.nrdc.org/food/wastedfood.asp 10 NRDC, 2012. 11 NRDC, 2012; McMillan, T. (2014). The New Face of Hunger. National Geographic. Available from http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/hun ger/ (Accessed 19 January 2015). 12 Ogden, C., Carroll, M., Kit, B., & Flegal, K. (2014). Prevalence of Childhood and Adult Obesity in the United States, 2011–2012. Journal of the American Medicine Association, 311(8): 806-14. about the situation in the US – which is by far the strongest promoter and user of GE crops by hectare – is that GE crops were first planted in 1996 and have been on a steady rise ever since and now cover a total of 70 million hectares as of 2013.13 If the introduction of GE crops has failed to solve the food crisis of America, how can it be expected to solve that of the world? A Broken System The answer is it can’t. Clearly, the simplistic notion of the need for more food does not square with current realities and does not address underlying problems of inefficiencies in the food system and inequalities in access and distribution which varies across time and space. The 2009 UN-led IAASTD report also supports this argument: “The problem of global hunger and poverty is not fundamentally a technological problem. Existing rules and policies and dominant institutional arrangements have shaped today’s food system, and are largely responsible for the extreme inequalities in access to food and resources seen today.”14 Poverty, hunger and malnourishment are not technical issues; they are complex social 13 GMO Compass (2014). GMO Crop Growing: Growing Around the World. http://www.gmocompass.org/eng/agri_biotechnology/ gmo_planting/ (Accessed 25 November 2014). 14 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. 2009. Agriculture at a Crossroads: Synthesis Report. Island Press, Washington, DC.
• 4.
  University for PeacePolicy brief ∙ n° 2015/01 and political issues. This means that the solutions lie in the arena of policy making and in our own ability to change our behaviours.15 This means we should be wary of any one solution that is advertised as being the golden ticket out of all our food problems. Food insecurity does not exist because GE crops have not been widely adopted so it cannot be expected that GE crops – and any form of modern biotechnology for that matter – can tackle the deeper structural issues of our food system including legislation and trade and food policies.16 The importance of good, democratic and action-oriented policy should not be underestimated: with the implementation of the Zero Hunger programme, Brazil was able to decrease overall poverty from 24.3% to 8.4% between 2001-2012; decrease the number of undernourished people from 10.7% of the population in 2000-2002 to less than 5% in 2004-2006 while also decreasing severe food insecurity by 25% between 2004-2009.17 Conclusion and Suggestions for Moving Forward The often cited single grandiose question of how ‘to feed the nine billion’ presents 15 Heinemann, Jack. 2009. Hope Not Hype: The Future of Agriculture Guided by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia., p. 1-2. 16 Morse, S., & Mannion, A. (2009). Can Genetically Modified Cotton Contribute to Sustainable Development in Africa? Progress In Development Studies, 9(3), 225-247. 17 Food and Agriculture Organization. (2014). The State of Food Security in the World 2014, In Brief. Available from http://www.fao.org/3/a- i4037e.pdf (Accessed 19 January 2015). global food security discourse as a one primarily concerned with production yet as we have seen, the issues challenging our current food system go much deeper than that. In fact, we produce so much food on this planet that we can afford to throw a large portion of it away. Moreover, hunger and malnourishment are very localized issues affecting nations, regions, rural and urban populations, socio-economic classes, genders and age groups differently.18 In this regard, a single technological fix such as GE crops is hardly sufficient to address the hunger problem which requires locally adapted solutions, democratic decision- making and in many cases, the restructuring of food systems.19 Before jumping on the technology band-wagon, the IAASTD has emphasized the following in order to assess the relevance of a possible technical solution to a problem within our food system:20  Engaging all stakeholders in open, democratic debate about emerging technologies  Conducting a cost-benefit analysis of a new technology to better understand the risks at stake including the long-term impact on public health, the environment and on society 18 Dowd-Uribe, B., Glover, D., & Schnurr, M. (2014). Seeds and places: The Geographies of Transgenic Crops in the Global South. Geoforum, 53, 145-148. 19 Dowd-Uribe, B., et al., 2014. 20 IAASTD, 2009.
• 5.
  University for PeacePolicy brief ∙ n° 2015/01 References Data from the FAO’S Food Security Indicators, Economic and Social Development department, 24 January 2013 release, available from http://www.fao.org/economic/ess/ess- fs/ess-fadata/en/ (Accessed 19 January 2015). Dowd-Uribe, B., Glover, D., & Schnurr, M. (2014). Seeds and places: The Geographies of Transgenic Crops in the Global South. Geoforum, 53, 145-148. Food and Agriculture Organization (2014). The State of Food Security in the World 2014, In Brief. Available from http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4037e.pdf (Accessed 19 January 2015). Food and Agriculture Organization. World Food Insecurity and Malnutrition: Scope, Trends, Causes and Consequences. Retrieved from http://ftp://ftp.fao.org/ docrep/fao/010/ai799e/ai799e02.pdf (Accessed 19 January 2015). GMO Compass (2014). GMO Crop Growing: Growing Around the World. Retrieved from http://www.gmocompass.org/eng/ agri_biotechnology/gmo_planting/ (Accessed 25 November 2014). Heinemann, Jack (2009). Hope Not Hype: The Future of Agriculture Guided by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia., p. 1-2. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (2009). Agriculture at a Crossroads: Synthesis Report. Island Press, Washington, DC. Morse, S., & Mannion, A. (2009). Can Genetically Modified Cotton Contribute to Sustainable Development in Africa? Progress In Development Studies, 9(3), 225-247. McMillan, T. (2014). The New Face of Hunger. National Geographic. Available from http://www.nationalgeographic. com/foodfeatures/hunger/ (Accessed 19 January 2015). National Resources Defense Council (2012). Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill. Retrieved 25 November 2014, from http://www.nrdc.org/food/ wastedfood.asp Ogden, C., Carroll, M., Kit, B., & Flegal, K. (2014). Prevalence of Childhood and Adult Obesity in the United States, 2011– 2012. Journal of the American Medicine Association, 311(8): 806-14. Pesticide Action Network North America. (2010). Biotechnology and Sustainable Development. San Francisco, CA. Zilberman, D., Kaplan, S., Kim, E., Sexton, S., & Barrows, G. (2014). Biotechnology and Food Security. Journal of International Affairs, 67(2).