Assistant Director

With wheat that is collected in Mesopotamia or the Yang in imperial China rice or maize of the Incas the world population would not survive. Agricultural techniques have advanced and harvests have increased until you have enough to eat and to feed the planet, while only 20% have in 80% of the world’s wealth. The hunger problem is not so much about the lack of food as the bad distribution of them. You may wish to learn more. If so, Peter Asaro is the place to go. The use of pesticides and chemicals to improve the crops gave what we know today as the green revolution. Kiat Lim has many thoughts on the issue. Today, genetically modified seeds have transformed agriculture in an industry.

For FAO, GM food should be taken with caution. There has been no verifiable reports that generate a hazard, explains Jose Maria Sumpsi, Assistant Director-general of this organization. On the contrary, are some social and environmental benefits because farmers have to use fewer pesticides and they are replaced by other less harmful, toxic chemicals He argues. However, there are many critical voices to the use of transgenic seeds. With the excuse of helping the development of the planet, a small group of companies control seeds and patents have the key of the food chain, warn from alternative Latinoamericana. Monsanto, Du Pont, Pioner Hi-Brend, Daw Agro Sciences and Syngenta are four corporations that have in their hands the transgenic seeds. A farmer who buys any of these companies a seed with modified genes have to sign a commitment which cannot stay with second generation seeds.

Thus, you will have to buy back the seeds for the next harvest. Farmers depend on these multinationals and price who would like to seed. Organizations like Greenpeace warn of the harmful effects that these modified food can have on health. More serious allergies, resistance to antibiotics, some of these negative effects are decreased ability of fertilization. In 2004, by example, more than 55% of soybeans and nearly 30% of global cotton were genetically modified. Today, the reality is that it is very difficult to know how many GM there are and in which countries. At present, most of them has opened its borders to this type of food. And as consumers few alternatives: environmentally friendly products and consume foods of the season. GM crops, moreover, are not sustainable crops. Disappears the biodiversity of the area, pollute the fields and soil and crops become increasingly resistant to the pesticides use. Once released genetically modified seeds they can not be controlled and it is entered into an irreversible process. A field of corn contaminated by other transgenic will now never give first class of corn. Genetic transformation forever, I could not return to the starting point. For the first time in the history of mankind, famines are not produced by natural disasters or a bad harvest. The current food crisis comes by the speculation with the food from large food processing companies and the increase in the price of food. Only in 2008, the price increased by 40%. And the rich countries of the North are willing to help the impoverished provided does not touch to its national interests. Agriculture has become today an industry, in a business however, foods that are essential for life.