Africa and Kenya, in particular, need to rely on crop breeding that is non-transgenic to boost food output to feed its rapidly growing population in the coming decades but equally need genetically modified products.
The United Nations estimates that the world must increase cereals output by 1 billion tonnes and produce 200 million extra tonnes of livestock products per year by 2052 to feed a population projected to rise to 10 billion from the current 8 billion.
The population of Africa is expected to double to 2 billion people by 2050, and the continent will definitely require to increase her food production by that time with some countries having to triple food production.
The future growth of Africa is through conventional breeding approaches and the use of biotechnologies that come up with high yields but are not transgenic.
The continent of Africa needs its own unique “green revolution” calling for interventions in several areas, in crops and livestock. And Africa must learn from India.
Under the famous green revolution in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, crop yields soared in India, China and Latin America, enabling them to break free of extreme hunger and recurrent famine.
These developing countries boosted farm production yields through intensive practices and new seed varieties drawing praise for helping reduce the number of hungry people and criticism for making farmers dependent on GM seeds.
Indeed, these agricultural changes made countries like China and India the emerging markets they are today.
It is time for African countries to embrace the best results of conventional breeding and “modest” biotechnologies to boost crop yields and make plants resistant to increasing heat and dryness as the climate changes.
Africa cannot rule out genetically modified organisms as a means to resolve Africa’s hunger—their use will rise slightly in the coming decades. Genetically modified products and/or food should not be excluded from African menus. If they can help to increase and stabilise yields, why not GMOs while people are dying of hunger?
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that even if developing countries doubled food output by 2050, one person in 20, or approximately 390 million people, would still risk being malnourished, most of whom would be in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
GM crops are widely used in major agricultural producers, such as the United States and Brazil, but face staunch opposition in Europe where they are largely seen as potentially risky to human health and the environment.
Africans are also worried about health problems that GM crops could trigger, but so far there has been no evidence of such problems.
The spread of GM products in Africa remains limited in the short term because only six countries on the continent have passed regulations to allow their use and just three of them – Egypt, South Africa and Burkina Faso – commercialise GM crops.
The global seed leader Monsanto (now Bayer) is the main supplier of GM seeds to those countries but other biotech companies are equally active there.
The real crime of GM is not its risks, it is squandering its promise, widening the rich-poor gap. Biotech companies have been known to push GM innovations on key crops such cassava, maize and potatoes globally, with their major interest being profits.
National organising secretary, Ford Kenya
