author: John E. Peck
Biotech Crops Will Hurt U.S. Family Farmers and Deepen the Energy Crisis
Monday, March 27 2006 @ 06:02 AM PST
By: John E. Peck
As concerns about peak oil mount, the latest group to jump on the
renewable energy bandwagon has been the biotech industry. In a March 13th 2006
press release building towards their national convention in early April in
Chicago, Jim Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization
(BIO), proclaimed that a new wave of genetically engineered technologies "will
end our national addiction to oil." Nothing could be further from the truth.
Family farmers and others who have already suffered from the first wave of
biotech crops can only shudder at what lurks within this latest
Pandora's Box. Thanks to Monsanto, farmers are now stuck producing vast
quantities of low quality Bt corn that has hardly any market. This
unwanted biotech corn must then be dumped - at taxpayer expense - into domestic
ethanol production, factory livestock farms, or abroad in
places like Mexico where it contaminates indigenous varieties, undercuts
peasant farmers, and creates desperate people who have no choice but to cross
the border. And in the wake of the Starlink disaster, one can only imagine the
consumer safety threat posed by fields of high starch low fiber biotech corn,
genetically engineered with an ethanol enzyme, growing adjacent to other corn
across the Midwest.
The conventional ethanol industry is already under the thumb of Archers
Daniel Midland (ADM), and many family farmers have lost their shirts
investing in co-op ethanol projects that end up being gobbled up by ADM when
times get tough, such as happened to MN Corn Processors. And, in tune with its
slogan about being the supermarket to the world, ADM could care less about
energy independence at a national level. They have already pledged to import
sugarcane ethanol from Brazil under new "free trade" deals and leave U.S. corn
producers high and dry if the price is right. Adding biotech ethanol crops into
this corporate-driven quasi-monopoly will only tip the scales further against
family farmers.
Another lucrative "solution" to the energy crisis being promoted by the
biotech industry is to engineer microbes to produce enzymes that can
then be added to switchgrass or crop wastes such as corn stover or wheat straw
in largescale biorefineries - a process known as cellulosic ethanol production.
Of course, the environmental impact of such unprecedented industrial facilities
is unknown. And beyond all the hype, one is still left with the same Enron
style scheme dependent upon potentially dangerous patented technologies,
abusive one-sided supply contracts, and commodity markets manipulated by
corporate cartels.
Patented seed varieties and large bioenergy facilities serving corporate profit
margins are hardly a recipe for sustainable rural development or national
energy independence. In fact, given all the problems created by existing
biotech crops, this misguided approach will only make matters worse. For this
reason and many others, family farmers, consumer advocates, and other concerned
citizens will also be gathering in Chicago over the weekend of April 7th - 10th
for Bioethics 2006, an open public event to educate each other and further
strategize about how best to defend our food/farm system from contamination and
cooptation by private agribusiness interests.
Rather than going to war overseas or trusting in corporate biotech to secure
our fuel supply, the United States would do much better by investing in
comprehensive energy conservation, decentralized energy production, and genuine
renewable alternatives such as wind, solar, and biodiesel that rely on open
source science under local democratic control.
John E. Peck is executive director of Family Farm Defenders
tel. 608-260-0900 www.familyfarmdefenders.org
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