The South African New Economics (SANE) network seeks to research and advocate a new model of macroeconomics that will regenerate economies at all levels - to end poverty, marginalization and inequity; and therefore to restore human dignity and potential. There is hardly any aspect of human development and fulfillment that is unrelated to the way the economy works. Thus the GM debate will falter unless related to the type of economy in which genetically modified agriculture is being discussed.

1. The Economic Model Matters

It is obvious that the global competitive market has different effects from, say, a social democratic mixed economy – or a decentralized rural economy, or a command economy on the communist model. Therefore it will affect the GM, like all other, debate.

The current dispensation – the open, unregulated global market in trade and capital -systemically centralizes wealth, within and between countries, automatically creating and deepening inequality. That fact is not disputed, even by its supporters. They justify the global market on efficiency grounds and hope that means will be found in the future to redistribute wealth; but they do not deny the fact that it creates inequity.

What has that to do with GM, founded as it is on science and technology? First, the production and consumption of food responds like that of all other products to the economic forces set up by a particular economic model. But food is different from all other products. People cannot choose to eat or not to eat, as they can choose whether to buy a pair of shoes. We must have food to stay alive. So an economy which fails to get food to people fails at the most basic level.

2. The Equity Outcome is not the purpose of Business

The proponents of GM claim that the science and technology they use will end the problem of hunger by producing enough food to feed everyone worldwide. But it is not the purpose of the GM companies to feed the hungry: it is to make profits. They may, incidentally, feed the world, but that is not the purpose of the exercise. Government and other policy makers must rigorously examine the claims about ending hunger extremely seriously, in the full knowledge that the claims to meet social needs are post-facto justifications, and not the intention.

The theory that food production through the market is at the heart of the solution to world hunger is at the root of current global policy, and the claims for GM. Here is a small sample of the results.

• About a third of all deaths globally is caused by malnutrition: while some 300,000 Americans die each year from obesity-related disease.
• In South Africa substantial numbers of maize farmers are not planting this year because the price they would get is too low to cover their costs: while about half our Black African population cannot afford to buy enough maize to meet their nutritional needs.
• The widely praised ‘Green revolution’ in India – based on high-yielding crop varieties – increased production considerably. Poor Indians did not benefit, their hunger was hardly dented; while most of the new production was exported, benefiting the balance of trade and the profits of food exporters.

Clearly therefore focusing on the production of food, as opposed to its distribution, has failed. Surpluses coexist with starvation. People who grow food cannot sell it because people who need it have no buying power. It really is as simple as that, and focusing on more output, more yield, does nothing to address that issue.

No one would deny that improving yields help both farmers and consumers – provided they have buying power. Farmers have improved crop ands livestock yields since time immemorial, by selective breeding through retained and sometimes shared seed and breeding stock. GM producers claim they are doing the same thing only on a larger and more efficient scale.

But there is a differences – both in terms of the economic and social effect and of the science.

• While a focus on production through GM gives the illusion that it can deal with hunger, it takes the attention from a focus on distribution – where the real problem lies. A scientific answer is always more attractive, because it avoids uncomfortable political/social issues around income distribution, which offend vested interests. But it is an illusion, as we have seen.
• Although some GM technologies can be used by small farmers, the great majority reinforce the advantage of size which the global market confers. Unfettered competition on the global scale is destroying local economies world-wide. It exerts a pull from the margins to the centre, from the rural to the urban, from the smallholding to the agri-business. It undermines the local circulation of money and leaves the margins cashless. It also advantages technology over labour, causing unemployment and reducing the wages of farm workers.
• Why does GM do that? Largely it is because the technology to maximize the financial benefits of GM is expensive. Not only the modified seed, but also the associated chemicals carry intellectual property costs, and must be bought in. Those inputs are expensive, requiring capital; small farmers easily acquire crippling debt. Add the usual weather hazards and farmers will need a considerable cushion to carry them over unpredictable seasons. The larger the farm the more easily it survives the costs of inputs, price fluctuations and the weather.
• The result is that small livelihoods and decent subsistence living, which used to be made in agriculture, are wiped out as large-scale farming overtakes small. Workers are made redundant, rural areas become depopulated. Large mechanized farms are the rural equivalent of supermarkets in towns and cities, which destroy small business over a wide area. One way they do that is to make it uneconomical for distributors to collect produce for large markets; so that when local markets disappear small farmers have no market at all.
• Diversity of agriculture detracts from the financial efficiency of GM farming; as a result nutritional inputs are lost. Small farms are most efficient when they relate animals and arable crops for mutual feeding. Traditional small farming provided the farmer and her family with all the nutritional elements they need, ensured they could sustain the planting cycle, keep the soil fertile, and encouraged local seed and animal modification to suit local conditions. Hardiness, as opposed to re-stocking was much prized. These skills have, sadly, already been lost in large parts of South Africa under the impact of racial oppression and land deprivation. GM foods will if anything, hinder their recovery.
• The efficiency argument for large-scale, high technology farming is that it enables a small part of the population to feed the rest. The use of GM adds to that argument. Thus it is suggested that 2% of a population, using modern technology, can feed he other 98%. If you count only the people working on farms, you might say so. In fact modern agriculture is enabled by large sections of the chemical industry, of the motorized vehicle sector, of the energy sector, plus of course the research that goes into animal and plant modification. If all that is added in, it would be surprising if the food growing sector used a smaller proportion of national resources than it did a century ago.

Social Effects

• Surplus populations from dying rural farming areas crowd into cities and towns. They compete with others seeking scarce jobs, housing, education, facilities. They enhance urban slums. They are resented locally; competition for scarce resources produces hostility. They create a tinderbox for revolt against a system that drives them from one desperate situation to another. They have nothing left to lose.
• World-wide, farmers have one of the highest suicide rates. While no one will suggest that is the fault of GM, that technology certainly raises the investment stakes and makes farming more financially risky.
• Rural areas can become deserts and ghost villages. No one can make a living unless employed by large farmers. The highest hopes of a rural population centre in the fickle tourist industry, and local communities have no cohesive economy.

SANE follows with interest the discussion between the scientists on both sides of the GM debate. Since its focus is on developing a sustainable economy that will end poverty, three aspects of that scientific argument are relevant to our focus.

• There is no doubt in the minds of economists that the world is heading for global shortages of fossil fuel energy and water. If GM foods use more of either they are clearly inappropriate for the future. We hope the government will examine with rigour this aspect of the debate.
• Poor people in poor health are obviously unproductive – to put it coldly. If the kinds of modifications scientists are currently using carry the slightest further threat to health, the risk is not worth it. We already know that asthma, cancers and other newly-widespread diseases are caused environmentally. We should be limiting the risks, not enlarging them. Our health services are already over-burdened.
• Tragedies litter human history over the past century because new science has not been sufficiently tested before its widespread use. Warning voices were silenced before new drugs went into circulation, new animal feeds used in the interests of cheapness, new chemicals widely dispersed – all of which later created terrible suffering for people and animals. The precautionary principle should by now have been thoroughly accepted. We hope the government will adopt it.

SANE will leave the scientific debate largely to other participants in this debate. We rely on our experience in studying the economy and alternatives to the present system to conclude that GM, as now offered, generally reinforces the most toxic effects of the present economic dispensation. Thus while the effect of using GM food is to replace small farming, rural livelihoods and local economies with large industrial farming, it must be opposed by anyone who seriously seeks to end poverty and hunger. Its own claims in that regard are mistaken.