‘DANGERS OF PROPOSED GMO COTTON UNPACKED’

Sir,

A lot of arguments against the acceptance of this GM derived technology are advanced. Some have a bit of merit, but most are misleading or downright fallacies. I will limit myself to the ones in the article. Failure to yield. This one is a bit puzzling, it literally says: ‘The difference before and after the introduction of GM seeds shows no correlation to such statements’.

Which statements? It would appear to be the one in the subheader. Which then implicates a defence of GM: there is no failure to yield. Which is true, but I don’t think that is what the writer meant. GM has so far been deployed to save costs, not to dramatically increase yields.
Super pests. What is meant is that bollworm can become resistant to Bt, but that is something that occurs everywhere in nature, and everywhere when mankind tries to kill something in the same way over a period of time. Malaria parasites become resistent to medicines and every year we need a new flu vaccine because the old one no longer works. To call this ‘super pests’ is just a technique to manipulate the sentiments of the public.

Emergence of secondary pests. These pests do not emerge, they were there all along. Jassids, aphids, thrips and stainers all live on conventional cotton as much as on GM ones. This is just the difference between agriculture and nature: we want one plant (monoculture), nature wants as many different ones as possible. Each plant has its own pests and diseases, keeping their numbers down and allowing others to grow as well. This is not agriculture.
Increased use of chemicals.  This argument invariably fails to indicate which chemicals were used more, and never counts how much less was used of others. In the majority of cases, the relative danger of these chemicals is left completely out of the picture. Loss of biodiversity due to monoculture. It is completely fallacious to put this on the plate of GM. This occurs wherever farming is practiced, GM or not.

Loss of non-target organisms. It is the chemicals that can kill non-target organisms! The only way a Bt crop can kill a caterpillar is if that caterpillar eats the plant. Which makes it a pest, not a non-target organism. Don’t confuse Bt plants that need no other factor to be effective, with a GM such as glyphosate-tolerant crops that go together with chemical use.

Contamination and loss of traditional seeds. Completely irrelevant here. 1) Cotton is a self-pollinator. There is no crossing with other types of cotton. 2) No cotton farmer keeps his/her own seed, ever. It is strongly attached to and sold with the lint that the farmer sells. It is very difficult to separate the two. Each cotton farmer buys new seed every year, GM or not. 3) There are, to my knowledge, no traditional types of cotton in Swaziland. It is not impossible, but in 34 years of experience I have never come across one. And I would love to know how that farmer gets the seed out of his cotton.

Effect on small-scale farmers.  I don’t understand this argument. Isn’t the writer happy that a big, well financed enterprise takes the risk and plays the guineapig for everyone else? We will now see if and how it works, and the farmer is not forced into anything but does it completely voluntary and at his own risk. If it is a failure, not a single small farmer is hurt.

Harry van den Burg

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