Reunion en la Academia de Ciencias del Vaticano sobre transgénicos en la Agricultura

CONSTRAINTS TO BIOTECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTION FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION

Poverty in developing countries is usually linked to low agricultural productivity. Inadequate quantity and quality of food impacts human development potential, physically and mentally. Reduced immunity to disease due to poor nutrition increases the burden, and kills. Current technologies (fertiliser, improved seed, irrigation, pesticides) correctly applied can sustainably and safely increase cropyields. Purchase cost and infrastructural issues (lack of roads, credit, market access and market-affecting trade-distortions), however, severely limit small-scale farmers’ ability to adopt these life-sustaining and lifesaving technologies.

Plant Biotechnology has a great potential to improve the lives of the poor. Delivery of the technology in the seed largely overcomes the logistical problems of distribution involved with packaged products: farmers can pass seed to one another. Once the initial research is completed the ‘cost of goods’ (that is, of a biotechnologically-delivered trait carried in a seed) is zero. Total time to market is comparable between biotechnology products and conventionally bred seed. For some traits conventional breeding is not an option: the only way to introduce a trait is by genetic modification. In developing countries, in pro-poor agriculture, intellectual property issues are not usually a constraint. It is worth noting that agricultural biotechnology uptake has been extremely rapid, for commercially introduced traits, even in developing countries (James, 2007).1 However, for products from the public sector, despite much research in developing countries (Cohen, 2005),2 this potential has not materialized.

The politicisation of the regulatory process is an extremely significant impediment to the use of biotechnology by public institutions for public goods (Taverne, 2007).3 Costs, time and complexity of product introduction are severely and negatively affected. Pro-poor projects are significantly impeded in delivering their benefits, especially in a developing country context. (Without such political impediment the technology is very appropriate for adoption by developing country scientists and farmers: it does not require intensive capitalisation).

The regulatory process in place is bureaucratic and unwarranted by science: despite rigorous investigation over more than a decade of commercial use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), no substantiated environmental or health risks have been noted. Opposition to biotechnology in agriculture is usually ideological.

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