Biotechnology: A False Sense of Food Security

Biotechnology: A False Sense of Food Security

4 04UTC Maio 04UTC 2010 por José Correa Leite

In his Foreign Policy essay “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers,” Robert Paarlberg paints the movement for sustainable food production and security as a Western elite preoccupation. He writes, “From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions… Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.”

In the same breath that he criticizes these “Western elites” who support sustainable food production, Paarlberg espouses the very Western, elitist argument that the only definition of “good,” “modern,” or “improved” agricultural inputs are the ones created, patented and sold by big Western biotech companies such as Monsanto, where Paarlberg serves on the Biotechnology Advisory Council (PDF).

Paarlberg seems to believe that the only two options for global agriculture are dirt poor subsistence farmers barely eking out a living or mass biotech production on the Green Revolution scale. But between these two extremes is a middle ground: A diverse and robust rural sector that includes small and medium farmers serving local communities and nations along with appropriate technologies that help re-balance the mix between locally sourced and imported food options. In my role at American Jewish World Service (AJWS), I see the wisdom of this third way set of approaches every day through initiatives like Lambi Fund of Haiti’s home-grown seed banks.