By Nnimmo Bassey
Our right to safe food is fundamental for our enjoyment of the right to life. All living beings need food for nourishment and for the sustenance of life. Food is so central to our well being that the denial of food even to prisoners is considered an inhuman and degrading treatment.
Then what happens when a whole populations are wracked by hunger due to socioeconomic hardship engendered by bad governance.
The industrialization of agriculture has led to the treatment of food as a commodity and the control of seeds production and sales, food packaging, as well as agricultural machinery and agrochemicals in the world today. This has in turn led to massive land grabbing in parts of Africa for the cultivation of monocultures, often to meet industrial needs.
Genetic engineering technologies have further aided the concentration of power in the agricultural sector by allowing the companies to design suites of seeds and accompanying chemicals. Whereas plantations were powered by slavery and colonialism, agricultural neocolonialism is more subtle and persists in coloniality of power with the new leaders given to the notion of cash cropping instead of growing food to meet local needs. The distortion introduced by monocultures for cash, rather than for food, offers easy ways to subvert a people’s food sovereignty and inexorably births food insecurity.
Food sovereignty promotes food security through the preservation of biodiversity, indigenous varieties with inherent high nutritional values. Hybridization and monocultures have dramatically eroded crop varieties.
Researchers inform that from a pervious array of thousands of crop varieties, today 75% of the food we consume comes from 12 crop sources and 5 animal sources. It is also estimated that a mere three plant species make up 60% plant-based calories in human diet. This clear case of brood insecurity is worsened by the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from 1996.
The question of safety of GMOs in Nigeria is left unanswered; yet several varieties (over 20) of these products have been approved for various uses including for commercial release to farmers. So far, there is no evidence of independent, long term risk assessment conducted by the National Biosafety Management Agency which was saddled with this responsibility.
In a situation where safety is in doubt, the Precautionary Principle of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to which Nigeria is a party advises governments to hold the breaks. The fact that the biotech industries is bent on forcing the technology on our agriculture system despite the highlighted implications (on human and environmental health as well as on our socio-economic system) and the resistance to them exposes the true agenda for them in the first place and that is profit and control of our food system.
We must critically consider the underlying causes of food insecurity in Nigeria. Will GMOs solve bad governance, insecurity, climate change, poor extension service, lack of storage/processing infrastructure, soil degradation, poverty, inequalities etc. which directly affect agricultural productivity? The obvious answer is no. We will not achieve food security and food sovereignty unless these critical issues are addressed.
The idea of labelling to ensure the right to choose is in our law but it has not been implemented due to our socio-economic context. The promoters of GMOs including the regulator -NBMA have not succeeded in explaining how foods sold in open markets in bowls and by the roadside are to be labelled.
Secondly, labelling GMOs will not avert the genetic contamination that GMOs can cause due to pollination with conventional varieties and the resultant loss of our indigenous seed varieties. Pollen from a genetically modified grass, for instance, has been shown to travel as far as 12 km from where they were planted.
Labelling GMOs will not lift the ban on our food exports from Nigeria. Beans, yam, sesame etc as reported by NAFDAC are banned in many countries and regions including the EU for excessive pesticide residues. Herbicide tolerant GMOs would further exacerbate this issue.
The process of approvals of GMOs needs to be interrogated for compliance with the provision of the NBMA Act. For instance, section 24(5) provides that the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) shall certify and determine whether GMOs are safe for human consumption. This is not complied with as NAFDAC recently stated they are not in support of GMOs and that enough risk assessment hasn’t been conducted.
Section 23 (1) of the NBMA Act states: “Any person, institution or body who wishes to import, export, transit or otherwise carry out a contained field trial, multi-locational trial or commercial release of a genetically modified organism shall apply to the Director General of the Agency not less than 270 days to the date of import, export, transit or the commencement of such activity” There is no evidence to show that this requirement is followed by the GMO permitting agency in Nigeria.
GMOs are touted as a silver bullet to end hunger. However, hunger continues in the world despite the introduction of GMOs 28 years ago. Other mythical claims include that GMOs give higher yields than natural varieties. Research has shown that there is no significant difference in yield between GM and conventional crops when cultivated under similar conditions. When the commercial placement of Bt cotton in our market was approved on 1 May 2016, the hype was there would be bumper harvests that would lead to the reopening of textile mills across the country. Eight years down the road there has been not a whimper about cotton bolls piling up on the farms of northern Nigeria. It should be stressed that the collapse of the textile industry in Nigeria was not primarily caused by a lack of cotton, but by political forces engineered by neoliberal international financial institutions as well as the ravages of bad governance.
We denounce the false narratives of GMO promoters who claim that any GMOs approved by government agencies is safe. We remind everyone that there are both good and bad science. There are equally inappropriate or unacceptable science.
In these days of tough economic circumstances, it is time for us to act and not just moan or agonize. It is time to set up gardens and farms wherever we find suitable spaces. It is time to bring back our indigenous food varieties. It is time to decolonize our taste buds and to kick out GMOs.
What must be done to ensure food sovereignty, ensure stringent regulation of GMOs in Nigeria; take back control of our food system, preserve the integrity of our eco systems and preserve overall biosafety?
Welcome words by Nnimmo Bassey at National Conference on GMOs Organised by HOMEF on July 30, 2024