National News

Experts urge Africa to ease GMO regulation

Agricultural researchers at giant global seed producer DuPont Pioneer have called on African governments to ease regulations on genetically modified (GMO) seeds to help farmers increase their production capacities.

Speaking during the opening of a week-long international media tour day organised by CropLife International, one of DuPont Pioneer’s lead researchers Jim Gaffney underlined the need for local African farmers to have increased access to improved seed as one way of boosting their production.

Maize-storageSaid Gaffney: “This year, the US will harvest a record of 11 tones per hectare. These are local farmers. The underlying reason is that our farmers have access to some of the best, improved seeds that respond to current challenges.

“This is not the case with most African farmers. I have worked in Cameroon and interacted with farmers who, for the past 60 years, are using the same old cassava seed. Their production capacity, as a result, is very low mostly because their inputs are not improved.”

He hailed Malawi for embracing innovative maize seeds, but urged government to extend the gesture to other crops like cassava, cotton, sorghum and rice.

Dr Addrian Massey, managing director for Science and Regulatory Affairs, noted that African economies, which are still being driven by agriculture, need to embrace biotechnology.

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4 Comments

  1. The article had the potential for making a worthy contribution to debates on how to move African agriculture forwards, but the writer totally ignored these debates and therefore the issues are poorly contextualised. Nonetheless, an interesting brief to which I have a few comments.

    Firstly, African governments are being urged to adopt GMOs. The first issue here is that DuPont is looking after DuPont, its business for them and they have too much vested interest in encouraging african governments to buy their seed. We should be getting such advice from our national agricultural research centres, but unfortunately we lack the capacity to do any research in these issues- we simply swallow whatever we are told as the truth, and the situation gets even more complicated when these big companies pledge some “free issues” to “support” our poor farmers. Be warned. This is economics not charity.

    Secondly, Gaffney suggests that if farmers were to adopt these seeds they would potentially harvest more- and gives the 11tonne per hectare example. But african agriculture is much more complex, and GMOs will not necessarily solve these problems. The main constraint is not seed quality, that’s just only one of the many problems. Malawi suffers from land scarcity to the extent that there are limits in terms of how much extra a farmer could get by using GMOs rather than conventionally bred seed. If GMOs were to prevent farmers saving seed for next season, this would expose them too much to market shocks and increase poverty in many parts. Farmers lack credit, transport linkages, price stability, extension support and secure land and water. Fix these things and see whether we need GMOs. Mind you, once our cows graze GM maize stalks, we lose markets in Europe and elsewhere. Malawi will need to think very carefully before it acts on GMOs. Zikomo

    1. What an impressive critic. I wish we met and talked in detail. Because I want to roll out an extensive inquiry into GMO and Malawi. You would be of help. Could you contact me on efnyondo@gmail.com? Waiting.

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