Zimbabwe urged to lift ban on growing genetically modified food
Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00 GMT
By Madalitso Mwando
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe (AlertNet) – From poultry products to fish, potatoes to
apples, Johnson Moyo, a primary school teacher in Bulawayo, has come to
enjoy what many Zimbabweans once considered the finer things in life.
While such foodstuffs might be part of a normal grocery list elsewhere, for
Moyo and many poorly paid civil servants like him they were luxuries that
have only recently become affordable for the “average man,” as he puts it.
The reason lies in the provenance of the food: it is imported, and some of
it is farmed using genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Moyo knows, and he
doesn’t mind.
“These items are relatively cheap,” Moyo said. “They are keeping my family
fed.”
The cheaper alternatives to locally grown food are particularly welcome in a
country where agricultural mismanagement has combined with drought, believed
related to climate change, to create chronic food shortages.
Import food wholesalers have sprouted across Zimbabwe’s capital, where items
such as poultry, long absent from working-class dinner tables, are sold in
bulk cheaply.
“I have been told some of the chicken and fish we eat comes from Brazil and
Australia, but it all tastes the same to me,” Moyo said.
While consumers gobble imported GMO products, however, the Zimbabwean
government remains opposed to local production of genetically modified food,
even as influential lobbyists pressure it to rethink.
Last month, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) announced it was
asking the government to allow farmers to plant GMO crops to boost
agricultural production after a succession of poor harvests.
“We will continue pushing for the embracing of GMO production, using GMO
technology,” the CZI said in a statement, noting that exporting such food
would be a starting point.
GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION
Zimbabwe has long opposed the production of genetically modified crops, even
though imported GMO products have flooded supermarkets since the easing of
stringent import regulations in 2009, when the country suspended the local
currency.
Agriculture minister Joseph Made has said previously that the country will
not allow farmers to produce GMOs, claiming they contain toxic substances
that are harmful to consumers’ health and that they are less nutritious than
organic foods.
The minister’s position has been criticised as flawed since Zimbabwean
farmers use pesticides and fertiliser, so locally produced food, while
non-GMO, is not necessarily organic.
However, there remain policy differences within the troubled coalition
government on this issue, as with others. Science and technology minister
Heneri Dzinotyiwei said last month that the government was reviewing its
anti-GMO policy.
According to Dzinotywei, the safety of GMOs has been confirmed by the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organisation,
as well as the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology, a non-profit research organisation.
But there are fears in the agriculture ministry that the call for relaxing
the country’s GMO ban could lead to the country being unable to export its
crops, and could lead to local seed dealers and farmers being pushed from
the market by foreign GMO producers.
Agriculture Minister Made last year described the idea of investment in
genetically modified products as an economic blunder, telling state media:
“If Zimbabwe produces surplus food for export where would you expect us to
export (it to), with most countries now banning GMO foods?”
Made says the government will invest in providing farmers with fertilisers
instead of adopting GMO production – even though most countries in the
world, contrary to his statement, are open to the importation of GMO foods.
Sentiments on GMO crops remain varied and often fuelled by emotion, but the
Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU), which represents indigenous farmers, says the
time has come for the government to explore more research on genetically
modified crops.
“We are aware of other African countries such as Burkina Faso that have
successfully embraced (genetically modified) production in non-edible crops
such as cotton. (They) are doing well. Why not us?” said a ZFU official.
For ordinary Zimbabweans who over the years have received food assistance
from relatives working in neighbouring South Africa, genetically modified
food already has become part of the daily diet.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS
Tapuwa Gomo, a Zimbabwean development expert based in South Africa, said
that adopting genetically modified crops could help farmers grow more food
with fewer resources.
“Engineering the ability to fix nitrogen into cereal crops could reduce or
even remove the need for chemical fertilisers and increase yields,” Gomo
said.
“Zimbabwe must seriously discuss GMO production because, as it stands, it is
impossible to talk about economic revival without strengthening
agriculture,” he added.
Opponents of the move to GMOs, however, point out that adopting more
drought-resistant existing crop varieties or incorporating needed genes
through traditional breeding could help solve Zimbabwe’s problems without
the need for genetic modification.
Zimbabwe this year is again appealing for food assistance to feed millions
of hungry people, having moved from being a food exporter at the turn of the
millennium to a food importer. The change was triggered by violent land
seizures that disrupted farming activities and by successive droughts.
“If Zimbabwe is to be self-sustaining, locally driven GM technology could be
a panacea for the country’s food security problems,” Gomo said.
President Robert Mugabe has in the past tried to ban imports of GMO food
from South Africa. But when local producers failed to meet demand, the ban
was quickly lifted, highlighting the tricky choices some African countries
face in their attempts to promote local food production that has to compete
with cheaper GMO imports.
For Moyo and other consumers, however, the GMO controversy has more
straightforward ramifications. As long as locally produced food remains
expensive, he says, “GMOs are what I will eat.”
Madalitso Mwando is a journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe.