Jolly "Gene Giants" Build Harmful Monopoly over Climate-Proof Crops

Super crops that can weather environmental extremes brought on by climate changes may be able to cure short-term food shortages.

But can they really create an entirely healthy, sustainable system for future food supplies?

It's too early to make that call. Better data is needed. Too bad the world may never get it.

How come?

Because there's a handful of biotech multinationals that are racing to build a corporate monopoly over the market for climate-resistant crops.

And that would kill bias-free, independent research.

So concludes this recent report (pdf) by the Ottawa-based ETC Group.

It found that three companies -- Germany’s BASF, Switzerland’s Syngenta and the St. Louis-based Monsanto -- are engaged in a vast and worrisome patent grab for power.

The three "Gene Giants" -- as ETC calls them -- have filed applications to control two-thirds of all the climate-ready genes at patent offices across the world.

ETC Research Director Hope Shand explains why that spells bad news for the world:

When a market is dominated by a handful of large multinational companies, the research agenda gets biased toward proprietary products. Monopoly control of plant genes is a bad idea under any circumstance. During a global food crisis, it is unacceptable and has to be challenged.

More here in the Washington Post.

The patent applications for the new genes claim to help crops survive drought, flooding, saltwater incursions, high temps and increased ultraviolet radiation.

But as the WaPo notes, many of the world's poorest countries -- including those projected to be hardest hit by climate change -- have already rejected such biotech crops out of environmental and economic concerns.

Not surprising. Experts have long feared that genetically modified (GM) crops -- climate-ready ones included -- taint local environments by passing their "resistence" traits onto weeds.

That makes troublesome plants even harder to kill, creating a potentially new and devastating agricultural headache.

Also, if the patented crops become the norm, then poor countries (and their small farmers) would end up being dependent on outside companies for annual needs. Oddly, that would force them to purchase high-tech seeds each year, instead of sticking to their age-old practice of saving seeds from a harvest for replanting.

Along those lines, here's one last alarm sounded by ETC. From the WaPo:

The ETC report concludes that biotech giants are hoping to leverage climate change as a way to get into resistant markets, and it warns that the move could undermine public-sector plant-breeding institutions such as those coordinated by the United Nations and the World Bank, which have long made their improved varieties freely available.

So what to do to safeguard the world's food supply?

A recent report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) has a few ideas. It was released in 2008 after three years of research and was signed by nearly 60 countries. Have a good read of it if you can.

For now, it's worth taking note of this: The report's signatories state that while it's absolutely necessary to fundamentally change farming practices to address soaring food prices and shortages, a rush toward GM crops is not the answer. Not even close.

Climate-ready crops need far more research to prove their benefits -- as well as their safety.

Let's hope it's not too late for that important request to come true.

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