The battle doesn’t make much sense. On either side of the line you find combatants in fierce agreement about the key issues – the right of all people to affordable nutritious food, protection of the environment and giving poor farmers a viable livelihood. Yet the battle rages with ever-greater heat.
Paradoxically, activists are attacking precisely those technologies that are helping to reduce chemical use and lifting poor farmers out of poverty. With all these benefits for smaller farmers, one wonders why they are not the ones protesting against being denied these enabling technologies.
Farmers work based on their knowledge of their land, their training and their intuition. Governments and regulators have the right to ensure farmers use safe and environmentally friendly practices. But beyond that why are organisations such as Greenpeace telling farmers what they should or should not farm?
As we face the challenge of feeding a planet poised to add the population of two more Chinas by mid-century, this warfare does no one any good.
Share this article
Read the full, original article: A senseless fight
Additional Resources:
- Misplaced fears of identical diseases links anti-GMOers to anti-technology fringe groups, Genetic Literacy Project
