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GM Crops Ten Years On: The Undying Promise
10 June 2009 – Dominic Glover
At an IDS Dangerous Ideas in Development event in Parliament this evening (10 June 2009), the STEPS Centre Biotechnology Research Archive, spanning 10 years of GM research, will be launched along with Dominic Glover’s new STEPS Centre working paper, Undying Promise: Agricultural Biotechnology’s Pro-poor Narrative, Ten Years On.
Current thinking on GM crops and the poor
In the last couple of years, government ministers, journalists and commentators have depicted transgenic (GM) crop technology as a vital tool for feeding an expanding global population. These influential voices are aware that GM technology is intensely controversial. They also know that one of the reasons for the controversy is the widely held suspicion that GM crops have been designed to benefit the biotechnology industry and could actually undermine the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world. However, they now think that there is a good news story to be told about GM crops in developing countries. They believe that their confidence is backed up by the encouraging conclusions reached by a number of academic studies that have been published in respectable peer-reviewed journals. Those studies have been interpreted by some analysts as showing that GM crops have proved to be broadly beneficial for poor farmers in places like China, India and South Africa. But is that view based on a firm foundation?
New analysis reveals a more complex picture
Detailed analysis of the studies in question reveals a rather more complex and mixed picture – one that should strongly qualify any claim that ‘GM crops are good for the poor’. Certainly, some farmers have benefited from the new technology, but others, especially smaller and poorer farmers, have not. The data also confirms that the impacts of GM technology depend on an awful lot more than one or a few new genes inserted into a crop plant.
Key facts lost in translation?
An intriguing gap has opened up between the story revealed in data collected from farmers’ fields and the ways in which that data has been interpreted and represented to policy makers and the general public. It seems there is a marked reluctance by some people to let go of the alluring promise of GM crops as a biotechnological quick fix for the problems of hunger, poverty and underdevelopment.
The Archive, working paper, material from today’s event, plus new Eldis and id21 GM resources are all available on the Steps Centre website.
Dominic Glover is a Post-doctoral Fellow in theTechnology and Agrarian Development Group, Wageningen University, NL.
Photo: GMB Akash / Panos
Related Events
Dangerous Ideas in Development ‘GM Crops and the Global Food Crisis’
Dates: 10 Jun 2009
This series of seminars is run jointly by the Institute of Development Studies and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Debt, Aid and Trade.
Speakers: Dominic Glover, Wageningen University; Erik Millstone, SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex and the STEPS Centre; Peter Newell, University of East Anglia
Chair: David Borrow MP
To reserve a place please RSVP to Charlie Matthews: c.matthews@ids.ac.uk
Related Publications
- Glover, D (2008) 'GM Crops: a ‘pro-poor’ technology?', STEPS Briefing 11, STEPS Centre
- Glover, D. (2008) 'Made by Monsanto: the Corporate Shaping of GM Crops as a Technology for the Poor', STEPS Working Paper 11, Brighton: STEPS Centre
- Glover, D. (2009) 'Transgenic cotton: A 'pro-poor' success?', STEPS Briefing 15, STEPS Centre
- Glover, D. (2009) 'Undying Promise: Agricultural Biotechnology’s Pro-poor Narrative, Ten Years on', STEPS Working Paper 15, Brighton: STEPS Centre
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