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span class="inline inline-left">Rolling like carpet: Syngenta workers roll the seedling medium for the Tegra project. Around the world right now there is a war taking place, quite literally, over world food production and supply.

Scientists and corporations believe that in order to feed the growing number of mouths in Asia more biotechnology is needed. They have been promising that genetic engineering will provide more, and better, food.

Activists and NGOs, on the other hand, argue that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone and biotech approaches to food production will not enhance food security in Asia unless severe distortions in existing food production are first addressed.

Issues regarding climate change have been making the war worse. Scientists and corporations argue that genetically modified (GM) crops can provide a “piece of the puzzle” needed to help farmers better adapt to climate change.

The volatility of crop prices, population growth, land and water scarcities, labor shifts due to urbanization, finite fossil fuels and changes in climatic patterns have been frequently pointed out as the determining factor behind the severe shortage of staple foods that have pushed millions into life-threatening malnutrition or even starvation.

CropLife Asia, a regional unit of CropLife International, a global federation of the plant science industry, has it own views on the importance of GM technology.

“Fundamentally, agriculture will require input to be put in at an appropriate level in order to enable the plant to achieve its full genetic or yield potential, no matter its normal seeds, hybrid seeds or biotechnology, every farmer that grows that product needs to give it sufficient nutrients to grow to its full potential,” executive director of CropLife Asia Tan Siang Hee told The Jakarta Post recently.

“So, no matter where you are, Cambodia or Vietnam, farmers need to use their money to buy good seeds to give a maximum yield.”

Siang Hee said there is no question of accepting or not accepting the technology, but the main question is how to use good technology to come out with better yields. “That’s the investment the farmer needs to put in, no matter at what level of agriculture.”

Siang Hee said if biotech traits had not been available in 2006, to produce the same amount of crops farmers would have had to plant an additional 4.6 million hectares of soybeans, 2 million hectares of corn and 1.8 million hectares of cotton.

In recent years, some amazing social struggles and initiatives have emerged to counteract what is considered the “corporate hijacking” of food safety policy-making and praxis. Small farmers, farmer associations, organic food suppliers and food-educated people are fighting against the coalition of multinational food companies.

But no matter what the campaign of the opponents of GM crops, the adoption of GM crops has increasingly found its way to many countries.

With the worldwide campaign and the practice of growing GM crops, activists and NGOs accused scientists and corporations of trying to concentrate power in their hands at the expense of local communities.

But, the company has their own response.

“The thought that the food chain is going to be dominated or owned by multinationals is ungrounded simply because there is lots of competition and there is government investment, there is nongovernmental organizational investment,” Syngenta’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific Andrew Guthrie told the Post.

“There are lots of companies, both multinational and local companies, that are involved in this technology. It’s not just private companies, there are governments around the world – the Chinese government is one example – that are making significant investments in this technology.”

Guthrie played down activists’ claims that GM crop domination is affecting traditional organic agriculture and local production systems.

He said organic farming currently has a very small percentage of agriculture compared to conventional agriculture. If consumers want to choose organic produce, that’s their choice.

“We need to recognize that the yields of organic crops per hectare are significantly less than conventional farming. And the challenge that we face is that there is no more agricultural land so we actually have to increase the yields per hectare.

“In 1960, 1 hectare of land fed two people, by 2030 1 hectare of land has to feed more than five people. So the concern that we have is that organic farming does not have the yields per hectare that will enable us to make the food requirement of the future. And organic farming tends to become more popular with rich people and we need to also recognize that almost 1 billion people that are hungry today are not rich.”

Activists believe that mal-distribution of existing food supplies has made the adequate levels of food we currently produce unaffordable to many, and scientists are skeptical about the fair distribution of food around the world.

“Every ecology, every region has its own supply chain. How can I expect food from Berastagi [in North Sumatra] to feed Africa?” said Tan Siang Hee. Siang Hee, who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Japan’s Okayama University, said it is crucial for every community within any region to have stability and self sufficiency in order to not be affected by volatile global markets.

“Only 7 percent of the global rice is traded, so if your self-sufficiency level is low then you are in food crisis.”

“We need to encourage local people to come up to a certain self sufficiency level by adopting technology that would give them productivity, because certain products can be traded, certain cannot be traded.”

Race against the machine: Local farmers demonstrate the traditional way of planting rice in Ramaporam, India, as compared to Syngenta’s Tegra’s approach. Sygenta said about 20 women could plant one acre in six hours, while a machine planter could plant six acres in eight hours.Siang Hee said farmers cannot afford solutions, therefore one of the main objectives of the companies is to develop economically viable solutions and in turn it will help the farmers with the product.

“Embracing all technology is an imperative, not just because it’s new technology, but making good choices about which technologies are going to assist growers to improve their yields. Biotechnology is one of these. This should progress at a sensible rate. It is important to establish the right regulatory regimes and to establish a good modus operandi,” said Guthrie.

Guthrie said government needed to create an environment that was attractive to private companies to invest.

“There has to be a good business environment to operate, because we can bring a lot of new technologies that give a good return for the growers, but similarly as private companies we need to have a return on an investment as well.”

“What is important is to recognize that unless we can harness the partnership and collaboration between the NGOs, government and industry, then we reduce our success or reduce our probability of being able to meet the challenges into the future.”

— Photos By JP/Matheos Viktor Messakh