Instead of GMO's: The Potential Solutions to World Hunger

In order to solve world hunger we need to rethink our current relationships with how our food is produced and distributed and we need to rethink how we relate with each other and our planet.

Roots Community Garden in Las Vegas, NV. Photo courtesy of iSickles Media

The night was still warm while I sat on the simple chair listening to insect songs which sounded both familiar and strange. The stars seemed brighter than usual in the southern skies of Zambia. In the dim candlelight Batata (father) gestured to the saved pumpkin seeds spread on the mealie sack covering the hard packed earth. He told me the seeds were from pumpkins he grew before and pumpkins his father grew before and pumpkins his father grew and his father before that. I sat silently in awe staring at those seeds and the long link to the past they represented. How amazing is it to have such a connection to your ancestors and the land stretching back generations? Links like this seemed to be disappearing where I came from along with so many others.

Saving seeds links us with our deep past and growing our own food connects us with the soils of the earth, the water from the sky, and the sunshine coming from light-years away to warm and feed us. These connections are lost when we can’t save seeds and a laboratory is needed to serve as a middle-man between us and our food. Gardening and farming requires intimate knowledge of our natural environment and we need this intimacy with the natural world now more than ever. We are forgetting where our food comes from and how to grow it and by forgetting such vital information we are forgetting how to sustain ourselves in a most basic way. We are forgetting how to feed ourselves and have become dependent upon food companies to provide us with food and water—at a price.

Oddly, our current system of industrial food production and distribution isn’t organized with the goal of feeding people—it’s organized around making as much money as possible for certain people. Food companies are not asking, “How do we feed as many people as possible?” They are asking, “How do we make as much money as possible off of selling food to people?” The main block between people and food in this system, it’s most sacred rule, is if you don’t have money, you don’t get food.

We need a new pattern of organization. In the previous blog, GMO's Will Not End World Hunger, I pointed out the cause of world hunger isn’t due to inadequate food production; it is our way of distributing and granting access to the food that is causing world hunger. So, we need to change the way we distribute and allow access to food. This is simple to say, but complicated to do because it essentially requires us to completely rethink our economic system. It requires us to rethink our relationship with our food and how it is produced. It requires us to rethink our relationships with each other and with our entire planet. The solution to world hunger is allowing more people access to food through fairer distribution and trade. Instead of blaming poor people for being poor, let’s change our systemic pattern of organization instead. Local sustainable production through community gardens and urban agriculture will do far more to end world hunger than GMOs created in a laboratory. So will redesigning our current distribution systems to focus on actually feeding people as the primary goal instead of profit being the only consideration.

We need to take back control of food production by producing locally and consuming locally and we need to stop wasting so much of what is already produced. Support local urban agriculture, join a farmer co-op or CSA, and shop farmers markets. Start your own garden because, in my experience with gardeners, sharing food is inevitable! Support measures which make it easier to farm and garden in your area while working to change laws which make it illegal or very difficult. Learn more about co-ops and the emerging co-operative economy. Support organic food production which nourishes and conserves our soils while leaving room for other species on this earth. 




Sources and Things to Check Out:

My subversive (garden) plot. (Video)

  By Roger Doiron for TEDxDirigo.

  September 2011

  http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_doiron_my_subversive_garden_plot

A guerilla gardener in South Central LA. (Video)

  By Ron Finley for TED

  February 2013

  http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la?language=en

Why Food Should be a Commons not a Commodity (Blog)

  By Jose Luis Vivero Pol for Shareable

  October 9. 2013
  http://www.shareable.net/blog/why-food-should-be-a-commons-not-a-commodity

It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado. (Article)

  By Kirk Johnson for the New York Times [U.S. Section]

  June 28, 2009

  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/us/29rain.html?_r=1&

Trader Joe’s Ex-Exec Opens Nonprofit Grocery (Article)

  By Rachel Brugger for Urban Farm Online.com

  June 5, 2015

  http://www.urbanfarmonline.com/urban-farm-news/2015/06/05/trader-joes-exec-opens-nonprofit-   grocery.aspx

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Food Waste (HBO). (Video)

By Last Week Tonight on YouTube

Published July 19, 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY

The Story of Solutions (Video)

The Story of Stuff Project

Written by Annie Leonard and Jonah Sachs

Directed by Louis Fox

Produced by Free Range Studios

October 2013

http://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions/

APA format:

Brugger, Rachel. (2015, June 5). Trader Joe’s Ex-Exec Opens Nonprofit Grocery. UrbanFarmOnline.com. [Web Article]. Retrieved from http://www.urbanfarmonline.com/urban-farm-news/2015/06/05/trader-joes-exec-opens-nonprofit-grocery.aspx

Doiron, Roger. (2011, September). My subversive (garden) plot. TEDxDirigo. [Web Video].     Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_doiron_my_subversive_garden_plot

Finley, Ron. (2013, February). A guerilla gardener in South Central LA. TED. [Web Video].Retrieved from                          http://www.ted.com/talks/ron_finley_a_guerilla_gardener_in_south_central_la?language=en

Free Range Studios. (Producers) & Fox, Louis (Director). (2013, October). The Story of Solutions. The Story of Stuff Project. [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions/

Johnson, Kirk. (2009, June 28). It’s Now Legal to Catch a Raindrop in Colorado. New York Times, U.S. [Web Article]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/us/29rain.html?_r=1&

Last Week Tonight. (2015, July 19). Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Food Waste (HBO). HBO. [Web Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY

Vivero Pol, Jose Luis (2013, October 9). Why Food Should be a Commons not a Commodity. Shareable. [Blog]. Retrieved from http://www.shareable.net/blog/why-food-should-be-a-commons-not-a-commodity

GMOs Will Not End World Hunger

The promise of GMOs is to end world hunger by being able to produce even more food to feed the world. However, not growing enough food doesn’t really seem to be the problem. Looking deeper, the problem seems to be more with our system of distribution and how we allow access to the food we already produce.

Preparing my demonstration field in Zambia with a ripper instead of a traditional plow.

     In the 1970's, the developed ‘first world’ unleashed a new agricultural development agenda upon the developing ‘third world.’ It was supposed to end world hunger and eliminate poverty by replacing small traditional farming practices with modern industrial agriculture; creating dependency upon big machines and petroleum based fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and commercially produced seeds. It was called the Green Revolution even though it had nothing to do with eco-consciousness or sustainability.

     I saw the results of this Green Revolution during my Peace Corps service in Zambia (2009-2011) where I experienced the cycle of debt as farmers struggled to buy these now much needed synthetic inputs and commercially produced seeds every season. I saw crop outputs declining and people relocating from the exhausted soils of the southern region of Zambia because our industrial agricultural system depletes the soil instead of nourishing it. It seems this Green Revolution didn’t work and made things worse for the people it was supposed to help. Perhaps intentions were good, but the technology of industrial agriculture didn’t end world hunger.

     Now, a second Green Revolution is under way; however, this time it isn’t industrialization which will end hunger, it is the Genetically Modified Organism (GMO). The genetic manipulation involved in creating GMOs is not the same as the selective breeding and hybridization farmers have been practicing for thousands of years because traditional practices use natural processes to modify genes already existing within the plant’s genetic code. GMOs introduce completely new genes from a different species requiring a sophisticated laboratory. GMOs won’t nourish the soil either and still rely upon applications of toxic pesticides and herbicides which will continue to run-off into our water. We will keep doing more of what doesn’t work, polluting ourselves and our environment, while people still go hungry. GMOs represent a shallow solution to a problem that really requires a fundamental shift in how we do things. When we look at problems like world hunger, our first reaction is to think there isn’t enough food! So the solution seems to be we must grow more food! However, in reality, we already have more than enough food being grown and produced. Look around. How much food is thrown away on a daily basis? How much food do grocery stores throw away? If we are throwing away so much food, clearly we have more than enough. And with so much food being thrown away, why are so many people hungry here in the United States? If industrial agriculture and GMO technologies are the solutions to world hunger, why do we have hunger here in the developed world? Obviously in our current economic system, people aren’t allowed to eat the food unless they have enough money to buy it. The problem is actually our current system of distribution and a lack of access to the food we already produce. It is as simple and complex as that.

     Understanding this, it is easy to conclude that GMOs will not end world hunger, but could in fact perpetuate hunger while creating a slew of potentially devastating unintended consequences. We must never forget the primary motivation of any corporation, as required by our current economic system, is to make a profit for its shareholders at any cost; not to benefit humans or the planet. Are we sure we want a small handful of corporations, under these conditions, to have ownership of genes and so much control over our food supply? Are we sure we want to allow corporations to tinker with inserting genes from completely different organisms into our crops for profit? Is all of this risk while increasing the wealth and power of corporations under the guise of saving the world really what we want? Or is there another way that will better benefit people and planet?

     So, what are some solutions to this problem? Check out my next blog, Instead of GMOs!

Sources and things to check out:

3 vile myths too many food companies are shoving down our throats. Gross. (Web Article)

                By Franchesca Ramsey for Upworthy

                Accessed on March 12, 2015

                http://www.upworthy.com/3-vile-myths-too-many-food-companies-are-shoving-down-our-throats-gross?c=click

100 years ago, people were eating things that most of us will never taste. So what happened? (Web Article)

                By Megan Kelley for Upworthy

                Accessed on March 12, 2015

                http://www.upworthy.com/100-years-ago-people-were-eating-things-that-most-of-us-will-never-taste-so-what-happened?c=upw1

A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees (Documentary)

                Directed by Ed Schehl

                2009 (USA)

                Produced by: Three Americas, Inc.

                Studio: Create Space Studio

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUUYaTz0Brg

An Invitation to Environmental Sociology, 2^nd Edition.  (Textbook)

                By Michael Mayerfield Bell

                Published in 2004 by Pineforge Press: Thousand Oaks

                http://www.sagepub.com/authorDetails.nav?contribId=503627

Environment and Society: Human Perspectives on Environmental Issues, 3^rd Ed. (Textbook)

                By Charles L. Harper, Jr.

                Published by Prentice Hall

                http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Environment-and-Society-5E/9780205820535.page

Food, Inc. (Documentary)

                Directed by Robert Kenner

                2008 (USA)

                Produced by Participant Media

                http://www.takepart.com/foodinc

GE Trees May Be Even More Damaging to the Environment than GE Foods (Web Article)

                By Dr. Mercola

                Published on April 27, 2013

                http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/04/27/ge-trees.aspx

GMO OMG (Documentary)

Directed by Jeremy Seifert

2013 (USA)

http://www.gmofilm.com/

Seeds of Change (Web Article)

            By the Take Part Staff

            Published on December 1, 2014

            http://www.takepart.com/video/2014/12/01/seeds-change?cmpid=foodinc-fb

APA Format:

Bell, M.M. (2004). An Invitation to Environmental Sociology, 2^nd Edition.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Dr. Mercola. (2013, April 27). GE Trees May Be Even More Damaging to the Environment than GE Foods. [Web Article]. Retrieved From http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/04/27/ge-trees.aspx

Harper, C. L., Jr. (2003). Environment and Society: Human Perspectives on Environmental Issues, 3^rd Ed. Prentice Hall.

Kenner, R. (Director). (2008). Food, Inc. USA: Participant Media.

Kelly, M. (Accessed 2015, March 12). 100 years ago, people were eating things that most of us will never taste. So what happened? Upworthy. [Web Article]. Retireved from http://www.upworthy.com/100-years-ago-people-were-eating-things-that-most-of-us-will-never-taste-so-what-happened?c=upw1

Kunau, J. Howerton, J. Kucinich, E. (Producers) & Seifert, J. (Director). (2013). GMO OMG. USA.

Ramsey, F. (Accessed 2015, March 12). 3 vile myths too many food companies are shoving down our throats. Gross. Upworthy. [Web Article]. Retrieved from http://www.upworthy.com/3-vile-myths-too-many-food-companies-are-shoving-down-our-throats-gross?c=click

Take Part. (2014, December 1). Seeds of Change. Take Part. [Web Article]. Retrieved from http://www.takepart.com/video/2014/12/01/seeds-change?cmpid=foodinc-fb

Three Americas, Inc. (Producers) & Schehl, E. (Director). (2009). A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees.  USA: Create Space Studio. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUUYaTz0Brg