GM will make global food crisis worse

Two competing scenarios are unfolding for the future of farming around the planet: organic & local versus industrialised & dependent on seed-varieties owned by multinational corporations. Linked into industrialised farming is the "bad science" of genetic modification (GM), which makes many crops dangerous to life as well as less productive. Our food security demands a return to local and organic farming.

Lecture by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho at the conference, TRADITIONAL SEEDS OUR NATIONAL TREASURE AND HERITAGE, 17 May 2008, Warsaw, Poland.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is the co-founder of The Institute of Science In Society The Brave New World of GM Science In 1994, I met some of the most remarkable leaders in the Third World: Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher (Institute of Sustainable Development, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), Martin Khor (Third World Network, Penang, Malaysia), and Vandana Shiva (Navdanya, New Delhi, India), who persuaded me to look into genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially GM crops, which they rightly saw as a special threat to small family farmers. The biotech industry was promising miracle GM crops that would boost yield to feed the world, improve nutrition, and clean up and protect the environment. Monsanto's Flavr Savr tomato, the first GM crop, had just been commercialised, though it turned out to be a complete flop, and was withdrawn several years later.

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