Did you see yesterday’s print supplement to the Guardian?
Titled Agriculture, produced by the Lyonsdown media group, it was basically a huge advert for intensive farming.
Including promoting the use of GM crops in Africa.
Warning! Spin-alert!
Don’t fall for the propaganda even if (especially if!) it comes with an ever-so-liberal paper such as the Guardian.
It is blatantly calculated to appeal to caring Guardian-reader types.
What makes me so cross is the way Africa is used in the sales talk.
Let us get one thing straight.
There is NO GM crop being grown commercially that improves yield. The only ones being grown are designed to make intensive farming tidier.
Currently, GM plants are engineered to be resistent to pesticide-spraying. This means when a farm sprays the field, the GM crops won’t die.
How this is supposed to help a farmer in Africa?
All it does is increase dependency on agrichemical companies. The farmers have to buy the GM seed (which cannot be saved) AND the pesticides to go with it AND the licence to use it all.
One of the authors is Professor Derek Burke known as the godfather of biotech.
He writes how organic farmers are a “wealthy lobby group” preventing GM progress.
– see pic above for evidence of “wealthy lobby group”.
So, according to the professor, a section representing 2% 0f the UK food industry, and made up of mainly small family farms, is the only thing holding back GM world domination?
No mention of the European public which does not want GM.
No mention of the African farmers who do not want GM.
And strangely, no mention of the marketing budget of agrichemical corporations such as Monsanto and Bayer which are aggressively pushing their risky, unproven GM technology.
I wonder what the marketing-spend is on a supplement such as the one in the Guardian?
I can’t imagine a GM company is short of a bob or two for its PR war.
Real Food Lover 