GM food first came into the market, it was and still being touted as the solution to World Hunger. But has it? As British writer George Monbiot rightly wrote:
The world has a surplus of food, but still people go hungry. They go hungry because they cannot afford to buy it. They cannot afford to buy it because the sources of wealth and the means of production have been captured and in some cases monopolized by landowners and corporations. The purpose of the biotech industry is to capture and monopolize the sources of wealth and the means of production …
GM technology permits companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them. They can patent the seeds and the processes which give rise to them. They can make sure that crops can’t be grown without their patented chemicals. They can prevent seeds from reproducing themselves. By buying up competing seed companies and closing them down, they can capture the food market, the biggest and most diverse market of all.
No one in her right mind would welcome this, so the corporations must persuade us to focus on something else… We are told that … by refusing to eat GM products, we are threatening the developing world with starvation, an argument that is, shall we say, imaginative …
Poverty is the root of the hunger problem, not the insufficiency of food supply. Many of us live in much abundance than we think we do. Unless we see the suffering of the much less fortunate people, we will continue to be discontented with what we have, blind to the needs of others, and self-absorbed with chasing after our yearnings and desires.
Capabilities of mankind:
