COMESA joins in GMO debate

A study by the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa has allayed fears within the continent that introducing genetic technology in agriculture may lead to loss of markets.

It indicates that even should such products be rejected, the decline in exports from the three East African countries would be quite insignificant.

The COMESA study says that there is little justification in the precautionary stance taken by countries, ostensibly in the conviction that they are preserving their trade interests and niche markets.

The low level of trading risk is attributed to the fact that most of the agricultural exports that importers may reject as possible GMOs have not been commercialized as yet.

These include tea, coffee, cocoa, pyrethrum, sugar tobacco, bananas and a wide range of horticultural products.

GM varieties of these commodities have not been developed and commercialised anywhere and so far there has been little commercial interest to develop them.

The study analysed the value and volume of agricultural food and feed exports by African countries to various regions of the world including the EU.

The findings revealed that the share of total export value that might be rejected translates to 1.1 per cent for Kenya, 6.5 per cent for Uganda and 6.2 per cent for Tanzania.

European countries have been the most vocal in the campaigns against GM crops, even though some European countries such as Poland have started growing GM maize.

Last year marked the second highest global increase in area under GM crops in the last five years, with the total area now being estimated at 114 million hectares.

There are now 12 countries in the developing countries that are planting biotech crops, compared with 11 in the industrialised countries. Last year’s growth rate in the developing world was three times that of industrialized nations (21 per cent compared to 6 per cent.)

Out of the global total 12 million beneficiary biotech farmers in 2007, over 90 per cent were small and resource-poor farmers from developing countries. Of these, most were cotton farmers followed by those growing biotech maize and soybeans.

According to Kenyan scientist Prof Calestous Juma, biotech crops must play an even bigger role in the next decade if African countries are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of cutting hunger and poverty by half by 2015.

In Kenya, the regulatory frameworks are still in construction stage. The Biosafety Bill was time-barred in the last parliament, with the house being dissolved just as the Bill was going through its third and final reading.

The issue of agricultural biotechnology in Kenya has been characterized by tit-for-tat squabbling between pro and anti GM lobbies, with the real issues being so convoluted that the average Kenyan can hardly keep score.

According to Prof Juma, the country needs to decide the way forward in relation to its peculiar problems.

“Africa faces ecological disasters, food shortages and extreme poverty levels, factors that most countries driving the debate can only appreciate at the intellectual level”, he said.

As the region dithers and “stakeholders” hold talkfests , experts are warning that even the little that East Africa produces is likely to decrease as a result of the warming of the Indian Ocean.

Climate analysts from USAID say that the warming could result in a decrease in rainfall of up to 25 per cent in Eastern and Southern Africa, and an estimated drop in crop reduction of between 10 and 20 percent.

Climate change

The study, carried out across different agro-ecological zones in eleven countries, says that the effects of climate change on the African continent may force large regions of marginal agriculture out of production by the end of this century.

Though agricultural production is sensitive to climate because it depends on heat and on water, both climate-related variables, the study said that the use of technology in farming will be a greater determinant of food security than climate change.

Even without climate change, African agriculture already faces serious challenges including land degradation, inadequate irrigation, rural-to-urban migration, political instability, and stagnant economies.

Slow technological progress and a lack of access to information on how to cope with climate change are further constraints.

According to an expert with International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Kenya produces the same quantity of maize per hectare that the USA was producing in 1865, mainly because of the pace of technology adaptation in this country.

The greater percentage of agricultural biotechnology research in Africa is on crop improvement, not all of which relies on the use of GM technology.

For instance, the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute some years ago developed a wheat variety that is now acknowledged to be higher-yielding and of higher grain quality that wild varieties.

The drought-tolerant wheat variety (Njoro-BW1) is a product of a technology known as ‘mutation plant breeding’, a process that alters the traits and characteristics of crops using radiation.

The variety is now being harvested on dry lowlands as well as in highlands and areas with acidic soil. Professor Miriam Kinyua, largely credited for developing the wheat variety says that it came out as a hit invention.