Week 7 – Bio-business in the face of agriculture
By a show of hand, who is strongly against GM food and will never eat one? Followed by; but your MacDonald’s, your Heinz Tomato sauce are all made from GM food! This is a simple introduction to how prevalent is GM food in our lives today. And I agree that it is plain stupidity and ignorance to reject GM food totally. Of course GM food has its risk but they have brought us thus far, revolutionized agriculture and provided food for the population that was deemed unsustainable decades back. How can we kill the golden hen?
When we discuss the new age of agriculture, it is almost inevitable that GM food will form the core of discussion. These crops are as though with keyed-in “god-mode”, able to grow in places that used to be impossible, resistant to drought or floods and even resistant to pest attacks. In the harsher and rapid changing climate today, I think GM food is more relevant than ever. Reliable stream of crops provide reliable sources of food for consumers and a reliable source of income for farmers, alleviating their poverty. This benefit alone provides a very strong case for compelling case for GM food because there are hardly any other as efficient alternatives. Risks on the other hand, can be taken and tackled individually, such as extremely strong international regulatory authority to ensure no corporates go rouge and extremely clear labeling for consumers’ awareness.
Previously before the session, I held a very negative view of GM food companies, in particular Monsanto, the leader of GM seeds. However, during the lesson, some misconception was cleared by Professor Gurinder’s expertise. The misconception was that terminator seeds were created first not to exploit farmers as we all were led to believe by NGOs. Misconception #1 is terminator seeds are not created by Monsanto but by U.S Government. Misconception #2 is terminators seeds were not invented to exploit farmers but to protect the bio-diversity. These “god-mode” crops are much hardier than usual plants, thus they have the ability to squeeze out the natural biodiversity if leaked into the wild. Knowing that it is impossible to prevent any leakage into wild when used in mass quantity, the government made these crops sterile, which is for a very good cause. This cleared my negative view of Monsanto reasonably but even then, with Monsanto past of shrinking from its responsibility of Agent Orange, I believe most people will find it hard to trust Monsanto with our diet. Therefore, I believe it is of utmost importance that government worldwide step up and take the responsibility of ensuring our safety and health effects when we consume GM food. Consequences of rouge companies should not be petty fines but to shut down the entire company. Only then, we as consumers will have the peace of mind.
Another interesting technology in agriculture raised was in Egypt, a system was created where plants are grown in a self-sustainable container. These containers then can be stacked up and used anywhere, even in deserts. Although I expect the cost of growing such food will be much higher growing it on conventional farms, I think this is a very viable solution to self-sustainability source of food for space-constrained Singapore. Another under-mentioned technology is using good hydroponics and aeroponics. Singapore climate is already suitable for growing crops thus reducing the need for enclosed environment. Stack them on our roof-top and we can convert our concrete jungle into our arable farmland. If every single HDB’s roof-top becomes a farmland, I believe we can provide at least 30%-50% of our daily vegetables need. It will be excellent if Singapore can pioneer this industry like how we did for NeWater. Given the volatility in today’s market, Singapore cannot merely focus on spectacular growth but also sustainability. Few years back, there was some research into this reported in The Straits Times but up till today, I do not see any significant developments. Perhaps another decade or two might do the trick…
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