The developing world

Greenpeace volunteers in Thailand help a farmer decontaminate his papya field where interbreeding with GM varieties has occurred

Genetically modified crops are often hailed as the answer to famine and starvation in developing countries. The truth is that, instead of increasing food security in parts of the world where poverty and hunger are commonplace, GM technologies only promise a recipe for disaster, tying farmers ever closer to multinational biotech companies while ignoring the fact that there is already enough food to feed the world.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the planet already produces up to one and a half times the amount of food needed to give everyone an adequate and nutritious diet. But rather than growing food to meet the needs of local communities, farming is being pushed towards industrial-scale models designed to produce cash crops for export.

And rather than reducing malnutrition and hunger, GM crops actually make things worse. Our report on the agricultural crisis in Argentina, whose enthusiasm for GM crops is second only to that of the US, revealed that the introduction of GM crops locked the country into growing commodity crops like soya for export. The result was that instead of growing food for themselves, people were farming for international markets and the number of people below the poverty line increased dramatically.

To farmers more accustomed to subsistence rather than surplus, the idea of GM crops can look enticing. With the purchase of seeds from companies like Monsanto and Bayer Cropscience, they are promised dramatically improved yields - in-built pesticides deal with insect invasions while the crops are engineered to be resistant to herbicides, allowing increased use without damaging the crop.

In reality, farmers are being sold short. The crops are only resistant to specific herbicides, all owned by the biotechs themselves - Monsanto's Roundup Ready is one of the most notorious with soya, maize and oilseed rape altered to specifically resist its toxic effects.

Of even greater concern is the reported damage done to crops, wild plants, animals and the health of the local human population by Bt cotton grown in India. There is clearly a need for rigorous investigations into the impact of GM crops themselves on human health and that of the environment as a whole but the Indian government, bewitched by the biotechs, has authorised farm trials and lab tests for other GM crops including potato, chilli, chick pea, watermelon, cauliflower and brinjal or aubergine.

A few time zones east in Thailand, GM papaya is not currently grown commercially but it is being grown in field trials. Contamination from the GM strain has spread to conventional crops and with the Department of Agriculture illegally distributing GM seeds, papaya farmers are worried that their own market could go the way of that in Hawaii.

Commercial GM papaya crops have been grown there since 1998 but the refusal of many countries to take GM produce (including China, Japan and the EU) has caused the market to collapse. Contamination has also destroyed the non-GM and organic markets which are finding it had to prove that their fruit is not the result of cross-breeding between GM and non-GM varieties.

And on top of all that are terminator genes, a nasty piece of technology that renders all seeds from a GM crop sterile and forces farmers to buy new supplies from the biotechs each year rather than being able to save seed in the usual way. However, in response to a worldwide backlash, Monsanto agreed to a moratorium on terminator genes and they are not currently in commercial use, but the UK government's position on terminator technology remains unclear and no one quite knows what the future will hold.

Claims of altruism from the biotech companies are nothing more than PR spin - reducing malnutrition and hunger isn't as profitable as increasing herbicide use on cash crops, and this is borne out by the GM crop varieties actually being grown commercially. The answer is to change the agricultural industry so communities are allowed to grow food without the use of toxic chemicals and without being pressured by the WTO and wealthier nations into churning out cash crops for export.