DID the multimillion-dollar investment in propaganda operations against agriculture biotechnology by Greenpeace fail to deliver results?
The answer appears to be “yes” given the sustained rise in the global demand for genetically modified seeds. According to recent media reports, the global market for seeds is forecast to exceed $112 billion by 2020, with the growth being driven by “rising focus on food security and robust demand for GM seeds”.
According to the same report, “the need for increased productivity against the backdrop of decreasing arable land, and the growing number of people to feed” is fuelling the market growth for biotech seeds.
This development must really be alarming to the Amsterdam-based executives of Greenpeace. The powerful pressure group has poured a lot of financial and political resources into its decade-old propaganda campaign designed to scare farmers out of shifting to biotech seeds.
The propaganda campaign, it will be recalled, spread allegations that biotech crops will cause cancer, deformities and deaths. Anti-biotech propagandists, at some point, also reportedly told farmers that ingesting food derived from biotech plants may lead to homosexuality.
Greenpeace operatives in the country also reportedly led organized action, allegedly including raids and destruction of government-operated research farms planted with biotech crops.
In fact, several Greenpeace operatives, including a few from foreign countries, are reportedly facing criminal charges in a Philippine court in connection with these activities.
Greenpeace, of course, seems to remain unfazed in the face of such legal moves on the part of its victims. Maybe, its huge coffers have given its operatives the courage to defy local laws. Such financial muscle has enabled the group to hire the most expensive lawyers, anyway.
Despite these, the demand for biotech seeds has sustained its growth.
This shows two things. First, Greenpeace’s scare campaign did not work. Second, farmers trust agriculture scientists more than they do so-called activists.
This also means the efforts of our own agriculture scientists to correct the misrepresentations made by Greenpeace propagandists about biotechnology have paid off.
In the face of allegations regarding the safety of biotech crops, Filipino scientists led by a former University of the Philippines president rose to the challenge and demolished the myths planted by Greenpeace propagandists.
It was Dr. Emil Javier who assured Filipinos farmers that biotech crops approved for commercialization are as safe, if not safer, than the traditional varieties. This point was expounded by former Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) head Dr. Kenneth Go. The latter explained that biotech crops go through a long and tedious screening process before they are allowed to be commercially distributed.
The same cannot be said of the traditional varieties. In fact, the traditional crop types are the ones that are sprayed with chemical pesticides. In contrast, biotech crops do not require such spraying because they have built-in abilities to fight insects and pests on their own. This emphasizes the safety aspect of biotech crops.
It looks like the rest of the world also did not take the hysterical propaganda campaign of Greenpeace against biotechnology seriously.
This must be why the size of arable land in the world planted to biotech crops has continued to grow. Based on another media report, the Philippines alone has already planted some 800,000 hectares to the pesticide-free biotech corn variety.
This is an encouraging development since the bigger the size of biotech crop farms become, the size of farms being sprayed with chemical pesticides contracts proportionately.
With the apparent failure of Greenpeace’s propaganda campaign in the Philippines and elsewhere, it looks like the group has is now shifting its political and financial resources to battling our scientists in the courts.
Some time ago, Greenpeace managed to get an order from the Court of Appeals stopping our scientists from completing field trials for a biotech eggplant variety.
Our scientists have appealed the order before the Supreme Court. Greenpeace has vowed to defeat our scientists in this legal battle. This is understandable. If Greenpeace cannot stop biotechnology here by convincing our farmers to reject it, the group can only resort to blocking it through our courts.
Greenpeace has been waging war against the adoption of these chemical pesticide-free crop varieties in the country based on an agenda that the local science and food production sectors are still trying to decipher.
Our scientists have been bludgeoned by local Greenpeace operatives in their efforts to help our farmers shift to biotech crop varieties which are naturally resistant to pests.
Greenpeace’s goal is obvious: farmers must not see the safety and advantages of biotech crops with their own eyes. Depriving our farmers the access to these crop varieties is crucial.
This is because the biotech crops themselves are perhaps the best weapon against Greenpeace’s propaganda campaigns.
After all, our farmers are not the kind who can be convinced merely by hysterical propaganda.
They require evidence. Greenpeace is now using our courts to make sure our farmers do not get their hands on the best evidence that would prove the group’s propaganda lines do not stand on solid ground.
E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.