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Agribusiness, biotechnology and war: Wartime profiteering and the disturbing expansion of chemical agriculture
by Brian Tokar
(Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2002 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- Most of the chemical "tools" taken for granted by modern agribusiness are products of warfare. Is this merely an indirect consequence of the tragic history of the 20th century, or does it suggest that the currently dismal state of our soils, fresh water supplies and rural
economies is an outgrowth of agribusiness' emergence from wartime in
some important ways? Virtually all of the leading companies that
brought us chemical fertilizers and pesticides made their greatest
fortunes during wartime. How can this help us understand the
ever-deteriorating quality of mass-produced food? And what does it tell
us about the new technologies of genetic manipulation that every one of
these companies posits as the centerpiece of the current generation of
crop "improvement" technologies?
Since the earliest origins of modern industrial agriculture,
agribusiness has been at war against all life on earth, including
ourselves.
In 1998, as debates were heating up across Europe around the unlabeled
imports of genetically engineered soybeans and corn from the United
States, the editors of The Economist magazine in London published an
impassioned defense of the biotech agenda in agriculture.
"Agriculture," The Economist editors wrote, "is war by other means."
Indeed, from its origins, chemical agriculture has been a form of
warfare -- it is a war against the soil, against our reserves of fresh
water, and against all the microbes and insects that are necessary for
the growing of healthy food. Since the earliest origins of modern
industrial agriculture, agribusiness has been at war against all life
on earth, including ourselves. An examination of the origins of today's
agrochemical technologies -- and the companies that first advanced
them -- can reveal a great deal about where we may be heading.
During World War I, two German scientists named Haber and Bosch
discovered an efficient means for the large-scale chemical synthesis of
ammonia and its various nitrate derivatives. The BASF company -- now
the world's fourth largest manufacturer of agricultural chemicals --
commercialized this process in 1913, and their products played a
central role in the orgy of mass destruction that soon followed. Huge
excesses of nitrogenous compounds that accumulated during World War I
provided the basis for the beginnings of the mass production of
synthetic nitrate fertilizers. DuPont -- now the sole owner of the
world's largest seed company, Pioneer HiBred -- was the largest
manufacturer of gunpowder in the United States during the early 19th
century and the first World War. Monsanto increased its profits 100
fold during the World War, from $80,000 to well over $9 million per
year, supplying the chemical precursors for high explosives such as TNT.
In the 1930s, chemists working for the German company Bayer discovered
the highly poisonous properties of organophosphate compounds. Today
Bayer has become the world's largest manufacturer of herbicides and
pesticides -- and a leading source of genetically engineered seed
varieties following its recent takeover of the biotech giant Aventis
CropScience. As all of German industry became absorbed into the growing
Nazi war machine, Bayer's organophosphate compounds were developed
simultaneously as agricultural pesticides and as nerve gases for
military use. These included such notorious chemical warfare agents as
sarin, soman and tabun gases, all of which are still manufactured
today. Organophosphates represent 40 percent of today's insecticide
market, and are associated with some 20,000 cases of acute poisoning
every year.
In the 1930s, scientists at the Swiss J. R. Geigy Company were
searching for new compounds to disinfect seeds and prevent moths from
feeding on wool. Geigy later merged with Ciba to form Ciba-Geigy, with
Sandoz to form Novartis, and then merged its agribusiness division with
the British Imperial Chemical Industries' offshoot Zeneca to form the
agrochemical and biotechnology giant Syngenta in 2001. These
researchers' key discovery was that DDT, which was first synthesized by
an academic scientist in 1874, could accomplish both of their desired
ends and more. Interest in DDT flared during World War II, when the
U.S. Army faced two nearly incapacitating pest problems. Soldiers in
southern Europe were facing widespread outbreaks of typhus from
exposure to lice, and their counterparts in the south Pacific faced
potential epidemics of malaria. The pyrethrum-based powders that were
most often used had to be reapplied in a stringent and systematic
manner every week, which was seen as far too inconvenient for
battlefield conditions. The Army looked to Geigy's new product as the
answer, and soon, 2 million pounds of DDT were being produced every
month. DDT was seen as the "atom bomb of insecticides," capable of
permanently eliminating various pest species.
After World War II, DDT became the most widely applied chemical in
human history, and its commercial success led to a massive increase in
the production and use of chemical insecticides of all types. The
widespread use of DDT -- for both agricultural and household uses --
led to a dramatic shift in the chemical industry's approach to pest
control, a shift in attitude that still plagues us today, and was in
many ways a direct outgrowth of its wartime origins. DDT truly was seen
as an ultimate weapon, the "atom bomb of insecticides," capable of
permanently eliminating various pest species.
During the 1960s, Monsanto was a leading manufacturer of the herbicide
"Agent Orange," which was used by U.S. military forces to obliterate
the dense jungles of Vietnam. Today Monsanto's Roundup-family
herbicides play a central role in the U.S. "drug war" via its
widespread use to eradicate coca and poppy plants in Colombia and other
countries. Colombian agronomists have uncovered the use of a new
additive that increases herbicide exposures to more than 100 times
Monsanto's recommended dosage for more typical agricultural
applications.
Of all of Monsanto, DuPont and Dow's agricultural products, genetically
engineered food crops might appear to be the least tainted with
immediate wartime origins. But this technology emerged from a period
when the future of chemical agriculture appeared very much in doubt.
With the rapid expansion of the agrochemical industry during the
post-World War II era, these companies and their European counterparts
had established a profound degree of control over agricultural
practices. But as public pressure and the weight of scientific evidence
curtailed the use of DDT and many other chlorinated pesticides in the
1970s, executives and corporate scientists saw the potential for
limitless advances -- and ever-expanding marketing potential -- in the
incorporation of technological advances into the genetics of seeds.
During the 1990s, Monsanto alone spent nearly $8 billion acquiring
leading commercial seed suppliers in the United States and
internationally; DuPont and others quickly followed suit, leading to
today's widespread proliferation of genetically engineered food crops.
Today, as the Bush administration continues beating the proverbial war
drum, and as scientific evidence increasingly affirms the ecological
hazards of genetic engineering, it is imperative that critics and
activists redouble efforts to counter these inherently uncertain and
destructive technologies.
Brian Tokar is the author of Redesigning Life?: The Worldwide Challenge
to Genetic Engineering. He teaches at the Institute for Social Ecology
in Vermont.
Editor's Note: This article, which ran in http://www.tompaine.com, is excerpted from a longer article in the September 2002 issue of Z Magazine. | |
