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Engineering food for Africans (Monday, Sept. 9, 2002 -- CropChoice news) --
The New York Times, September 8, 2002, By MARC LACEY:
ABETE, Kenya, Sept. 6 - A barbed-wire fence encloses a field full of vegetables, and
security guards protect the perimeter of what is clearly not an ordinary garden. At
harvest time, this well-guarded produce, instead of going to market, goes into a
bonfire.
The sweet potatoes grown here on the outskirts of Nairobi, and in three other secure
gardens across Kenya, are different from those sold at market - genetically
different. They have been altered in a laboratory to help them fight a virus that
regularly wipes out Africa's sweet potato harvests.
For now, though, they remain experimental, and they are sealed off from consumers and
destroyed just when they grow to the point that they could be boiled, mixed with
unripe bananas and eaten as a Kenyan breakfast food with tea.
Genetically modified food is a contentious topic in Africa right now. Two countries
where many people live on the verge of starvation, Zambia and Zimbabwe, have raised
safety concerns about corn donated by the United States that was grown using
scientific methods. Zambia has banned donated food that has been genetically
modified. Zimbabwe was also reluctant to feed its people corn from the United States,
which does not certify that it is free of modifications, but lately has dropped its
objections.
But behind the protests, Africa has been developing genetically modified foods of its
own, with the help of countries like the United States that see them as an important
development tool. Scientists at the front lines of Africa's biotechnology revolution,
in Kenya, South Africa and Egypt, say they believe that their lab work will
eventually help develop heartier crops for a continent that has always been a
difficult place to farm.
"Biotechnology is a tool, one of many," said Christopher K. Ngichabe, a Kenyan
scientist who is coordinator of the Association for Strengthening Agricultural
Research in Eastern and Central Africa. "We're not saying it's a panacea, but it can
address some of our problems."
There are plenty of problems when it comes to African agriculture. Pests and viruses
wipe out harvests that are already some of the least bountiful in the world. Add to
that difficult soil conditions and recurrent droughts, and one has a situation in
which most Africans eke out a hand-to-mouth existence despite toiling long hours in
the fields.
Critics of the experimentation contend that much of Africa has neither the regulatory
agencies nor the regulations required to ensure that biotechnological research does
not harm the environment.
Kenya is in the process of drafting a law dealing with genetically modified foods.
South Africa has had regulations in place for five years, although they have not
always been followed.
Still, research continues in various parts of the continent to create more durable
crops, plants that can stave off pests and disease and tolerate soil that is dry and
lacking in nutrients.
Besides sweet potatoes, scientists are trying to perfect cassava, a root that is a
primary source of calories in Africa, that can withstand the cassava mosaic virus,
and a high-tech version of corn, Africa's main staple, that would be less sensitive
to the maize streak virus. They are also working on a cotton that is more resistant
to insects.
Already, bananas produced using plant-tissue culture are widely available in Kenya,
and they grow faster and are heartier than other bananas.
In 1999, a dozen strains of genetically modified sweet potatoes in tiny vials arrived
in Nairobi from the United States, where they had been produced over several years by
a team that included a Kenyan scientist, Florence Wambugu.
Several rounds of research completed in Kenya have narrowed the most desirable sweet
potato strains to four. Local scientists hope to select one or two especially hearty
strains in the years ahead, and eventually to introduce them to Kenyan farmers.
"The impression that Africa opposes genetically modified foods is false," said Dr.
Wambugu, one of the continent's leading advocates of the practice and the author of
an article in the scientific journal Nature titled "Why Africa Needs Agricultural
Biotech." Dr. Wambugu personally carried Kenyan sweet potatoes to a laboratory in St.
Louis in 1991 during a postdoctoral fellowship financed by the United States Agency
for International Development. She worked with American scientists, and other
Kenyans, to produce a more durable crop for Kenyan fields.
"Imagine if we could increase yields, and feed more people, through technology," she
said in an interview from Johannesburg, where she was trying to counter widespread
criticism of genetically modified food at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development. "Many farmers here cannot read or write. But they know seeds. We could
give them technology that is packaged in the seed."
South Africa is further along than the rest of the continent when it comes to such
research. Its farmers this year harvested the country's first crop of genetically
modified corn, without a significant uproar from the populace. The white corn was
grown on about 200,000 acres of farmland around the country, a relatively small area,
and will represent only about 1 percent of the local market, officials say.
A yellow variety, also genetically modified, has been around since 1998, grown mostly
as cattle feed. Some of it has found its way into African kitchens, though, mostly as
cereal, scientists say.
It is similar corn, developed in American laboratories with extra genes for
hardiness, that has sparked controversy in drought-stricken southern Africa.
Zimbabwe has accepted the genetically modified corn but not before insisting that it
be milled first so that it does not contaminate homegrown corn varieties. Zambia
remains a holdout, refusing to accept any of the corn - which is called maize in
Africa - for anyone other than non-Zambian refugees living in the country.
At the Johannesburg summit meeting that ended this week, technologically enhanced
produce was considered by many critics to be a dangerous innovation, one that might
just end up harming Africans more than it helps. Their fear is that altered genes
might disrupt the world's biological diversity, giving rise, for instance, to
troublesome weeds resistant to all herbicides.
With both research and protest occurring simultaneously, Africa appears as divided as
the rest of the world when it comes to genetically modified foods. Besides assisting
African nations with the research, the American government is financing education
campaigns to try to counter the arguments of many Europeans, who are far more
skeptical of tampering with genes.
As for the scientists trying to use the technology to increase Africa's harvests,
they imagine a day when markets the continent over will be fully stocked with
genetically altered produce, just as tasty and nutritious as the more pedestrian
varieties Mother Nature provides, but more durable.
"It's not about Frankenstein," said Dr. Ngichabe, who contends that most Africans
have not yet staked out a firm position one way or the other in the genetically
modified food debate.
That is why African scientists, backed by wary politicians, are proceeding
deliberately before they try to transfer the potentially beneficial technologies from
the laboratory to the field.
"See, the plants don't have horns," said Francis L. O. Nang'ayo, principal research
officer at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, among the rows of genetically
modified sweet potatoes growing here.
Dr. Nang'ayo, who studied in the United States and Britain, dissociates himself from
the African governments that have turned away genetically modified corn. If he were
in their shoes, he said, he would have accepted the food.
"It's a matter of life and death," he said. "I'd rather save a life than let millions
die for theoretical reasons."
But that is not to say Dr. Nang'ayo wants to rush the research process along. For
now, he considers it prudent to burn the experimental sweet potatoes. And he
carefully plucks the flowers off the genetically modified plants to ensure that they
do not pollinate with any run-of-the-mill sweet potato varieties growing outside the
ring of barbed wire.
"We're taking our time with this," he said. | |
