Sitting Down To That Biotech Cocktail
This time of year finds me spending large amounts of time by myself usually in a tractor seat. It gives me a lot of time to think but it also gives me a lot of time to listen to different commentaries on the radio. I try to have an open mind with everything because that’s how you learn and I hope to never stop learning.
Typically one of the topics that you hear on the radio over and over is a one of weight-loss. In Western society it’s obvious that obesity is a problem and child obesity is getting to be a huge problem both here in Canada and in the United States. So on one hand in our society we spend untold dollars on untold food choices in our supermarkets to satisfy us and we spent untold dollars on the other hand to keep the weight off.
Of course I’m just as guilty as anybody else when it comes to weight loss because I like to lose some weight too. However, in my perch an agricultural economist I think there is one thing missing from this ongoing debate about food in this country. It has a lot more to do with how food is produced in our world now than anything with regard to how the typical consumer sees food in their supermarket.
I recently read a report from Reuters regarding the US corporate giant Monsanto. For those of you who don’t know, Monsanto started to dominate the agricultural biotechnology business about 10-12 years ago. Since then they have bullied their way into almost every farmer’s field in Canada. Needless to say the report I read said that they expect their US Gross profit from sales of seeds and traits to double by 2012 from the 2008 level and they do expect their international business to grow by 85%.
In the report, it said that Monsanto will launch “high impact technology “products every one to two years with each of those projects resulting in a boost of $300 million in gross revenue by 2020. Maybe many of you grow numb from those figures but I find them startling. Whatever way you look at it, Monsanto is cleaning up in the profitable world of agricultural biotechnology. And if you still don’t get it, let me just say this it’s ending up on your dinner table.
Some of you probably still don’t care because typically in North America there is only one criterion that is used to determine whether food makes it to the dinner table. Simply put that one criterion is it has to be cheap. You could add a few things to that by saying it has to be cheap and plentiful. However, I don’t want to complicate things here, but that’s the default criteria in almost every city across North America.
Typically the person who is most at risk when it comes to cheap food is a Canadian farmer. However this is not a column about agricultural economics and if you want to learn more about that listen to my podcast. However, Monsanto has grown rich by adding things called “traits “to naturally selected plants like soybeans and corn. At one time it was a simple “trait” which made the plant resistant to insects or specific herbicides. However now those “traits” are being stacked on top of each other effectively forming a biotech cocktail for farmers to plant. My question is should the consumers of this country have a voice in that and at the end of the day do they even know that biotech cocktail is for supper?
There is a lot to this because in my opinion North American consumers have been completely duped by the big corporate biotech giants. There was never any real debate in Canada or the United States about genetically modified food. It was simply imposed on everybody, albeit some would argue to keep food cheap. Of course I’ve argued many times do people like “glowing in the dark “?
Sadly, some of what has been put on the market for farmers to plant is snake oil. I should know because I have grown some of it, however it certainly can’t all be portrayed that way. Clearly though, the big corporate giants continue to try and extract money from farmers on every new whiz-bang biotech advance.
Meanwhile we’ve got an obesity problem in this country and for the most part everybody’s pointing at the problem talking about diet and exercise but leaving the big corporate giants who produced the biotech cocktails, which ultimately end up in the snack food aisle without any type of consumer scrutiny.
If you don’t give food a second thought and most Canadians don’t I can see how you could let these big guys off the hook. Me on the other hand, I live, breath and work with this stuff every day and sometimes the reality of it all is blatantly obvious. These big corporate giants have everybody drinking the genetically modified cool-aid. If you want to get off this train all I have to say is good luck. It isn’t going to happen, however, keep in mind our food supply shouldn’t be taken for granted. And also, remember that some of these corporate giants are making out like bandits at your expense.