LETTERS

AfricaBio says GM maize in SA is safe

Genetically modified (GM) crops are the most extensively tested food crops today. They are tightly regulated both before they reach the marketplace and once they are on sale. This ensures that they are at least as safe, if not safer, than conventional foods. There are no substantiated scientific reports of any food safety issues. We are thus very concerned about the anti-GM movement and their activities here and on the rest of the continent. In South Africa, farmers have been growing GM crops for 15 consecutive years. This technology has assisted our smallholder and commercial farmers with good yields, increased income, and contributed to job creation and food security. South Africa has the GMO Act 15 under the Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), passed in 1997 and amended in 2007, to comply with international biosafety standards. Thus all the GM crops commercialised here have been stringently tested for human, animal and environmental safety. Many respected scientific bodies and regulatory agencies have declared their confidence in the safety of biotech crops and GM food, including the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, among others. DAFF follows a rigorous, scientifically based safety evaluation process before any genetically engineered crop can be approved. The science underpinning biotechnology is extremely advanced, and more precise than conventional techniques used to produce food. Testing involves measuring the availability and concentration of all nutrients in food to ensure that they fall within the normal range of variability. Levels of naturally occurring toxins and antinutrients found in all foods are tested. Immunological testing is also conducted to ensure that new potential allergens are not present. Few analytical studies are done on conventional crops during development. We have to encourage the use of scientific evidence and not nonfactual information to educate citizens about innovations in agriculture. Let us not deny farmers the right to choose and use new agricultural tools to help them address the challenges they face in the field with pests, diseases and the climate. Dr Nompumelelo H. Obokoh, CEO AfricaBio, via email

Preventing agricultural suicide

Over 50 years ago, Dr William Albrecht wrote the following words soon after the commencement of the Green Revolution: Much is being said about and claimed for our scientific progress. We believe that we are approaching the pinnacle of it. That progress, though, is not in co-operation with the creation of life, but rather in the destruction and death of life. It seems well, then, that we enquire whether we are allowing ourselves to be deceived by our technological successes Even though by chemical technologies we have fertilised the soils and produced record crops, let us not believe that we are controlling Nature Agriculture is biology first; it is not only technology. It is not ploughs, tractors, seed, soil conditioners, and mechanical manipulation first, but it is the creative capacity and chemistry of the soil first. Only after that, then, the products that the soil creates become objects for technology. We dont grow crops as a technological procedure, rather, Nature and her soil create them by our co-operative and supplemental assistance. Today, few if any crops can be grown successfully without chemical intervention. GM crops are chemicaldependant, so where is our agricultural pursuit leading us? These chemicals supposedly have no effect on humans and animals, but many trials published recently show that our digestion and the supply of our essential nutrients, is negatively affected and this leads to many of our modern diseases. Farmers the world over who have not embraced modern technologies are going to be the food producers of the future. Nature will keep on mutating and new chemical interventions will have to be sought as has happened with the rise of chemicalresistant weeds. We must deal with the cause of our ills, not merely treat the symptoms. Rory Milbank via email

RIGHT: This reader (pictured with his wife Geraldine) is an ex-Zimbabwean farmer who comments on a recent Archives column.
COURTESY OF PROF TERRI CARMICHAEL

BELOW: GM crops are perfectly safe, thanks to rigorous testing, stresses a reader.
FW ARCHIVE

Blast from the past

My name is Bill (William Arthur) Carter, an 84-yearold evicted Zimbabwean farmer, now living in Amberglen Frail Care, Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, with my wife of 60 years, to whom I got engaged while at the newly opened Gwebi College of Agriculture in then-Rhodesia. I was on Course 1 under Dr Fielding, Tony Donovan, Dave Hanham, Dennis Barnes, Bing Crosby and Jack Lane amongst others. I saw, in the 22 March 2013 Archives column, a photo of the FW Gold Medal award presentation which interested me greatly, because I was the first recipient of that award in 1951. I wonder if the two then-young men of 1974 have suffered the same fate as I! All the best to you, I enjoy reading Farmers Weekly, which is passed on to me by a retired farmer here. Bill Carter, via email

10 | farmers weekly | 14 JUNE 2013