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Mexican tortillas made from maize.
Soya research lab in Brazil.
wellbeing of Mexicans. So that’s why for the people of Mexico it is unthinkable for maize to be genetically modified or for indigenous maize varieties to disappear.
What is the main risk that people in Mexico are concerned about regarding GM maize? One of the big arguments gaining momentum in Mexico is that if they introduce GM maize they run into the risk of losing their own native varieties, and they will be lost forever. There will not be a way of recovering them and seed banks are not enough. They see the end of the life of small farmers and the end of rural communities whose livelihoods are based on traditional cultivation.
What other risks are communities in all three countries concerned about? The risk of being left behind in the technological race, which is associated with losing sovereignty and independence. Ministries of environment worry about risk to biodiversity, ministries of agriculture tend not to. Those tend to be the most influential organisations in terms of policymaking in all three countries.
Consumers don’t think about risk. They think about danger. It’s not a balancing of pros and cons here. This is about what’s going to happen and for them what’s going to happen is certainly bad. So there’s fear associated with the implementation of GM. The sense is one of danger rather than risk. In all three countries there is definitely a feeling that if science is to happen it needs to be a national science. An argument by pro-GM scientists is ‘look guys we have to get into this. If we don’t do it then others will do it for us. If it’s going to happen it better be our own rather than something big GM companies sell to us’.
How are effects on biodiversity being considered in any of the three countries? It’s at the centre of the discussions. In Mexico it’s the whole idea of introducing GM maize and losing the maize biodiversity, which is not only about maize, but the whole ecosystem, the role of traditional agriculture and the conservation of those ecosystems, which preserves the biodiversity of the country. In India it’s about the same, instead it’s a little bit more upstream. It’s about if we are developing GM in our labs but we don’t know what it’s going to do to
our biodiversity. If we’re not sure about our scientific capacity to actually prove that it will not destroy biodiversity then we cannot unleash it.
GM lab in Mexico.
Family farm in Mexico.
Farmer tilling cotton field in India.
Planting rice in India.
As far as the aims of the GMFuturos project are concerned, what is an example of what you would ultimately like to achieve? We are aiming to introduce farmers’ voices into the discussion and other collectives that have been completely ignored as stakeholders in this issue, including women. And we have taken the position that everyone is a stakeholder in something that affects everyone’s future. The other original contribution is going beyond the surface of the discussion to find out why people really oppose GM so strongly and vocally. The GM discussion is a discussion about futures. It’s a discussion about the future of the environment, the future livelihoods of rural people, indigenous communities and the children of farmers. It’s also a discussion about the food we will eat in the future. Dr Susana Carro-Ripalda is Project Manager of the interdisciplinary research project GMFuturos (https://www.dur.ac.uk/ihrr/ gmfuturos/). Contact: susana.carro-ripalda@ durham.ac.uk