World Food Day: What Technology Can Safeguard Food Security?

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16 October marks the 44th World Food Day. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) has set this year’s global theme as: “Food Security for the World, Building Better Lives Together, Creating a Brighter Future Together.”

Genetic modification technology and its supporters and promoters have long packaged it as the best solution for ensuring food security. However, the new book Seed Empire, authored by scholars of American environmental history, uses meticulous facts and data to powerfully dismantle Monsanto’s genetic modification myth.

Around this work, several Chinese scholars and practitioners have also engaged in discussion: How should ordinary people understand genetic modification technology? How have these technologies relating to food and agriculture shaped our dietary systems? What kind of technology can truly safeguard food security? As ordinary consumers, what can we do?

● This article is adapted from the 9 August livestream on Tencent News’ science channel, Species on Our Table. Scan the QR code to watch the replay.

I. The Complexity of Genetic Modification Technology Has Been Overlooked

Tianle (Founding Editor of Foodthink, Convenor of the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market): As early as 2005, Monsanto had become the world’s largest seed seller. Its GM seeds were sold to Vietnam, Brazil, India, and many other countries. On the subject of Monsanto’s GM crops, I would like to cite two conclusions from Seed Empire. First, it has not reduced the use of herbicides and pesticides, because once their GM products were placed on the market, resistant weeds and insects appeared almost immediately. Take GM soybeans, which account for over 90 per cent of the market, as an example: herbicide use, whether measured per unit area or in total volume, declined for only a few years after GM crops appeared before rising rapidly again, far exceeding the levels seen before herbicide-resistant GM crops were introduced. Meanwhile, the use of the accompanying glyphosate has risen almost continuously.

● Trend in herbicide use on soybeans, 1992–2016: pounds of glyphosate per acre versus pounds of other herbicides per acre (top); pounds of glyphosate versus all other herbicides combined (bottom). Data compiled from Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio. Data sources: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service and USGS National Pesticide Use Assessment, annual estimates of agricultural pesticide use on major crops, 1992–2017. Image source: Seed Empire
Tianle: Second, it has not achieved yield increases either. For one, GM technology was never designed to boost yields; for another, many scientists have compared yield data between the United States, which makes extensive use of GM varieties, and Europe, which does not use GM technology, and the results show that yield growth curves have been virtually identical over the past several decades. In other words, Monsanto’s GM varieties carry no yield advantage.
Guan Qi (Seed Systems Researcher, Head of the Eastern Office of the Farmers’ Seed Network): When Monsanto promotes its GM seeds, it emphasises yield – a results-oriented approach. I think the complexity and the inherent unpredictability of the process have actually been overlooked. In biotech breeding, the interaction between genes and the environment is highly complex. Whether it is GM or gene-edited crop development, the process is extraordinarily complex and unpredictable. Making selections within that process involves an enormous amount of work, and there are many failures, though they are never shown to the public. To help understand the complexity of the GM debate, let me give another example. On Mindanao Island in the Philippines, an open-pollinated maize variety has been widely grown for nearly 15 years. Researchers later tested it and found that it actually contained an introduced GM segment, originating from a patented herbicide-resistant GM variety. It appears that farmers who had mastered breeding techniques crossed this GM variety with a pre-existing open-pollinated variety, and the result was a variety that could both save its own seed and carry herbicide resistance. This new hybrid variety gradually became popular in the region without any formal agricultural extension – it simply spread among the farmers, somewhat in the spirit of mutual aid. This variety both reduced farmers’ labour input and eliminated the need to spend money buying seeds.

What makes this case particularly interesting is that it challenges both supporters and opponents of GM alike. GM supporters blame inadequate government regulation and the infringement of the GM variety’s patent rights, but in practice, because the origin of this hybrid cannot be traced, no one can be held to account. For those who oppose GM, there is a significant challenge: what seeds do farmers actually need, and who should be meeting those practical needs? Can our public plant breeding system, for instance, fulfil that role?

II. Will the General Public Continue to Be Beneficiaries of Future Technological Progress?

Tianle: According to the book, Monsanto has been extremely aggressive against farmers it considers to have “infringed” its patent rights. In the past, we might have assumed that ordinary people have always been beneficiaries of technological progress, and we can certainly find countless examples to support that. But in recent years, we have also begun to sense a conflictual dimension between technology and ordinary people – for instance, algorithms’ impact on food-delivery riders, Luobo Kuaipao’s impact on taxi drivers, or in the food domain, where everyone is complaining that food doesn’t taste as good as it used to, when in fact that is simply the result of so-called technological progress, because the emphasis has increasingly shifted to efficiency rather than flavour and quality. Technology’s capacity to reshape our lives is growing ever stronger. How do we view the conflictual side that new technologies bring? Xu Zhun (Professor in the Department of Economics, Sun Yat-sen University): When it comes to the utility of science and technology, we really cannot generalise. It only becomes our friend – an important tool for improving our lives – under certain specific social conditions, but under other social conditions, it can just as easily become our enemy. So the question ultimately comes down to analysing the relevant socio-economic relationships.

To give an example, in the 1960s, the Indian government agreed to pursue the Green Revolution, introducing high-yielding crop varieties in the hope of using technology to boost production. At the time, many people had great expectations for the Green Revolution, including narrowing the gap between rich and poor in society. But the evidence showed the exact opposite. These high-yielding varieties were more expensive than local traditional varieties, and growing them required large amounts of water and good irrigation conditions. However, rural infrastructure in India was generally poor, and in fact these high-yielding varieties not only failed to help farmers who were already poor but actually intensified poverty in some areas.

So I believe we should not support or oppose science and technology in general, abstract terms; rather, we need to analyse specifically what a given technology will bring under the particular social conditions of the present moment.

Taking Monsanto as an example, the book reveals numerous problems with its technology – problems that do not even operate at the level of science. Whether it is herbicides or pesticides, their researchers merely discovered in some experiment that the product was effective at killing weeds or pests. That discovery then became a kind of technical secret, a patent, a money-making formula. But why it works, what the underlying principles are – they are not actually interested in that, nor do they encourage scientific discussion. Their contribution to science is therefore limited.

III. How Can Breeding Technology Better Serve Farmers?

Tianle: If a seed company like Monsanto monopolises the breeding and seed markets, it will have negative effects on farmers and agriculture. So how should breeding technology be developed to be more beneficial to farmers? Guan Qi: There should be a mechanism to support farmers in acquiring appropriate seed-selection and breeding knowledge through their collaboration with research institutions. For farmers, their needs are not that complex, but they are quite diverse. Ordinary people tend to mistakenly assume that farmers have no knowledge or capacity to save seed, let alone do breeding. Yet when we look back at history, we can see that hybrid breeding was only industrialised within the past hundred or so years. Before that, farmers were able to carry out seed selection and breeding relying on their own accumulated techniques and knowledge.

So the question is whether we can now establish a support mechanism that enables farmers to regain mastery of these techniques and knowledge. The Philippine case shows that farmers not only have the potential to acquire these techniques and knowledge but, once they have, can select and develop varieties that meet their own needs.

Building this social support mechanism cannot rely on civil society organisations alone, because they are limited in funding and manpower and can only carry out local demonstrations. Ultimately, it may need to return to the public plant breeding system. Our country once established a powerful agricultural research and extension system, but how these systems can function effectively now and how they can properly understand farmers’ needs requires reflection.

Take the early stage of Mexico’s Green Revolution, for instance. Even within the Rockefeller Foundation, there were disagreements about how to approach seed promotion. Among the project officials at the time, there were broadly two disciplinary backgrounds: some had a scientific research background and wanted to directly transplant high-yielding varieties from the United States for promotion in Mexico; others had a social science background and stressed promoting the varieties that local farmers most needed, advocating the improvement of local landraces so they could adapt to Mexico’s specific environment.

These were, in essence, two different development paths. Looking back at this history, we can see that the social-science-informed approach was ultimately marginalised. Everyone tended to favour abandoning the time-consuming work of improving local varieties, and as a result, many of Mexico’s maize landraces were replaced. In the end, it was Mexico’s large farms that benefited, not the many smallholders.

Beyond the vertical process of transferring technology to the general public or to farmers, the breeding industry also has a horizontal dimension. When breeders work on variety improvement, a fundamental prerequisite is that the diversity of seed resources must be safeguarded. Because reducing the uncertainty and complexity in the breeding process is best achieved, most efficiently, by carrying out pre-breeding and selection on a large scale using diverse germplasm resources.

Competition pressure among seed companies or agribusinesses is now extremely intense, and market concentration is rising. Because of this competitive relationship, information is not shared between individual laboratories and companies, as breeding materials constitute trade secrets. This very often prevents collaboration between them.

For example, Argentina’s GDM is one of the world’s very large soybean biotech breeding companies, with 700 experimental stations across 15 countries. It stores an extensive collection of germplasm resources and has carried out an enormous amount of selection work, accumulating a tremendous advantage. A company with such a massive stock of seed resources exerts enormous pressure on later-arriving countries and companies. In fact, many biotech breeding companies simply buy germplasm resources directly from them before carrying out their own GM research.

But who preserved these germplasm resources in the first place? It was, in fact, the farmers. We work by a principle we call “seeds held by the people.” Why do we consistently support farmers in preserving and protecting the seed resources they still have? Because only by saving them first can we later work to unlock the potential in these landraces. All of this lays the groundwork for pre-breeding and for meeting diverse social needs.

So bringing farmers into the process – and bringing consumers in too – is extremely important. As consumers, we can communicate our consumption preferences – for example, “I don’t want fruit that is so sweet” – to breeders. Breeders, in turn, have opportunities and channels to learn about this information and adjust their breeding objectives to meet social needs.

● VERN, a community organisation near Berlin, Germany, runs a seed bank that preserves over 2,000 varieties. Some older varieties have, through their work, been commercialised and made their way into the mainstream market.

IV. Do Consumers Really Know What They Want to Eat?

Tianle: Professor Guan just mentioned getting consumers involved, but in the food domain, most consumers are actually very passive. Or rather, as consumers, even our preferences are shaped by the market. Because I also work at the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, I can see that a small group of consumers are actively seeking out their own alternative food networks, rather than passively waiting for the market or companies to shape their consumption preferences and shopping habits. That trend is actually quite interesting. Professor Zhou has done research on this in recent years – do you think consumers have a chance to reshape their own food consumption networks? Zhou Mujun (Food and Agriculture Systems Researcher, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University): From an optimistic standpoint, absolutely. When I was researching alternative food networks, I met a farmer on the outskirts of Chengdu. He farms just twenty to thirty mu of land, yet in Chengdu he has found around 100 customer households willing to buy his produce and support him in running his farm in a more ecological way. He loves the work – he enjoys digging into agricultural techniques – and he doesn’t need to go out for migrant work or be separated from his family. Compared to a typical farmer, his income is a little higher, and those customers get access to better, more reassuring produce. It’s a mechanism that benefits both sides. So on a small scale, this approach is feasible.

● Alternative food networks similar to the Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market exist across the country, allowing consumers to buy directly from small-scale ecological farmers. For more events like these, follow Foodthink’s WeChat official account, which publishes a “National Food and Agriculture Activities Roundup” at each solar term.
Zhou Mujun: But when you zoom out, this is quite difficult. We keep talking about consumer preferences, as if consumers spontaneously like or dislike certain things, certain flavours. But in reality, our tastes and preferences are largely shaped by external forces. We can see that each generation grows up in a different environment, eats different food from a young age, and their tastes are vastly different. The cherries I used to eat as a child were slightly sour and a bit watery, but I find it very hard to find them now. All the cherries in supermarkets are those extremely large, very dark, and exceptionally sweet varieties. Sometimes I wonder whether a discerning palate for food, or a preference for healthy food, is also linked to one’s socioeconomic status. If your quality of life is poor, you may not be able to worry about these things. Abroad, we can indeed see a very clear class distinction – organic supermarkets are always located in better-off neighbourhoods, and their prices are higher too. So my attitude is actually quite ambiguous and confused. On the one hand, I deeply admire consumers who take the initiative to build their own food networks; on the other hand, I am very sceptical about how much impact these alternative food networks can have on the overall market structure.

Tianle: Indeed, a lot of Western research links taste with class and race. But I think in China there might be a slight exception. From my own observation, it is actually those from rural areas, with a countryside background, who may be more sensitive to food quality. Those who grew up in big cities from a young age, born in the 1980s and 1990s, are more easily conditioned by industrialised food, to the point where they can no longer enjoy a richer variety of food and flavours. That is why the joke exists that “Beijing’s specialities are KFC and McDonald’s.” How can consumers participate? I think the right to be informed is the first step. The middle class in cities is becoming more health-conscious. For example, in April this year, Shanghai was the first to introduce a “nutrition grading” system for beverages, requiring them to carry an ABCD nutrition grading label. I think that is a very good start.

Will consumers in the future have more opportunities to choose produce and food that are kinder to the environment and to producers? This is a question we all need to work together to find an answer to.

● For further discussion on food security and technology, please watch the video replays of this year’s Seed Empire series of sharing events, jointly organised by Foodthink, SDX Joint Publishing, Yali Books, and the Farmers’ Seed Network, or read the written recap of the series at the end of the article.

 *This article was first published on Tencent News’ “Let’s Chat Science“.

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Editor: Tianle

Published by Foodthink