It’s a model not designed to match the African smallholder farming system—and with rare exceptions, it’s failing in a big way.
Canadian Associate Professor Matthew Schnurr argues in a new book that genetically modified crop technology, with its “large scale, heavily capitalized, mechanized monoculture,” is suited to industrial agriculture without considering the geographic, social, ecological, political, and economic realities of smallholder farmers.
Africa’s Gene Revolution: Genetically Modified Crops and the Future of African Agriculture predicts that the trend will continue, while recommending the model of transplanting existing first-generation GM crop to Africa should be abandoned.
“A litany of precedents (in Africa shows) what does not work: interventions imposed…by experts with limited understanding of local farming systems, who champion science and technology as the sole means of enhancing productivity,” he writes.
Decades of research revealed that some second-generation GMO crops could work, such as GM bananas.
“But it is naïve to think that this model can be successfully transplanted to smallholder growers in Uganda, Kenya, Ghana or elsewhere in Africa,” Schnurr wrote.
Despite the promises, restrictions “embedded in GM technology compound the inelasticity of these programs. Africa needs to have its resources to identify and develop these technologies for themselves,” he concludes.
Source: MyJoyOnline
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