By Jonah Nwokpoku

LIKE most countries in Africa, Nigeria is experiencing low productivity in agriculture. The largely subsistence agriculture has not kept up with the rapid population growth of mostly young people who are not being absorbed into the sector. Sadly government policies have failed to address numerous challenges faced by farmers. The implication is that the country which was once reputed as a large net exporter of food now imports large quantity of its food products even as the entire sector accounts for only 40 percent of the gross domestic products, GDP.

Without doubt, successive administrations, especially the current one, have directed several efforts towards reversing this trend but the situation has only improved slightly. At the moment, adoption of genetically modified crops is being advocated by authorities in order to address the challenge of productivity and to tackle food insecurity. But can genetically modified crops be the lasting solution to all the challenges confronting poor productivity in the Nigerian agriculture? Can this solution deliver the kind of output volume that the country needs?

Genetically modified foods

Genetically Modified, GM foods according to World Health Organization are foods derived from organisms whose genetic material (DNA) has been modified in a way that does not occur naturally, e.g., through the introduction of a gene from a different organism.

Major attractions of GM foods include the belief that it improves yield through the introduction of resistance to plant diseases or of increased tolerance to herbicides.

In the recent past, Nigeria has taken several steps towards GM crops. For example, Ahmadu Bello University is developing a GM black-eyed pea, hoped to be resistant to the ravaging effects of insect, Maruca Vitrata, estimated to lay waste to nearly $300 million of black-eyed pea crops in a year. The National Assembly has also recently conducted a hearing on a bio-safety bill which seeks to allow GMOs to be introduced into Nigeria’s agricultural system.

However, many pressure groups, especially some civil society organisations, consumer rights groups and non-governmental organisations want Nigerians to have nothing to do with it.
While government and other proponents of GM food believe that with increasing trend of low agricultural productivity in Nigeria and in the entire continent, this is the time to open doors for GMOs, the rights groups argue that GMOs are unhealthy not just to the environment but also to the people and poses significant threat to the natural agricultural ecosystem.

Speaking recently on the planned introduction of GMOs in the country, Director of Home of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, Ninmo Bassey said, GM crops do not necessarily yield as much as normal crops and neither do they yield more than those bred conventionally.

According to him: “Most genetically modified crops are either modified to resist certain herbicides produced by the seed companies or they are modified to kill target pests – the crops becoming pesticides themselves. The myths by which crops with these traits have been promoted are that they will require less herbicides and pesticides. But nature has responded to these traits in the form of superweeds that have become resistant to these herbicides, and what may be termed superbugs, which have become resistant to GM insecticide producing crops.”

He added that: “The problem of superweeds has reached epidemic proportions in the United States, where the US Department of Agriculture says over 28 million hectares of farmland is now infested. The biotechnology industry’s ‘solution’ to this is the creation of GM crops resistant to toxic cocktails of multiple herbicides, many of which are banned in several countries or regions around the world.”

Bassey said modern biotechnology thrives on myths. Citing experts’ research findings on the claim of higher yield of GM crops compared to conventional crops, he said Hans Herren who worked for 27 years in Africa as Director General of International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, ICIPE and Director of the Plant Health Division at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, IITA, attested that local research and development has “developed and disseminated successful sustainable technologies that have not only increased the yields by 200 to 300 per cent (dwarfing the expected 25 per cent of GM crops) – as proven in the case of maize using the Push-Pull, or SRI for rice technologies in Eastern Africa, or permanently controlled pest such as the cassava mealy bug with natural methods across the continent- but also continuously adapted them to new local challenges, including climate change.”

Herren, a winner of the Right Livelihood Award in 2013 for his work in promoting agro-ecological agriculture had noted that the challenge in Africa is that “public agricultural research continues to be stifled by low funding.”

He therefore recommended that what needs to be done to address the low productivity and other agricultural challenges in the country is for “government and scientists to work together in charting a path for, and investing in, sustainable agro-ecological agriculture that builds on local knowledge and crop varieties and not persist in what present themselves as shortcuts simply because philanthropic capitalists and the biotech industry are happy to fund such endeavours.”

Bassey further said argument for the GM crops like the ones put up by the Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina that those who oppose the use GMOs want to use match boxes like children do with strings tied instead of using mobile phone, is an empty argument. He said the technology of GMO is better left in the laboratory and instead of putting up such argument: “We have to look at the critical issues affecting the people.”

He noted that with the largely subsistence farming system, introducing GM would make things more difficult for farmers. He said, “Let’s look at the natural order of farming. You buy a seed, plant it and then harvest but with the GMOs, this order will change as the food will always go sterile because you must always go to the shop to buy seed.”

He also warned that introduction of GM food carries with it other serious implications as it can be used as a political weapon. “GMO is also used as a political weapon. In El Salvador, the country was supposed to receive aid from the US but the US said they would not give them that aid unless they buy GMOs from a GMO seed firm, Monsanto. So you can see that these things are not value neutral. It’s a big political weapon to re-colonise Africa and they are doing it through our stomach and we don’t want to be colonized again,” he said.