Part 5: GM Foods, Fertilisers and Healthy Nutrition

ARE genetically modified (GM) foods as good for the body as they look on the supermarket shelves?

In an age when the power of choice reigns supreme over the power to choose wisely, this may be considered an unfair question.

But at a time when the global aim is to keep the world’s population eating well by making healthy choices, it’s not a bad question.

Indeed, there are still too many people in this world with no choice and have to scavenge in rubbish dumps and garbage bins in search of their next family meal, or who don’t even have rubbish bins to dig through and simply depend on generosity, food aid or charitable meals.

This week, UNICEF (the United Nations agency for children), reported that malnutrition is affecting 40 million children globally under the age of five, thanks to a deadly combination of Climate Change, wars and rising food prices.

They don’t have access to water and food, while the rich nations play politics with food enterprises, hamburgers being weaponised as instruments of economic wars to remove choice and access to millions who simply won’t die hungry.

The processing of animals (chickens, cows, pigs, etc) used in burgers has always attracted heavy criticism about the effect on humans of the GM foods fed to the animals before slaughter and the chemical processes employed.

But, very able to pay for the best advertising and PR to win and keep customers, the story is a different one for those who can’t stay without ‘a-burger-a-day,’ never mind nutritional value versus cost.

In this age of digitised agriculture, minds nurtured by science will argue that genetic modification is a positive achievement that makes food tastier and more nutritious, but they’ll also admit that its side-effects can be harmful to the humans and animals that consume those food products.

One perception that lends to support for GM foods is that the products are ‘bigger and therefore better,’ but here too, scientific opinions remain split.

GM products are subject to non-natural growth injections that produce miraculous production-enhancement results vis-à-vis natural or manufactured fertilisers, just like manufactured chicken feed is seen to produce bigger birds than traditional home-grown feed; and just like the hormone treatment of American and European livestock used in the fast-food industry, is more of a production factor than a healthy consideration.

Fertilisers, on the other hand, have metamorphosed from use of animal waste (such as cow dung) to ammonia-based imported versions promoted as ‘better’ than the uninterrupted natural animal product.

But fertiliser imports have been badly hit by the COVID Supply Chain crisis and the Ukraine war, to the extent that in many cases in Africa and Asia, entire national agricultural outputs have been negatively affected by unavailability of fertilisers since March 2022.

Cattle waste has other uses in Africa and the Indian sub-continent, including as a natural cement for thatched huts (a practice still employed in parts of Guyana for ‘bottom-house’ purposes).
And never mind the scientific argument that a cow’s fart can influence climate change its dung is still useful to many in many places.

The cultural, religious and other factors that influence what people eat and the choices they make, must always also be weighed against those who have no choices and those who simply cannot make wise choices because they know not better.

Same with fertilisers and GM processes: farmers and consumers respond to what they see — mainly bigger sizes and brighter colours, which they measure against their pockets instead of with health in mind, as costs and prices largely determine consumption affordability or quantity considerations.

But today’s reality has forced many countries to review their attitudes to fertiliser production.

According to a March 15 Reuters report, ‘Mexico aims to as much as triple its fertiliser production… to support its plan to boost local agriculture [sic] production and control consumer price inflation.’

The Mexican government says it’s investing in existing fertiliser factories “to lessen reliance on foreign imports and ensure fair prices for staple foods such as corn, rice and beans by increasing production.”

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in a series of meetings with producers over the weekend, said a programme to provide free fertiliser to farmers would be expanded to several more states, including Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Veracruz.

Lopez Obrador said at an event promoting his government’s campaign to increase production of basic foods: ‘We have to produce organic fertiliser, because it is very good in theory — and what is natural is also the best — but we need to increase production.’

The May 19-21 Agricultural Investment Forum and Expo at Guyana’s Arthur Chung Conference Centre will also open the way for consideration of the choices between organic and chemical fertilisers and their human nutritional impact.

These are no easy choices to the average lay farmer, but those not living in the Metaverse must not be mistakenly considered less-able to understand and apply nature and science, as they’ve done it normally for generations, learning from every experience – from astrological predictions in Mac Donald’s Farmers’ Almanac, to application of new techniques introduced by those trained in tropical agricultural sciences.

Meanwhile, fertiliser prices on the World Market rose by 80 per cent in 2021 and already by 30 per cent more since the start of 2022, causing caring governments worldwide to intervene to save both farmers and consumers from the resulting higher prices.

The Guyana government, considering the continuing escalating impact of rising fertiliser prices on food prices for Guyanese, announced Monday it will purchase and distribute — free of cost — $1 billion in fertilisers for farmers all across the country, to absorb the rising global costs and prevent the price rises being automatically passed on to consumers.

The $1 billion will be drawn from the $5 billion the government had set aside in the 2022 national budget to implement measures to ease the cost-of-living impact on citizens.