Globalization, Genetic Modification of Crops and Agricultural Hysteria on the Left
One of the most telling images in the modern media of recent date, regarding the issue of genetically modified foodstuffs was the sight of silos of genetically modified seed being sent back from an African nation experiencing a profound crisis of famine. Despite the fact that such seeds would have helped the immediate problem, fears were too great that the nation would be rendered dependant upon subsidized food from the first world, and more to the point, become test subjects for a questionable new technology. However, amongst the strident cries in Europe and Africa against genetically modified produce, which have driven some individuals to engage in 'eco-terrorist' practices of sabotage, the American consumer has become comfortable, one might state, in a kind of blissful ignorance over the debate. American genetically modified crops are not even required to be labeled in our supermarkets, while Europeans are willing to risk imprisonment, and Africans hunger, to fend off the advancement of such products. But is "green" and organic, necessarily better. (DeGregori, 2002, 9-10)
Thomas DeGregori sees such hysteria as a form of Luddite technophobia. (DeGregori, 2002, 152). He also sees the African example as a dangerous result of first-world generated fears regarding important new agricultural technology. The capitalism that fueled genetically modified crops that are more resistant to disease and easier to produce in difficult climates, DeGregori suggests, will be the salvation of the world, if only environmentalists will step aside. DeGregori, it must be noted, does not stand alone on the world agricultural state in his fervent belief in the value of capitalism. By way of an analogy, Lawrence Busch points out that when Christopher Columbus set forth upon his great mission, the explorer did not do so out of the impetus to explore the world but to enrich his backers in spices and wealth. Columbus engaged in the pursuit of progress, in other words, with mercantilist and nascent capitalist sympathies, rather than with any desire to see the world. (Busch, 171 cited in Bigman, 2002). Thus capitalist and self-interested monetary benefit, this anecdote implies, can reap huge dividends in terms of benefiting the world. Thomas DeGregori is the author of The Environment, Natural Resources and Modern Technology, and the Origins of the Organic Agriculture Debate, and both books are written with the central thesis that capitalist technological innovations ultimately must be fostered to allow for the world's betterment -- and genetically modified foods, with no proven health risks, are one of these great innovations.
However, those who see Columbus not as the embodiment of the positive force of the European Enlightenment but of naked colonial exploitation might see Columbus as a refutation to DeGregori's central thesis in both his texts. They also might counter that when DeGregori asserts that that capitalism fused with the technological fervor it generates in the agricultural sector is the solution to world hunger, even DeGregori admits that African modalities of hunting have been damaged and changed for the negative, because of globalism and its historical underpinnings in colonial intervention. All the more reason to allow the West to aid Africa, however, through the use of technology, DeGregori asserts, now the damage has been done. Also, when he argues that Native Americans were not 'one' with nature, but used nature in the most efficacious fashion, given their environmental circumstances, he uses this as proof that those who espouse organic rather than technologically innovative farming practices are sentimental and misguided in their use of history. (DeGregori, 2002, 90-95)
An opponent of DeGregori might rebut that the Native American use of nature is all reason that colonialism was such an imposition upon Native Americans, estranging them natives from their original modalities of production and imposing European models upon the land that were detrimental to it in the long and short-term. Furthermore, by depriving of the native population of their use of the land with proto-capitalist ownership, the colonial interlopers in the Americas again show the inefficiency of capitalist modes of life. (DeGregori, 2002, 45-49). This is the type of technological tampering the African rejecters of genetically modified crops are attempting to avoid.
Perhaps it is best to listen to the voices of the developing world itself, and to transcend the often metaphorical and verbal, rather than practical,
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