[LINK] The Main Problem With GM Food Is The Patent, Not The GM

[Jim Birch]

On 10 January 2013 11:40, Janet Hawtin <janet at hawtin.net.au> wrote:

> I think the numbers of Indian farmer suicides is a striking outcome of
> GM and corporate control of seed.
>

How many Indian farmers?  Can their suicide be specifically be attributed
to GM seeds or is that just their or someone's story?  I don't know much
about this stuff, but there's obvious potential for attribution error, not
to mention disinformation from anti-GM religionists.  Has the suicide rate
actually increased (or decreased) with GM seed use?  Or is this what is now
held to blame in this particular situation where it might have previously
been (eg) a lack of a good dowry for the daughters.  Even if these things
were covered off, there's a faulty logical link in the chain: this is a
problem with patentable seeds, not with GM.

But the big question is how do the suicide numbers compare with the
improvements in nutrition and health from GM crops?  Things like golden
rice are estimated to prevent really big numbers of cases of blindness and
other nutritional diseases that result in poor quality of life, economic
hardship and even death.  These numbers are estimated in millions.  Have
millions of Indian farmers committed suicide for want of GM seeds?  I think
not.  This is just an are just an emotional "GM!!!!" story, where a 1000
blind girls scattered around Pakistan is not.

These are the kind of numbers I'd be interested in, not some emotionally
resonating narrative.  As I said, I'm no fan of the patent system and I
would strongly support a public funding model that gets improved seed
strains to poor farmers for free.  However, this doesn't mean that they
would be generally better off without GM even with the current flawed
system.  The farmers themselves want the seeds because they know how good
they are, their distress is with paying for them.

A public funding model has been proposed for medical technology and it
would work for agriculture technology too. This seems a much better thing
to promote than trying to stop GM which has so much obvious potential for
benefit.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Impact_Fund

Jim