San Francisco Chronicle, Aug 23, 2002

Johannesburg -- Millions of Africans in dire need of food aid may go hungry because the leaders of several drought- and famine-wracked nations say they cannot accept genetically modified grain from the United States -- the very same product that Americans have been eating for years.

With world leaders gathering in Johannesburg for next week's World Summit on Sustainable Development, diplomats and aid agencies were stunned by recent decisions by the governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe to reject shipments of donated genetically modified grain.

Malawi has also expressed strong reservations over the grain, and Mozambique, through whose ports much of the food aid will travel, has placed stringent and costly restrictions on any genetically modified shipments passing through its territory.

COMPLEX CAUSES

The objections appear to turn on several factors: disinformation by governments eager to deflect attention from their own poor performances; anti- Western views within the affected countries; and worries that biotech food companies will demand payment if their products are planted and grown in recipient nations.

As the controversy expands, 13 million people across Africa are facing a slow death from starvation. Aid agencies report that desperate families are eating the last of their livestock, watchdogs and, in extreme cases, grass and leaves.

The United Nations says very young children are the most severely affected; thousands are expected to die because their mothers are too malnourished to provide milk.

At least 10 million people are infected with HIV-AIDS on the continent, and the mortality rate is expected to drastically increase as lack of food further weakens those already ill.

John Stremlau, a former U.S. diplomat who is a senior member of the South African Institute for International Relations, believes the obstacles are politically motivated.

"These objections are completely misguided and clearly political," he said. "The drought may be a natural phenomenon, but the famine is entirely man-made."

Stremlau says ruinous economic policies in Zimbabwe and corruption and inefficiency in Zambia and Malawi have destroyed food self-sufficiency in the region.

In Malawi earlier this month, the government belatedly sacked the minister of poverty alleviation, Leonard Mangulama, after it turned out that he had sold the country's strategic maize reserves -- 166,000 tons worth -- and allegedly pocketed the cash. Malawi is the worst famine-afflicted country, with hundreds already dead and 3 million on the verge of starvation.

Zimbabwe, which until recently exported maize to neighboring countries, continues to force white farmers off their land to make way for ruling party militants and cronies of authoritarian President Robert Mugabe.

The mostly white-owned commercial agricultural sector has been devastated by the evictions, and farms have been unable to plant seed for next year's crops.

On Thursday, Zimbabwe said it would accept 17,000 tons of American whole maize meal but mill it first to prevent any chance of contaminating domestic maize crops with genetically modified varieties.

In Zambia, where 1.75 million people face starvation according to the United Nations, President Levy Mwanawasa recently declared, "We would rather starve than get something toxic."

Such stances anger Jason Lott, a visiting American academic affiliated with the bioethics department at Johannesburg's Witwatersrand University.

"These countries are rife with corruption and are trying to push the blame for their own inadequacies onto the World Food Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development," he said.

Lott has researched a conspiracy theory, circulating in southern Africa, which claims that the World Food Program and USAID serve as fronts for American biotech food corporations trying to unload produce they cannot sell at home.

"These governments have latched onto this theory because it detracts from their own bad management," Lott said.

Many of the conspiracy stories originate with fringe lobbying groups in Europe, where suspicion of genetically modified foods is high.

"The attitude of 'better to starve than eat GM (genetically modified) corn' reflects a luxury until now reserved for picky Europeans and radical U.S. academics," Lott said.

"It is an ill-informed debate that is having pragmatic consequences here in Africa," he said. "In Europe, people have choices. If they don't want to eat biotech foods, they can eat something else. In this part of Africa, where people are dying from hunger, there is no 'something else.' "

With humanitarian aid agencies lobbying hard to get relief supplies into the region, USAID chief Andrew Natsios said Tuesday that every effort was being made to calm the fears of affected governments.

"My children and my wife and I have been eating genetically modified maize for the last seven years, and so have most Americans," he told a news conference in Washington, D.C. "And, I might add, most Canadians and Brazilians and Argentinians and Chinese and Indians."


U.S. SET TO SEND 500,000 TONS
Natsios said the United States was prepared to donate around 70 percent, or 500,000 tons, of the total food needed to stave off widespread starvation, with Europe making up most of the rest.

Another issue impeding resolution of the crisis is the belief by officials in several affected nations that small farmers may end up being liable for patent royalties to be paid to the mostly American agribusiness firms that dominate the genetically modified field.

The officials argue that subsistence farmers will withhold some of the donated grain seeds to plant for next year and that African countries could be forced to spend millions of dollars in precious foreign currency to pay for the crops.

Mozambique's worries over the issue have led to its insistence that all modified produce landing at its ports must be transported to its famine- stricken neighbors -- and its own starving populace -- in sealed trucks that will prevent the accidental escape of seeds.

Support for this view comes from SafeAge, a South African lobbying group fighting the introduction of genetically modified crops into the region.

"These countries are right to reflect deeply as to whether they should accept these products," said SafeAge's director, Glen Ashton. "If genetically engineered grains get planted, then the owners, the patent holders of these plants, can go into Africa and claim the crops as their own. It would be nothing more than biological imperialism."

Said Stremlau: "The suspicions regarding the West run extremely deep in this region. Together with bad management, this distrust mixes up a devil's brew of problems for anyone wanting to come in and provide assistance."

However, Monsanto Co., one of the largest global biotech food producers and a frequent target of the anti-genetic foods lobby, denies it will lay claim to produce harvested by small farmers.

Modified foodstuffs are already used in abundance in South Africa, says Andrew Bennett, lead biotechnologist for Monsanto in Johannesburg.

"These governments have screwed up and are looking for someone to blame," he said. "Their people are starving and need food. This should not even be the subject of discussion at a time like this."

Bennett says chances of Monsanto pursuing any intellectual property rights complaints are "slim."

"In much of Africa, intellectual property rights are ignored anyway," he said. "The chances of getting a case to court are zero."

Any "contamination" of local crops would only be to the benefit of poor farmers, Bennett contended.

"Our products are resistant to disease and insects; they create higher yields," he said. "If anyone plants our stuff, they are certainly not going to complain once they see the result."

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.

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