Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa [Paperback]

"Starved for science" is a disturbing book. The author, Robert Paarlberg, documents how Africa is being kept in poverty by an unholy alliance of neo-liberal "free market" advocates, left-wing/Green activists, sated Western middle class consumers, the European Union and corrupted African elites. The book has a foreword written by two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Norman E. Borlaug (the father of the Green Revolution) and Jimmy Carter (the former U.S. president).

Paarlberg begins by pointing out that sub-Saharan Africa lags behind both Asia and Latin America in terms of development, including agricultural development. While Asia in particular benefited from the Green Revolution, African agriculture has experienced something that could even be described as negative growth. Paarlberg rejects the standard explanations for this sad state of affairs. For instance, both landlocked African nations and nations with splendid ports have lagged behind the rest of the "Third World" (not to mention the rich countries). Likewise, the situation is almost as bad in stabile, peaceful nations as in those torn apart by civil war. Nor are cash crops to blame, since *both* cash crops and food crops are in crisis, and the worst areas are those which are still "self-reliant" on food, and hence don't grow cash crops at all. Skewed land ownership patterns á la Latin America can't be the explanation either, since most African peasants own their own land. The author reaches the conclusion that the real culprit is the lack of investments in modern agricultural science. This brings him to the main issue of the book: how genetically modified organisms (GMO's) are being kept out of Africa, despite the benefits they could give to the poor farmers.

The picture painted by Professor Paarlberg isn't a pretty one. He points out that consumers in both the United States and Europe are dead against genetically modified foods, despite their being no proven health risks whatsoever, but readily approve of genetically modified medicines, even when these are risky or only benefit very narrow groups of patients. Thus, the opposition to "GMO's" is completely hypocritical. People fear "Frankenfoods" but have nothing against, say, human insulin produced by genetically modified bacteria. Western nations don't really need GM foods, and it's therefore cheap to oppose them. GM medicine is something else again!

Further, affluent middle class consumers in the Western nations demand "natural", "organic" foods from "traditional" farms, and are ready to pay extra to get such (or food items perceived to be such). This had led to a widespread hostility in the West to industrial farming and advanced agricultural science - the very things that lifted Europe and North America out of poverty a century ago. Since the Western nations have a food surplus and can afford heavy farm subsidies, it's easy to wax romantic about "organic farming" in these nations.

In itself, the attitude of affluent, middle class consumers in the West would simply be an irrational, Romantic, populist outburst of little consequence. But what happens when the United States, the European Union, Western-dominated international institutions or left-leaning NGOs attempt to stop GMO's in the Third World? In Asia, not much. The Asian nations have their own resources and can approve of GMO's whether the Western interests like it or not. But in Africa the consequences can be downright lethal. The poor African peasants, indeed all of sub-Saharan Africa, are being sacrificed at the altar of Western anti-GMO fears. Sometimes almost literally: both Zambia and other in southern Africa actually refused food aid from the United States during a famine, since the food was genetically modified!

There are many culprits in this story. One is neo-liberalism. Poor African peasants are uninteresting as costumers for the multi-national seed companies. Investments in agricultural science must therefore come from the public sector or private foundations. The public sector in Africa, however, is being slashed as part of IMF's structural adjustment programs. The World Bank, in a neo-liberal move, demands tangible results from loans within 3 to 5 years. This makes loans to agri-science unviable, since these usually don't show results until after 10 years.

But neo-liberalism isn't the only culprit. The most disturbing sections of "Starved for science" document the bizarre anti-GMO activities of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other NGOs. The author has even managed to find a front group for the Anthroposophists working somewhere in Uganda, teaching the (presumably bewildered) peasants the occult-mystical "biodynamic" farming techniques developed by Rudolf Steiner! While that's almost fun (I'm a bit obsessed with Steiner and his rants - see my other reviews), the rest of the information is not. Perhaps I reacted so strongly because of my "liberal" political views? I even toyed with the idea of "going Green" for a while. No more. It's obvious that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, groups with thousands of paid staffers, aren't really rank-and-file organizations but powerful, international apparatuses hell-bent on destroying modern agriculture. They can't and won't succeed in the rich contries, of course, but they have certainly created havoc in Africa. NGO activists warned the starving nations in southern Africa to stay away from GM-"contaminated" food aid, organized "mock trials" against GMO's in several poor nations, and created a hysterical atmosphere at a summit in Johannesburg. They have also recruited "scientists" and government officials in a number of African nations, including Zambia and Ethiopia.

Other culprits pinpointed by Paarlberg include the European Union, which more or less have exported its tight anti-GMO regulations to Africa, and the private commodity markets, where the European buyers refuse to accept GM crops from Africa (of course, this is due to consumer pressure, so the real culprit here is really the average European). Urbanized, corrupted African elites who feel more affinity with the former colonial powers than with their own rural hinterlands, is a final contributing factor. Of the sub-Saharan African nations, only South Africa has been able to stem the tide and approve widespread use of GM crops, obviously because of South Africa's greater economic clout. But what on earth can Zambia do?

One salient aspect of the situation not discussed in "Starved for science" is China's role in Africa in relation to the GMO issue. China is apparently buying large tracts of land in various African countries to grow food for its own ever-expanding population. How do the Chinese view GMO's? Will the food exported to China be GMO? If so, how will that affect the policy of the African elites, who today look rather to the anti-GMO European Union? And so on. These are surely interesting questions!

To sum up, Robert Paarlberg's "Starved for science" is a necessary and important read for those who want to know what's *really* going on in the world, and how the "good guys" (neo-liberals if you're conservative, radical-liberal NGOs if you're liberal, *you* if you're a so-called concerned consumer) are simply continuing centuries-old colonial patterns under new garbs.