In his 2002 address to the Pontifical Council of Pastoral Health Care, Pope Jean Paul II warned of the “Promethean ambitions” that propel so much of contemporary science, threatening to deprive life of its inherent dignity. His remarks certainly typify much of present day biotechnology that has managed to cobble together portions of the genome of various unrelated species to provide short-term benefits for agribusiness.
In the course of just a few decades biotechnology has grown from an arcane laboratory procedure to a worldwide juggernaut driven by powerful economic military and political forces.
Committed to energy-intensive, mono crop agriculture, biotech businesses – Monsanto chief amongst them – have penetrated distant markets by strong-arming national governments, deregulating environmental standards, disrupting the seed-saving cycle and disparaging local knowledge.
Globally, genetically-modified (GM) crops account for less than 7%of the total land under agricultural cultivation. Almost all commercialized GM crops are grown in only six countries with the United States dominating production at 54%. Argentina (18%), Brazil (17%), Canada (6%), India (4%) and China (3%) are the other major producers.
Despite its aura of historic inevitability, the biotechnology industry may have already reached its high watermark. Confronted by a set of intractable problems – among them peak oil, climate change, capital destruction and resource exhaustion – it seems that the transnational corporations are beginning to lose their grip on peripheral regions yielding a low profit margin.
In their stead, a contrary initiative called localization or deglobalization is slowly gaining ground. In everyday terms this means that local communities are now assuming many of the economic and political functions formerly abrogated by transnational corporations and their subservient governments. At this juncture, a very promising form of resistance has emerged involving the formation of GMO-Free zones at either the national or bioregional levels.
The notion that seed can be patented is anathema to those who grow food for a living. When opposition to biotechnology comes from farmers themselves, it is often expressed in spiritual terms as the need to protect heritage seed, the vital stream of life, from impious meddling. Such practices and beliefs can provide the strength and endurance for communities to resist the corporate onslaught. From the Canadian Yukon to Bulgaria and the Philippines, rural communities are currently rallying together to create and defend their own GMO-Free Zones.
It would be sheer Promethean ambition on our part to try documenting all the promising initiatives that are being taken worldwide to resist biotechnology. Drawing daily upon numerous biotech webfeeds, our more modest intention is to post one or two articles that best express the spirit and praxis in these nascent GMO-Free Zones. For each of these articles we shall provide a brief introduction along with its URL so that you yourself can access it via the internet.
Our GMO-Free Zone awaits you!