Gates, Dupont, Monsanto spending billions on GMO drought tolerant corn in Africa
IRENE LIN
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100217/BUSINESS01/100217010/Pioneer-Gates-to-give-African-farmers-biotech-seed
Pioneer, Gates to give African farmers biotech seed
Updated 12:00 pm
By PHILIP BRASHER • pbra...@dmreg.com • February 17, 2010
Washington,
D.C. — Pioneer Hi-Bred is joining with the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation to help scientists in Africa develop genetically engineered
corn varieties that would allow poor farmers increase their yields with
less fertilizer.
The aim of the project is to increase corn
yields by 50 percent over the average now reached by African varieties,
said Paul Schickler, president of Pioneer, a Johnston-based unit of
DuPont.
The project represents the latest effort by U.S. seed
giants to promote their products as being potentially beneficial to
small-scale farmers in Africa, a continent with chronic food shortages
but where countries have been reluctant to permit genetically modified
crops.
“If you look at the issues the world faces, we’ve got a
tremendous need for increasing productivity,” Schickler said in an
interview. Experts say global food production needs to double by 2050
to meet the needs of growing populations in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
Pioneer’s arch-rival Monsanto Co. is two years into a similar
project with the Gates foundation to develop drought-tolerant corn that
is to be made available to small-scale farmers in eastern and southern
Africa.
Both Pioneer and Monsanto have agreed to make the seeds available royalty-free to small-scale farmers.
Both
projects involve making improvements in conventional African varieties
using molecular breeding techniques as well as introducing the
companies’ patented genes to either improve the crop’s resistance to
drought, in Monsanto’s case, or its use of nitrogen fertilizer, in
Pioneer’s.
Corn is a staple food throughout eastern and
southern Africa, but yields are typically only a fraction of what they
are in the United States because of the poor soils, insufficient
rainfall and farmers’ lack of access to fertilizer, insecticides and
high-quality seeds, experts say.
Bill Gates, who co-founded
Microsoft, highlighted the Monsanto project, without mentioning the
company by name, in a speech at the annual World Food Prize symposium
last fall in Des Moines.
Monsanto, which has been testing its
drought-tolerant corn in South Africa and hopes to begin field trials
in Kenya and Uganda this year. Monsanto hopes to have its
drought-tolerant seeds to small-scale farmers in Africa by 2016, four
years after the projected release of a commercial variety in the United
States.
Pioneer’s goal with the African project is to first
develop the improved conventional African varieties through the
molecular breeding techniques and then introduce the transgenic
material toward the end of this decade, Schickler said. The first
conventionally bred varieties could be available within four years,
according to Pioneer.
The use of molecular markers allows scientist to more precisely identify important genes within the plants.
Improving
the nitrogen efficiency of crops would allow crops to grow better in
poor soils or mean that farmers could use less fertilizer, which can
wash off fields and pollute streams and rivers. Nitrogen runoff from
fields in corn fields in Iowa has been linked to a dead zone in the
Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
In Africa, many poor farmers use little or no fertilizer already because of its cost.
“African
maize farmers must deal with drought, weeds and pests, but their
problems start with degraded, nutrient-starved soils and their
inability to purchase enough nitrogen fertilizer,” said Wilfred Mwangi,
associated director of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement
Center’s Kenya-based corn breeding program
Both Pioneer and
Monsanto are working with scientists at the research center that has
long been associated with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug,
who is considered the father of the Green Revolution, which resulted in
increased production of wheat and rice in Asia but largely missed
Africa.
A U.S. critic of agricultural biotechnology, Margaret
Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the companies may be
trying to improve the global image of genetically modified foods, which
have met resistance in Europe, Africa and other regions.
The
companies appear to be trying to “enhance some sense that the
technology is needed because it produces better” than conventional crop
breeding, she said.
South Africa is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that currently allows commercial production of a biotech food crop.
Schickler
said it had not been decided yet whether African farmers will get seeds
that would combine the traits for drought tolerance and nitrogen
efficiency.
