Organic coffee
Seventy per cent of the world's coffee is produced by small farmers; mostly in developing countries. Most of this coffee is grown using traditional, environment friendly farming methods. Around 60 million people rely on coffee production, either on small farms or on larger plantations, for all or part of their livelihood. Coffee berries, known as cherries, grow in tight clusters on the trees and ripen at different times. This makes harvesting coffee labour intensive, as the cherries must be picked by hand. Mechanised harvesting has been introduced on large plantations to reduce labour costs, but picking a mix of ripe and unripe berries lowers the value of the crop. GM coffee is now being developed so that all the cherries will ripen at the same time. The coffee has been genetically modified so that the enzymes, which control the natural ripening process, are 'switched off'. The GM coffee will then ripen only if it is sprayed with the chemical ethylene which 'switches on' the final ripening process. GM coffee is being developed primarily for use on large plantations, which can take advantage of the use of mechanised harvesting and will be able to increase the profitability of their operations. As Dr Tewolde Egziabler from Ethiopia says 'Small farmers will be squeezed out of the market with GM coffee. It's a shift from a labour intensive to a capital intensive system from small farmers to large farmers'. It may seem too soon to worry about GM coffee when it may be as much as 10 years before it is available commercially. But it is precisely because it is so far from commercialisation, that we have a chance now to stop it's continued development. Getting a product withdrawn after commercialisation is far harder than stopping it now by showing that GM coffee is not wanted by consumers and that it is not a solution to the problems of farmers in the developing world.
Local communities should be allowed to provide for themselves in a sustainable manner before worrying about supplying crops for export
Modern, industrial agriculture has much to answer for. It has degraded the soil, polluted and exhausted water supplies, and destroyed animal and plant species.
Widespread use of pesticides has led to the emergence of pesticide-resistant weeds, while excessive use of fertiliser contributes to global warming due to its energy-intensive manufacture, not to mention the enormous quantities of fossil fuels used in food production and transport. Meanwhile the run-off pollutes water supplies and harms fish. Food scares and epidemics are increasingly commonplace, and in response demand for organic food is skyrocketing.
As is all too common with unsound industries, when people and governments in one part of the world wake up to bad industrial practices, these industries shift to poorer countries. GM technologies - the ugly stepdaughter of industrial agriculture - are no different. The GM industry has wasted no time in claiming that whatever those of us in Europe think about GM, it will be necessary to feed the growing world population.
This is despite the fact that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation states that there is more than enough food on the planet to feed everyone - one and a half times as much in fact. But that hasn't stopped companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer Cropscience trumpeting about the benefits of crops such as golden rice, so-called because of its disputed increase in vitamin A compared to conventional rice varieties.
These companies have not only misrepresented the problem but also their own solutions - neither golden rice nor any other GM crop designed to help poor farmers in the developing world is ready for use. Unsurprisingly, the GM crops which have been commercialised are designed to sell more agrochemicals such as Monsanto's Roundup herbicide or Bayer's Liberty.
To properly address hunger, we need to support sustainable farming that meets the needs of the local people and environment. Successive studies have documented the social and environmental benefits of sustainable low-input and organic farming in both the North and the South. These offer a practical way of restoring agricultural land degraded by industrial farming with chemicals and over-production, allowing family farmers to fight poverty and hunger.
Sustainable agriculture leads to better soil, a varied locally grown diet, increased harvests, a better environment and increased food security. Like illusionists using sleight of hand tricks, the biotech companies are diverting resources away from these more sustainable solutions and towards GM technologies simply to further their own interests.
But by championing organic, locally-produced food, we can challenge the threats posed by industrial agriculture and see a farming system that works in conjunction with nature, not against it.
Publication date: 16 October 2006 Summary
The government has published its proposals for managing the coexitence of GM, conventional and organic crops within the UK.
Our position is that the proposals legitimise contamination of organic and conventional crops by GM varieties, putting farmers' livelihoods at risk, endangering public health, and removing the ability of consumers to choose food that is free from GM contamination.
Genetic research can deliver enormous scientific advances, both in medicine and in our understanding of the natural world. But when that research is applied to alter the genetic make-up of living organisms, it has the potential to cause enormous damage to human health and the environment.
By manipulating the genetic make-up of plants and animals, genes from one species can be artificially inserted into another, unrelated one. This is supposed to give genetically modified (GM) organisms new abilities - such as maize that produces its own pesticide - which will be disease and drought resistant as well as being able to provide more food for the world's poor.
At least, that's the theory, but after decades of research there are no GM food crops that live up to all this hype.
Instead, the use of herbicides has increased and a wealth of contamination scandals (in which non-GM crops become polluted with GM material) have erupted. On top of that, farmers who were supposed to reap the benefits of GM technology are instead facing financial ruin and starvation.
The multinational biotech companies such as Monsanto and Bayer Cropscience, who develop GM crops, own the rights to the varieties they develop, increasing their stranglehold on global agriculture and allowing them to generate vast profits. They make even more money by making their crops resistant to just one brand of herbicide - their own.
As a result, the production of our food is governed by economic models rather than natural ones, and bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, the European Commission and several national governments are keen to force GM products on the global market.
An international agreement called the Biosafety Protocol aims to regulate the use and movement of genetically modified organisms, but again biotech companies and governments sympathetic to their interests are attempting to disable it, making the familiar argument that environmental protection is a barrier to international trade.
Once GM crops are planted, cross-pollination means other crops often become contaminated and GM material ends up in the food chain. Contamination scandals are now commonplace, often originating from farm trials in which the GM crops are unapproved for human consumption.
GM organisms are also serious threat to biodiversity. Designed to grow faster and stronger, they out-compete native varieties and, again, cross-pollination (which its supporters insisted was impossible) could result in their genetic material spreading far and wide, potentially altering entire species. Once they make it out into the wild, there is no way to recall them and we will have to live with the consequences.
The widespread introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) poses enormous risks. Not enough research has been done into their impacts on other species or human health, and putting commercial gain for a few multinational corporations ahead of everything else is something we cannot afford to do.
We believe GMOs should not be released into the environment. Scientific understanding of their impact on plants, animals and human health is not adequate to ensure their safety.
We also oppose all patents on plants, animals and humans, as well as patents on their genes. Life is not an industrial commodity and when we force life forms and our world's food supply to conform to human economic models rather than their natural ones, we do so at our peril.
Instead, we advocate a move away from industrial-scale agriculture towards locally-focused and sustainable models. Feeding the world without exhausting the planet's natural resources is achievable, and it has to be a global priority - making sure everyone has enough to eat has to be more important than making money.
Study after study has shown the social and environmental benefits of sustainable and organic farming in both the affluent North and the impoverished South. These offer a practical way of restoring agricultural land degraded by the chemicals and over-production of industrial farming, allowing family farmers to fight poverty and hunger.
By championing organic, locally-produced food, we can challenge the threats posed by industrial agriculture and remove the flimsy arguments in favour of GM crops. Instead, we will have a farming system that works with nature, not against it.
Greenpeace volunteers uproot a field of GM maize in Norfolk, 1999?
Genetically modified (GM) crops have had a massive impact on farmers, shoppers and the natural world. Like the multinational companies which champion them, we work internationally to prevent their spread and promote better alternatives.
The grandiose claims of the biotech industry about the benefits of their GM inventions are often misleading so we ensure consumers have enough information to make up their own minds.
As a result, millions of shoppers across the UK and Europe have already rejected GM products, yet those with vested interests continue to force them onto the market in an effort to recoup the massive development costs and gain intellectual property rights over our food, so we are here to make sure they don't go unchallenged.
Part of this is questioning assumptions that GM crops will help ease poverty and hunger throughout the world. To do this, we cut through the biotechnology industry's promotional hype and report from the ground where farmers in countries such as Argentina and India are being driven into poverty and hunger because of their GM crops.
We also champion the right of anyone to know where GM crops are being grown in their area, challenging the secrecy of biotechnology companies and the governments that support them. Revealing the locations of GM crops is important for those concerned about health risks and for farmers worried about contamination.
But like a particularly malevolent genie which has been let out of the bottle, GM contamination of conventional crops is already widespread and farmers in China, Thailand, Hawaii and the US mainland have been badly hit. We expose contamination scandals when they occur, and work with farmers and farming organisations to help prevent them in the first place.
Behind the scenes, we lobby governments and international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation to put environmental concerns ahead of those of corporate fat-cats who want to make a fast buck at the expense of the environment and our own health.
A bizarre decision has been made by the EU to increase the maximum limit of GM material allowed in organic food, and effectively legitimise widespread GM contamination.
You might be alarmed to think that any GM ingredients end up in organic food, and you're right to be so. The previous maximum limit of 0.1 per cent was set simply because that was the lowest level that food could accurately be tested for GM contamination.
The new limit is 0.9 per cent, the same that applies to non-organic food, and while this might not sound like much, it does now mean that organic food can be polluted with much greater quantities of GM material before it has to be labelled with a warning. If organic food is tested and found to contain 0.8% GM contamination, it will be labeled as ?GM free'.
This makes absolutely no sense. The success of organic foods has come about precisely because we trust them not to contain toxic chemicals and GM produce. As our campaigner Ben Ayliffe pointed out in the Independent, the shelves are groaning with organic food because it's what shoppers want, while GM food is conspicuous by its absence for the opposite reason.
For the EU to say it supports organic farming while increasing the level of contamination it can contain smacks of double standards. Do we see the lobbying fingerprints of the monolithic biotech companies all over this? I'll leave you to make up your own mind.
Chinese farmers are discovering that resurrecting the old tradition of keeping ducks in their rice fields allows them to cut down on the amount of pesticides and artificial fertilisers they need to use to grow their crops.
In this lovely short film from Greenpeace China organic rice farmer Weng Falin explains how his 200 ducks effectively weed his rice fields, and protect the plants by eating many of the insects that naturally attack them.
Climate change makes it likely that pests will become more prevalent in the future, but keeping ducks means that farmers don't have to use pesticides and herbicides.Weng's ducks are protecting both water and soil quality by keeping pest numbers down, and helping to maintain the ecological balance of the land.
