Through My Eyes

Anyway, here is what I found. I hope it does not spoil your dinner.

"There are 7.2 billion people on the planet. There will be 9.6 billion by 2050. The demand for food will doubleusing GM food and data science is the only thing that will enable us to feed the planet without encroaching on the forests and wetlandsThis represents a business opportunity, but from a societal perspective, it's very important." Said Robert Fraley, CEO of Monsanto, Winner of the World Food Prize 2013.

• Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality. People are generally hungry not because of insufficient agricultural production but because they do not have money to buy food, access to land to grow food or because of complex problems like food spoilage, poor food distribution systems and a lack of reliable water and infrastructure for irrigation, storage, transport and financing, THE best we can do for the poor is teach them how to grow their own food, in SA we have enough fertile land,assist with irrigation and protect our seeds
  
• If these deeper problems are not addressed and as long as food is not reaching those who are hungry and poor, increased agricultural production will not help reduce food insecurity,the current "solution" of GMO seeds adds to the problem as ordinary seeds become contaminated and GMO production is expensive.
  
• We already produce enough food to feed the world's population and did so even at the peak of the world food crisis in 2008. Current global food production provides enough to feed ten billion people.
  
• The world produces 17 percent more food per person than it did 30 years ago and yet the number of food insecure people is still very high.
  
• The recent food price crises of 2008 and 2011 both took place in years of record global harvests, clearly showing that these crises were not the result of scarcity.
  
• The GM crops that are on the market today are not designed to address hunger. Four GM crops name the crops account for almost 100 percent of worldwide GM crop acreage. All four have been developed for large-scale industrial farming systems and are used as cash crops for export, to produce fuel or for processed food and animal feed.
  
• GM crops have not increased yields and do not increase farmers' incomes., we would do better to support small scale farmers and commercial farmers to enable them to keep on farming
  
• GM crops are patented and owned by large corporations. These companies profit
  
• From the sale of GM crops and royalties on GM traits, while small-scale farmers round the worldnewsd bear the increased cost of buying seeds and the risks that come with using GM crops. GM crops reduce choice but increase risk for farmers, while the likes of Monsanto dominant the agritech sector and rake in enormous profits.
  

The main message is that hunger, food security and 'feeding the world' is a political, social and economic problem and no amount of gene splicing is capable of surmounting obstacles like poor roads, inadequate rural credit systems and insufficient irrigation. - my note the large GMO corps would have a better reputation if they made meaningful contributions to under-privileged communities and empowered them to become self sufficient,

The answer to food security, food democracy and local/national food sovereignty does not lie with making farmers dependent on a few large corporations whose bottom line is exploiting agriculture to maximise profit.

We need to support diverse, vibrant and sustainable agroecological methods of farming and develop locally based food economies. After all, it is small farms and peasant farmers (more often than not serving local communities) that are more productive than giant industrial (export-oriented) farms and which produce most of the world's food on much less land.

To date, any studies done that relate to GMOs have been performed on animals, with consistent, documented effects of GMO toxicity, including immune dysregulation (asthma, allergy, and inflammation); accelerated aging; infertility; dysregulation of genes associated with cholesterol synthesis, insulin regulation, cell signaling, and protein formation; as well as altered structure and function in the liver, kidney, pancreas, spleen and gastrointestinal system, still birth, birth defects, and early death.

So next time you're reaching for your favourite food, think where it came from and its harmful properties, support local growers, Say NO to GM foods. And lobby government for labeling of GMO ingredients.