A global movement to stop GM wheat
Over 100 Global South organisations appealed to UN Special Rapporteurs in January 2024 to block the cultivation and trade of GM wheat developed in Argentina. The alliance included food sovereignty activists, social movements of peasants and indigenous peoples, and academics from Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
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Their submission covered human rights, the environment, food, toxic chemicals, water and sanitation, poverty, indigenous peoples, and health.
“Introducing GM wheat into agricultural and food systems is akin to putting out a fire with gasoline, since it will advance the industrial agriculture frontier into marginal areas and local communities,” according to the alliance. “This will, in turn, put greater pressure on fragile ecosystems and encourage further deforestation, land enclosures, and land and resource grabs, undermining the right to self-determination of local and indigenous communities, especially in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.” |
Genetically modified wheat. Image credit: Green America
The GM wheat, HB4, was developed by Bioceres, a company usually described as Argentinian but which has a complex ownership structure with linked companies in the tax havens of the Cayman Islands and the US state of Delaware. Its strategic investors have included Monsanto (now Bayer), with which it has also collaborated “for the deregulation of HarvXtra™ Alfalfa with Roundup Ready® Technology in Argentina”. It has “strategic alliances” with Syngenta and Dow AgroSciences. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the former President of Argentina whose tenures were plagued with corruption scandals, is a shareholder of Bioceres and is reported to own part of one of its patents.
Argentina’s former President Cristina Kirchner. Photo: Bichos de campo.
HB4 is claimed to be drought-tolerant – not only by its developers but by an increasing number of supporters worldwide. In apparent contrast to claims that genetic engineering could be a tool to mitigate climate change, there are very few crops under development about which such claims are made. There is no single drought-resistant gene; crops are infinitely more complex than that, and their resilience to changeable weather patterns depends on a variety of external factors also. So the case has global significance: it seems that whenever anyone needs an actual example of a climate-change busting crop, HB4 is held up.
Image: Bioceres
HB4 is also tolerant to the herbicide glufosinate. This has raised concerns that it will increase the use of this agrotoxin, which has been linked to a range of adverse health and environmental effects, including brain damage.
It has been approved for production in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and the United States, and for eating in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia, Colombia, Chile and the United States. It is being field tested in Canada.
