Keep your ears open for a new batch of What’s for Lunch radio stories about food and climate change on PRI’s The World. The series, part of the Food for 9 Billion project that Homelands Productions is producing with the Center for …
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Jonathan Miller
Food for 9 Billion
Transgenic Lunch
Jonathan Miller
Food for 9 Billion
Transgenic Lunch
Scientists in the U.S. and Uganda have developed genetically engineered cassava plants that resist two devastating viral diseases. Is it a boon for small farmers or a Trojan horse?
Ugandan farmer Eva Mugalu samples cassava from her property north of Kampala. Cassava is an important food security crop for millions of Africans, but it is susceptible to viruses. Scientists say they are nearly ready with a genetically engineered virus-resistant variety. Photo by Jonathan Miller. For years, proponents of genetic engineering have said that gene-splicing technology can help the world’s poorest farmers – making their crops more nutritious, or more productive, or protecting them against drought and pests and diseases.
But they haven’t had much to show for those claims. Even in developing countries, most of the land area planted in GMOs is devoted to commercial crops on industrial farms. Opponents of GMOs have included that fact among their many arguments against transgenics.
Today, though, there are dozens of genetically engineered crops in the pipeline that are specifically aimed at small-scale farmers in poor countries. In many cases, they are being developed by public sector scientists who plan to make them available at little or no cost.
In this story, we travel to Uganda to meet researchers working on a genetically engineered cassava variety that resists two devastating viral diseases. The scientists say it’s the best hope for saving a critically important food security crop.
But critics question whether the new variety is really necessary and suggest that the real goal is to break down resistance to GMOs on a continent that has been wary of the technology. Are GMOs a boon for Africa, or are they a Trojan Horse?
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The Homelands Blog
This week: Seven stories about food and the climate
It’s the biggest week yet for the “Food for 9 Billion” project, with five stories scheduled to air on PBS NewsHour and two on PRI’s The World. Today on the NewsHour, Sam Eaton visits Costa Rica, where farmers and researchers are finding …
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The Homelands Blog
New Stories to Probe Food-Climate Connections
Reporters Jonathan Miller, Sam Eaton and Mary Kay Magistad have been in Mexico, Costa Rica, India, Singapore, China, Qatar, Uganda and the Netherlands gathering tape for a series of radio and TV stories about the future of food …