“One of the problems that the biotechnology industry has is that it’s done nothing for the American consumer. There’s nothing there. There’s no genetically engineered food that does anything… no nutrition, nothing for us. So how are they going to sell this technology to the American people? Well, they’ve come up with this idea that maybe biotechnology should be sold as the way to feed a starving world.
“One major problem with that, the reason why roughly 800 million people starve every day – and that is a tragic fact – has nothing to do with the amount of food available. Most of these people around the world who are starving used to be farmers. But because of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund giving huge loans to these countries, these countries can no longer allow for subsisted farming. They had to grow expensive export crops back to the first world to pay back those loans. So they kicked these hundreds of millions of farmers off their farms, they end up in the Bopauls and the Mexico Cities and the Brazilias of the world. Without money. They are no longer growing their own food. And they’re competing for the scarce jobs available in the new industrialization of these countries. They are no longer food independent, they’re food dependent.”
– Andrew Kimbrell
Executive Director, Center for Food Safety
Transcribed from The Future of Food.
