In Which I Agree with the Corporations

In Deserting the hungry?, a Nature essay argues today that “Monsanto and Syngenta are wrong to withdraw from an international assessment on agriculture.” The assessment, titled the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology, is an ambitious, 4-year, US$10-million project that aims to do for hunger and poverty what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done for another global challenge. Drafts of the assessment can be read here: http://www.agassessment.org/.

The goals of the assessment are of course are noteworthy and laudable. Very recently, Monsanto and Syngenta decided to quit the project, and no comments have been issued other than to say:

…the spokesman for CropLife told Nature that the decision was prompted by the inability of its members to get industry perspectives reflected in the draft reports. One of these perspectives is the view that biotechnology is key to reducing poverty and hunger, and it is based in part on high (and rising) levels of demand for biotech crops from farmers across the developing world.

Reading the assessment drafts for myself, there are two non-exclusive ways of interpreting the scuffle. First, and most clearly, there appears to be disagreements over how to implement biotechnologies into the agriculture of developing (and starving) countries. It only makes sense that the interests of corporations should be tempered, and that there should be extensive negotiation between intergovernmental panels and private corporations. If this is the basis of the Monsanto/Syngenta pullout, then of course they deserve a heaping pile of criticism.

But somehow, that explanation for the pullout doesn’t hold water, in my opinion. These corporations are not novices at brokering deals in international agriculture, and I don’t read the assessment as suggesting that they work completely pro bono. They have more to gain from sticking with the assessment than pulling out.

Unless my second explanation for the pullout is correct, which seems to be the case from the Nature editorial and the assessment drafts: GMOs are viewed as the boogeyman, with “gullible and irrational fear of the big bad genetically-modified crop”:

Insiders agree that the current draft is decidedly lukewarm about the technology’s potential in developing-world agriculture. The summary report, for example, devotes more space to biotechnology’s risks than to its benefits. The report says that evidence that biotech crops produce high yields is not conclusive. And it claims that if policy-makers give more prominence to biotechnology, this could consolidate the biotech industry’s dominance of agricultural R&D in developing countries. This would affect graduate education and training, and provide fewer opportunities for scientists to train in other agricultural sciences.

The biotech industry’s influence of agricultural R&D in developing countries is negotiable, and again, expecting them to help out for free is absurd, which is what it sounds like. Additionally, sure, individual biotech crops may not be significantly more effective, but with trial and error, some will almost certainly be so. Improving agriculture to meet the demands of growing countries demands that all available resources, especially innovative applications of technology.

So the Nature editorial’s comment…

Whatever happens next, the status quo is not an option. A meeting to agree the final text is expected to take place in April. Monsanto and Syngenta must get back to the table before then. If they maintain their current position, it will be a blow to the credibility of an important scientific assessment. In addition, public confidence in the biotech industry and in its ability to engage with its critics will have been undermined.

…has it backwards. The credibility of the assessment was already in question, and not because of Monsanto’s or Syngenta’s position, and their pullout probably reinforced public confidence in the biotech industry, by pulling out of an assessment unfriendly to said industry.