If permits for commercial cultivation of transgenic corn are granted to transnational entities like Monsanto, warns Ignacio Chapela, the landscape of the Mexican countryside will be a sterile mono-culture, without microbiological life and without campesinos [small, rural, often indigenous farmers]. In 2001, the Mexican ecologist discovered the contamination of the traditional grain with genetically modified organisms organisms [GMO].
During his visit to Oaxaca, the University of California at Berkeley researcher was interviewed by La Jornada. Chapela pointed out that the discovery he made twelve years ago in the Sierra Norte [mountains] of Oaxaca helped to stop the entry of transgenic corn into the country, and he believes that several times the authorities
"have been with pen in hand to give such authorizations, but they know that this would go against the majority of the population."Chapela emphasized that the companies have developed only two products in four varieties of plants. They have a presence in a few countries, but they want to go to countries like Mexico, the center of the origin of corn. The transgenic is a grain created in the laboratory by inserting a gene from an alien species.
La Jornada: Why the urgency of being authorized to cultivate commercial [GM] corn in the country?
"The historical situation of the industry explains their desperation to get these permissions. Mexico's corn production is minor compared to that of the United States and other countries. Then why are they bent on entering here? To maintain the fiction that the transgenics have acceptance, that they are useful and productive, which makes their presence grow.
"Only two transgenic products have been released: Round Up and BT in cotton, corn, soybeans and canola. They have not moved beyond those products. They have been stuck, because they do not get good results [i.e., promised higher productivity] other than to make the producers addicted to Round Up. They are only in a few countries: Canada, United States, Argentina and Brazil, but they [Monsanto] cannot enter another. In India there is resistance. The Russians banned the entry of all Monsanto products. China withdrew. The European Union is closed to the entrance of transgenics. So they are desperate to say that there are countries that accept them. [Their desperation] is a demonstration of the industry's bankruptcy."
La Jornada: What have been the risks?
"In the beginning what we feared was the generation of super-weeds. In the United States, more than fifty percent of the producers of cotton, soybeans and corn are confronting this problem. Soon their fields will not be cultivable because of the super-weeds, which are resistant to Round Up.
"Monsanto and Dupont asked for permission to introduce crops resistant to 2.4-D, the herbicide banned by a toxic substance present in the Agent Orange used in Vietnam. For thirteen years, in their Round Up they mixed earlier generation herbicides, which they use because they cannot control the weeds."La Jornada: What might happen in Mexico with authorization for commercial cultivation of [GM] corn?
"What has happened in the United States: the Mexican landscape will be left without people, but with a biological and ecological mono-culture; this country's agricultural fields will be deserted. The soil will be sterilized, its microbiology finished; there will be no other plants.
"For example, last year the [the population of] Monarch butterflies dropped fifty percent over the previous year. The reason is that there are no longer the plants they eat during their journey from Canada to Mexico, because those plants grew in corn fields that have now disappeared. In the United States, there are one or two people operating machines in a sterile field of a single species. This would be the consequence of the authorization."
La Jornada: The transgenic patents are about to expire, what about this?
"The industries make whatever changes and present them as new. We have to understand that it is a State industry. During George W. Bush's administration, biotechnology was the second priority of the Department of State in its international relations, second only to the fight against Al Qaeda, which was the number one priority.
"At this time, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering patents about life. They accepted three major complaints against a farmer who planted seeds without buying Monsanto's patented seeds. The court could reaffirm [Monsanto's] right to ownership over life. This would seal at a constitutional level that Monsanto cannot be touched."
La Jornada: Has research in this area been co-opted?
"Totally. They even invent things. Here in Mexico, researchers Mario Soberón and Alejandra Bravo from the Institute of Biotechnology, National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM], invented things. Using photo-shop, they made photographs in which supposedly there is evidence of their research. This is the level of the industry's desperation and bankruptcy.
"The industry never bothered to produce something that would give an advantage to consumers; instead, it focused on a product that would bring immediate benefits. In a profound way, transgenic manipulation is based on a concept that does not work in biology, and that's what comes back to cause trouble again and again.
"They try to solve problems according to a logic that says they can move parts from one side to another. That they can put wings on a pig by removing the gene from the wings of a hen. But this does not work in biology, and they do not want to accept it," he concluded.