SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Retired judge Justice Patrick Tabaro writes of a proposed law in Uganda that looks to adversely affect its independence and, specifically, what is starting to be called these days "food security".
[...] science is not a magic wand for solving man's food security concerns, but must be applied in accordance with Ubuntu (humaneness).
[...] Since the advent of civilization, peasants have had capacity to plant their own seeds. With the advent of GMO farming, the peasants who constitute 70 per cent of the population have their fate sealed; they may fall into the debt trap, fail to service bank loans and will be in danger of losing their cherished land holdings to financial institutions – and this may entail food insecurity for everyone.
[...] God forbid that anyone should be targeting our scientists to make us vulnerable for easy domination.
He concludes that [w]ith GMOs, there is no Ubuntu, (human nature, humanness, humanity, virtue, goodness, and kindness).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aclarke on Thursday November 16 2017, @04:11PM (1 child)
I think you're being too hard on the author. He made a couple mistakes, but he also started his article with a preface about the difficulty of increased specialization of knowledge. Yes, it's problematic if he accidentally spreads misinformation, but in my opinion at least he lands at the right conclusions.
GM is not the same as cross-breeding. He says "Of course our forefathers practiced [GM]; for example, by crossing animals for desired characteristics." So he has his definition of genetic modification/engineering a bit off. It's unfortunate as he's writing an article about it and pulling most of his new-found information from Wikipedia.
There are potential issues with genetic modification. It's not all a glorious future. I'm not saying it's all evil evil bad, but there are issues with creating GM-resistant pests, since GM pesticides only kill vulnerable pests and leave GM-resistant ones to mutate and survive. That's just one example.
Additionally, there are studies that link GMO to obesity. At the very least there's correlation, and second-order causation like GMO providing more HFCS, causing obesity.
Again, before you write me off as someone mindlessly opposed to GMO, I had about 45 acres of GMO corn grown on my land this year. It helps pay the mortgage.
Ugandans have a long history of foreigners trying to take advantage of them, including Arab slave traders, British colonialists, and more recently the Chinese. It's reasonable that they'd be extremely wary of "foreigners bearing gifts". In this case we have the mostly pro-GMO Americans and anti-GMO EU and Russia. That alone ought to make anyone considering policy slow down enough to understand the issues before creating a new law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 17 2017, @04:04AM
I am leery of *anyone* bearing "gifts". Christmas is just around the corner.
This is the time of year I just want to completely disappear until this whole thing blows over.