South African farmers this winter harvested the country’s first crop of genetically modified (GM) maize aimed at human consumption, but grain growers say it has been slipping into the food chain for a while and fear the public will resist it if green consciousness grows.
“The first crops were harvested in June, July, and it should be about to hit the shelves,” said Willem Engelbrecht, the marketing manager for Pioneer Seeds, one of three companies in South Africa that sell GM grain.
The white maize yield, coming from about 100 000 hectares of farmland scattered around the country, is expected to make up only one percent of the local market, according to the agriculture ministry’s GM registrar Shadrack Moepheli.
But it will reach both livestock and people, mainly the country’s impoverished black population for whom maize is a staple food, said seed breeder Arthur Schroeder from Pannar.
Genetically modified yellow maize has been around since 1998 and while that has been grown mostly as cattle feed, it has entered the human food chain in the form of cornflakes.
“Yellow maize has been around for four years and it is being grown all over the country. It is used mostly for livestock but it also goes to humans, it is being used in cereal,” said Bully Botma, chairman of Grain South Africa, which represents 95% of South African maize farmers.
It accounts for about 15% of the local maize crop, but Engelbrecht said the market was “exploding.”
“We were sold out of seeds before we had produced them and we will be putting more on the market. The farmers want it because the seeds give a better yield and they are resistant to stalk borer, a worm that eats the seeds, so it means they do not have to spray their crops with toxic insecticides.”
The seed technology comes from the United States and so far South African producers have put only one modified maize gene on the market, but the seed producers say more variations are expected to be brought in from the United States in coming years.
Botma said that for Grain South Africa the problem with the GM maize was that as in the United States it had largely been mixed with non-GM grain and consumers and cattle farmers now had little way of telling whether it was in their food or animal feed.
“There are regulations but practice has shown us that where we have genetically modified yellow maize there is no control at intake points. The silos just take it in, food manufacturers don’t complain and the millers mix it.”
Farmer Hannes Haasbroek, who grows GM maize at Bothaville some 270 kilometres south of Johannesburg, said: “I do not keep my GM maize separately from the rest of the maize I grow because they do not test for it so there is no point.”
South Africa’s main export market for maize, Japan, and sales of corn syrup to the European Union have not been affected as what is sold to them is grown separately, but Botma said Grain South Africa feared that the domestic market would suffer as consumers became aware of the debate around GM foods, possibly in the wake of the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development being held in Johannesburg from August 26 to September 4.
“South Africa is not rolling out the red but the green carpet for this summit. Our farmers are worried that the green lobby could affect the market and make consumers change their minds,” Botma said.
“There is a protocol for GM growing which says you should keep your crop 1 000 metres away from your neighbour’s but it is not really being applied.
“If a niche market develops for GM-free food, we want to be able to service it, and with cross pollination we would not be able to do it. Countries like Namibia have said they will not buy our maize because they export meat to Europe and that market might complain.”
A representative for the Safe Food Coalition, Andrew Taynton, said the body was pushing for GM maize to be banned from shelves: “We are horrified because the long-term health effects are not known.
For US consumers it will be only a small part of their diet, but in Africa maize is a staple food.”
The South African Freeze Alliance on Genetic Engineering said it would use the Earth Summit to demand a five-year moratorium on GM maize growing.
“We are trying to arrange awareness and we are going to band together with international groups and lobby the government,” alliance coordinator Gill Kerchhoff told AFP. – AFP