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The Biotech companies would like you to believe that this is true but it couldn't be further from the truth.

The genetically modified organism (GMO,) food seeds that the Biotech companies sell are not foods that are indigenous to third world nations, rather they are foods that are designed for export not local consumption. Moreover, the farming of GMO crops is not inexpensive which actually leads to an increase in hunger and starvation to these poorest of poor. The cycle of a family farmer growing indigenous food for his family and local people is broken and now the farmer is growing crops for cash to pay for food that is brought in from somewhere else at a higher cost. In the meantime the local people are not being nourished by those locally grown GMO foods.

Biotech companies implement a genetic engineering technique called "terminator" technology that renders a crop's seed sterile, making it impossible for farmers to save seed for replanting. Farmers not only cannot save seeds for planting the following year (even if they could, to do so would break their contract with the biotech company and the farmer would be subject to stiff financial penalties and/or litigation,) but they must also return year after year to the company to purchase expensive new seed. Half the world's farmers save seed to produce food that 1.4 billion people rely on for daily nutrition. This is nuts!

Biotech companies have only one thing on their agenda and that is to make money. The process, in which they do so in my opinion, is underhanded and quite frightening. They are seeking to "own" the world's food supply, and by infusing GMO crops into the supply, they are also contaminating it.

Hunger is a social and poverty problem due to unequal distribution of food on a global level. This is mainly a logistical problem not a shortage of food problem.

The United States has such a glut of food. We regularly dump food on a daily basis simply because we don't have a system to salvage this resource.
Right here in southern California, I volunteer for a non-profit organization, Food Finders, whose sole purpose is to rescue surplus food from grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, etc and distribute it to other non-profit social service agencies in the area. The number of pounds saved from being thrown out every year from this one agency is astounding. Since 1989 over 50 million pounds of surplus food to date has been distributed.

If we are serious about feeding the world's poor, then we should think about how we can distribute to them food we already have and address specific needs of those nations that are unable to grow their own food.

Learn more about this author, Maria Weston.
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