Les plantes génétiquement modifiées peuvent-elles nourrir le tiers monde ?

Valentin Beauval and Marc Dufumier

Revue Tiers-Monde, 2006, vol. n° 188, issue 4, 739-754

Abstract: Out of the 6,5 billion inhabitants of our planet, some 852 million still suffer from hunger and more than two billions are victims of malnourishment in proteins, vital fatty acids, vitamins or minerals. This principally concerns the agricultural families of the Third World, who have hardly any means of producing their food requirements to feed correctly, by themselves, or to earn the monetary income sufficient for purchasing enough food from markets. These poor families, who have generally no more than tiny plots and hand tools, are the same that have already proven incapable of drawing gains from high yield varieties which had been proposed to them in the past, within the framework of the classic ?green revolution?, due to the notable requirements of chemical fertilizers and expensive phytosanitary products. By enabling the reduction of costs in these manufactured inputs, could genetically modified plants therefore not help them to increase their yields ? Nothing is that simple. Besides the difficulty of dealing with environmental risks induced by the use of these GMPs, farmers must also face the overhead costs resulting from the use of the plants for which the large firms hold patents. The development of GMPs has often demanded considerable investments and the multinational companies which are at it?s basis logically try to draw some profits even if these involve selling seeds at high prices and disabling farmers from replanting seeds of their own harvests. The GMPs were not really conceived for insolvent Third World peasants and do not therefore appear to solve the problem of hunger and malnutrition in the Third World.

Date: 2006
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