In honoring the seed biotechnology industry, this year’s World Food Prize — often considered the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture — betrays the award’s own mandate to emphasize “the importance of a nutritious and sustainable food supply for all people.”[i]

The 2013 World Food Prize has gone to three chemical company executives, including Monsanto executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, responsible for development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).  Yet, GMO seeds have not been designed to meet the Prize’s mandate, and function in ways that actually impede progress toward the stated goals of the World Food Prize.

Twenty years after commercialization of the first GMO seeds, most are of just two types: not engineered for better nutrition but to produce a specific pesticide or to resist a proprietary herbicide. But even in reducing weeds, the technology is failing, for it has generated herbicide-resistant “super weeds” now appearing on nearly half of American farms.[ii]

 MO seeds undermine sustainability in several other ways as well.

While profitable to the few companies producing them, GMO seeds reinforce a model of farming that undermines sustainability of cash-poor farmers, who make up 70 percent of the world’s hungry. GMO seeds continue their dependency on purchased seed and chemical inputs. The most dramatic impact of such dependency is in India, where 270, 00 farmers, many trapped in debt for buying seeds and chemicals, committed suicide between 1995 and 2012.[iii]

GMOs also threaten sustainability because they continue agriculture’s dependence on fossil fuels, mined minerals, and water—all resources that will only become more expensive as they become more scarce.

This award not only communicates a false connection between GMOs and solutions to hunger and agricultural degradation, but it also diverts attention from truly “nutritious and sustainable” agroecological approaches already proving effective, especially in the face of extreme weather. The Rodale Institute, for example, found in its 30-year study, that organic methods outperformed chemical farming during drought years by as much as 31 percent. Organic methods can use 45 percent less energy and produce 40 percent less greenhouse gases.[iv]

Further evidence from around the world is showing how ecological methods dramatically enhance productivity, improve nutritional content of crops, and benefit soil health, all without leaving farmers dependent on ever-more expensive inputs.[v] The UN, through its Office of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has documented ecological agriculture’s potential in hungry regions to double food production in one decade.[vi]  Chaired by former World Food Prize awardee Dr. Hans Herren, the 2008 International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, developed by 400 experts and endorsed by 59 governments, calls for redirection of agricultural development toward such sustainable practices.[vii] Across the world, agroecology and food sovereignty are emerging solutions shaped and chosen by scientists and citizens worldwide.

Note that the World Food Prize mandate is also to recognize contributors to food “for all people” but GMO seeds make this goal harder to reach. The planet already produces more than enough food for all — and 40 percent more per person than in 1970. Yet, 870 million people, still suffer from extreme, long-term undernourishment because they lack power to access adequate food. Developed and controlled by a handful of companies, genetically engineered seeds further the concentration of power and the extreme inequality at the root of this crisis of food inaccessibility. An estimated 90 percent of U.S.-grown soybeans and 80 percent of corn and cotton crops.[viii]

The choice of the 2013 World Food Prize is an affront to the growing international consensus on safe, ecological farming practices that have been scientifically proven to promote nutrition and sustainability. Most regions of the world and most governments have rejected GMOs and millions of citizens have marched against Monsanto. In living democracies, discounting this knowledge and these many voices is not acceptable.

Signatories

LIST OF WORLD FUTURE COUNCIL MEMBERS SIGNING AND RIGHT LIVELIHOOD LAUREATES

Ibrahim Abouleish, RLA 2003, Egypt

Swami Agnivesh, RLA 2004, India

Uri Avnery, RLA 2001, Israel

Maude Barlow, RLA 2005, Canada

Dipal Barua, RLA 2007, Bangladesh

Nnimmo Bassey, RLA 2010, Nigeria

Andras Biro, RLA 1995, Hungary

Zafrullah Chowdhury, RLA 1992, Bangladesh

Tony Clarke, RLA 2005, Canada

Mike Cooley, RLA 1981, UK

Erik Dammann, RLA 1982, Norway

Hans-Peter Dürr, RLA 1987, Germany

Daniel Ellsberg, RLA 2006, USA

Anwar Fazal, RLA 1982, Malaysia

Irene Fernandez, RLA 2005, Malaysia

Johan Galtung, RLA 1987, Norway

Ina May Gaskin, RLA 2011, USA

Stephen Gaskin, RLA 1980, USA

Monika Hauser, RLA 2008, Germany

Martín von Hildebrand, RLA 1999, Colombia

Mohamed Idris, RLA 1988, Malaysia

Bianca Jagger, RLA 2004, Nicaragua

Erwin Kräutler, RLA 2010, Brazil

Felicia Langer, RLA 1990, Germany

Birsel Lemke, RLA 2000, Turkey

Hunter Lovins, RLA 1983, USA

Ruchama Marton, RLA 2010, Israel

Tapio Mattlar, RLA 1992, Finland

Manfred Max-Neef, RLA 1983, Chile

Raúl Montenegro, RLA 2004, Argentina

Frances Moore Lappe, RLA 1987, USA

Helena Norberg-Hodge, RLA 1986, UK

Evaristo Nugkuag, RLA 1986, Perú

Juan Pablo Orrego, RLA 1998, Chile

Nicanor Perlas, RLA 2003, Philippines

Fernando Rendón, RLA 2006, Colombia

Sima Samar, RLA 2012, Afghanistan

Vandana Shiva, RLA 1993, India

Sulak Sivaraksa, RLA 1995, Thailand

Michael Succow, RLA 1997, Germany

Suciwati, widow of Munir, RLA 2000, Indonesia

Hanumappa Sudarshan, RLA 1994, India

Alice Tepper Marlin, RLA 1990, USA

Shrikrishna Upadhyay, RLA 2010, Nepal

Janos Vargha, RLA 1985, Hungary

Alyn Ware, RLA 2009, New Zealand

Chico Whitaker, RLA 2006, Brazil

Alla Yaroshinskaya, RLA 1992, Russia

Angie Zelter, RLA 2001, UK

Additional WFC Councillors:

David Krieger

Rama Mani

Alexander Likhotal

Thais Corral

Pauline Tangiora

Anna Oposa

Scilla Elworthy

Katiana Orluc

Riane Eisler

Ashok Khosla

Hafsat Abiola, Founder and President of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND)

Rafia Ghubash

Vithal Rajan

This is the mailing list of all Right Livelihood Award Laureates.

1 World Food Prize, About the Prize, http://www.worldfoodprize.org/en/about_the_prize/

2 Resistant Weeds – Intensifying by Kent Fraser, January 25, 2013 Status Research, http://www.stratusresearch.com/blog07.htm

3 Wesley Stephenson , “ Indian farmers and suicide: How big is the problem?” News Magazine, BBC, January 23, 2013. Notes 270,000 suicides as the “official” estimate. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-­‐21077458

4 The Farming Systems Trial: Celebrating 30 Years, Rodale Institute, 2012, http://66.147.244.123/~rodalein/wp-­‐content/uploads/2012/12/FSTbookletFINAL.pdf

5 Jules Pretty, “Sustainable Intensification in African Agriculture,” Jules Pretty, Camilla Toulmin, and Stella Williams, International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability. 9(1) 2011; pp. 5–24, doi:10.3763/ijas.2010.0583 # 2011 Earthscan. www.earthscan.co.uk/journals/ijas; Soil health, see “Agro-­‐ecology and the Right to Food,” Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/component/content/article/1174-­‐report-­‐agroecology-­‐and-­‐the-­‐ right-­‐to-­‐food; Elaine Ingham, Life in Natural Agriculture Soil, Rodale Institute, http://rodaleinstitute.org/tag/dr-­‐elaine-­‐ingham/

6 Ibid.

7 Agriculture at a Crossroads, United National Environmental Program, 2009.http://www.unep.org/dewa/agassessment/reports/IAASTD/EN/Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_S ynthesis%20Report%20%28English%29.pdf

8 Robert Langreth and Matthew Herper, “The Planet Versus Monsanto”, Forbes.com, 12, 31.09, http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0118/americas-­‐best-­‐company-­‐10-­‐gmos-­‐dupont-­‐planet-­‐versus-­‐ monsanto.html