This is from Sirkka Immonen. I am working at FAO in the Secretariat of the CGIAR's Technical Advisory Committee.
It is obvious that in addition to solving socio-economic and political constraints to food security, there is a serious need within the coming decades to produce considerably more food - probably through higher productivity per unit, in a sustainable way and mostly in the developing countries. Would it be useful for this debate to consider what the role of genetic improvement (GI) is in alleviating poverty and providing food security ?
Biotechnology, including genetic modification (GM) technology, is commonly used as a tool in GI - among many other tools, including participatory methods. (There are surely other uses of biotechnology relevant to poor countries and to this conference, such as animal vaccine development.) There is quite a lot of evidence and plenty of indications that biotechnology will make GI more effective in the short and long term and more cost-efficient in the long term. It may also speed up delivery of GI products to farmers, including poor farmers in developing countries. The public sector GI deals with several crops and animal species that the private sector does not focus on. This work includes research on GMOs, particularly where the problems are otherwise difficult (for example banana breeding) or impossible to solve (certain kinds of resistances that do not exist within the species). The public sector also invests in research on traits which are particularly relevant in difficult production conditions (such as resistance to the parasitic weed Striga) or relevant to poor farmers (such as apomixis). These would seem to be research topics where success would benefit poor producers and consumers. In the International Agricultural Research Centres the work is multidisciplinary and participatory by nature and demand-driven.
If GI is considered a potential pathway but biotechnology is not, then the reasons for the latter are obviously somewhere else other than in the potential of biotechnology to help GI reach its goals. Is it only GMOs that are a problem, or is it biotechnology in general ? And if it is GMOs that a problem, why just them ? Are questions of access (including aspects such as pricing, intellectual property rights, the species targetted) more pertinent to GMOs than to other biotechnology products and knowledge ? Is it the assumption that the environmental and health risks will be too serious to overcome? Or that the national regulatory practices are too difficult and costly to develop and implement or unreliable. Or is it that case that GI is not seen as a useful activity at all. Transfer of public funding from biotechnology/GI to something else does not seem very likely. How then can we focus the research to gain from best science and avoid adverse effects?
Sirkka Immonen
Senior Officer (Agricultural Research)
FAO, TAC Secretariat, C-626
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00100 Rome, Italy
tel: (39) 06 570 54861
fax (39) 06 570 53298
E-mail: Sirkka.Immonen@fao.org
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-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 10:00 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Environmental risks are important for third world food security
too
Hello, this is Peter Rosset again. By the way, I am based in Chiapas, Mexico. There is currently a huge debate in Mexico about these topics.
I am disturbed by people who only feel that the risks of transgenic crops are of importance in the North, and thus anything with any potential should be sent to the Third World 'in case it turns out to help.' The debate here in Mexico indicates otherwise -- people do not want untested, risky products here, any more than they do in the USA or Europe. I would like to indicate that many of the potential risks are quite relevant to food security in developing countries.
The widespread crop failures reported for transgenics (i.e. stem splitting, boll drop, etc.) pose economic risks which can affect poor farmers much more severely than wealthy farmers. If consumers reject their products, the economic risks are higher the poorer one is. Also, the high costs of transgenics introduce an additional anti-poor bias into the system.
Transgenic plants which produce their own insecticides, usually using the 'Bt' gene, closely follow the pesticide paradigm, which is itself rapidly failing due to pest resistance to insecticides. In general, the greater the selection pressure across time and space, the quicker and more profound the pests' evolutionary response. Thus integrated pest management (IPM) approaches employ multiple pest control mechanisms, and use pesticides minimally, only in cases of last resort. But when the product is engineered into the plant itself, pest exposure leaps from minimal and occasional to massive and continuous exposure, dramatically accelerating resistance. Most entomologists agree that Bt will rapidly become useless, both as a feature of the new seeds and as an old standby natural insecticide sprayed when needed by farmers that want to get out of the pesticide treadmill. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has mandated that farmers set aside a certain proportion of their area as a 'refuge,' where non-Bt varieties are to be planted, in order to slow down the rate of evolution by insects of resistance. Yet it is vanishingly unlikely that poor, small farmers in the third world will plant such refuges, meaning that resistance to Bt could occur much more rapidly under such circumstances.
At the same time, the use of Bt crops affects non-target organisms and ecological processes. Recent evidence shows that the Bt toxin can affect beneficial insect predators that feed on insect pests present on Bt crops, and that windblown pollen from Bt crops found on natural vegetation surrounding transgenic fields can kill non-target insects. Small farmers rely for insect pest control on the rich complex of predators and parasites associated with their mixed cropping systems. But the effect on natural enemies raises serious concerns about the potential of the disruption of natural pest control, as polyphagous predators [i.e. that feed on or utilise many kinds of food...Moderator] that move within and between mixed crop cultivars will encounter Bt-containing non-target prey throughout the crop season. Disrupted biocontrol mechanisms may result in increased crop losses due to pests or to the increased use of pesticides by farmers.
The fact that Bt retains its insecticidal properties after crop residues have been plowed into the soil, and is protected against microbial degradation by being bound to soil particles, persisting in various soils for at least 234 days, is of serious concern for poor farmers who cannot purchase expensive chemical fertilizers, and who instead rely on local residues, organic matter and soil microorganisms (key invertebrate, fungal or bacterial species) for soil fertility, which can be negatively affected by the soil bound toxin.
When the Bt genes fail, what would poor farmers be left with? It is entirely possible that they would face the serious rebound of pest populations freed of natural control by the impact Bt had on predators and parasites, and reduced soil fertility because of the impacts of Bt crop residues plowed into the ground. These are farmers who are already risk-prone, and Bt crops would likely increase that risk.
In the Third World there will typically be more sexually compatible wild relatives of crops present, making pollen transfer to weed populations of insecticidal properties, virus resistance, and other genetically engineered traits more likely. Genetic exchange between crops and their wild relatives is common in traditional agroecosystems and transgenic crops are bound to frequently encounter sexually compatible plant relatives, therefore the potential for "genetic pollution" in such settings is inevitable.
There is potential for vector recombination to generate new virulent strains of viruses, especially in transgenic plants engineered for viral resistance with viral genes. In plants containing coat protein genes, there is a possibility that such genes will be taken up by unrelated viruses infecting the plant. In such situations, the foreign gene changes the coat structure of the viruses and may confer properties such as changed method of transmission between plants. The second potential risk is that recombination between RNA virus and a viral RNA inside the transgenic crop could produce a new pathogen leading to more severe disease problems. Some researchers have shown that recombination occurs in transgenic plants and that under certain conditions it produces a new viral strain with altered host range. Crop losses caused by new viral pathogens could have a more significant impact on the livelihoods of poor farmers than they would for wealthier farmers who have ample resources to survive poor harvests.
Peter M. Rosset,
Diego Duguelay No. 38, Casa Tucan
Colonia El Cerillo
29220 San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
Tel/fax: +52-9-6789708
eFax: +1-(253)-295-5257 (USA fax number which
automatically bounces to me at no extra charge)
rosset@foodfirst.org
rosset@portalmundomaya.net
--------------------------------------------------------------
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-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 10:03 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Priority setting
As a professor in a major Land-Grant University (Michigan State University), I am convinced that a vibrant private sector is essential for rural development. The private sector focuses on economic issues and is usually more efficient than the public sector, while the public sector must look at development in the light of equity, growth and justice. A strong private sector along with a strong public sector is the key to rural development.
The participation of the private sector in agricultural research is not bad. This debate reminds me of the discussion that ensued after the cytoplasmic male sterility system (CMS) was patented on July 10, 1956. Many people thought this patent would stop the technical progress and cooperation in the agricultural research arena. In November 1956 the American Society of Agronomy passed a resolution stating that the CMS patent dealt a serious blow to the "principle of interchange of information and material, and seriously jeopardizes the future continuation of such cooperative endeavor".
An important "key" to the biotechnology debate rests with the priority
setting process used by both the public and private sectors. The priority
setting process must be developed by representatives of civil society;
farmers, consumers, business persons, extension and research, and other
stakeholders. The Michigan Extension Service has developed a program which
organizes self-directed work teams which look at what is needed for Michigan
rural (and urban) development. An article in the Journal of Extension gives
an overview of this program.
If biotechnology is to help the poor of this world, biotechnologists must be
connected to civil society. (In some cases, it may be determined that
biotechnology is not appropriate.) The example of self-directed work teams
is one example of such a connection. Today, because of the difficulty of
reducing poverty around the world, we need to be building coalitions which
work together to address the complex problems and challenges of poverty.
Russ Freed
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-----Original Message-----
My name is Tamala Kambikambi and I am an agronomist, lecturing
at the University of Zambia, where I am also the assistant dean in
charge of undergraduate studies in the Faculty of Agricultural
Sciences.
I have followed part of the discussions on the current topic with
keen interest and felt that I need to make some contributions
especially since I come from one of the regions under discussion.
The answer to that question is not simple and straight forward
because the relationship between hunger and food security is also
neither simple, nor linear - at least not in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Scientifically, there is a well defined relationship between
agricultural productivity and the inputs that are part of the
production system. This, however, is not the case for most
smallholder farmers of SSA where productivity is a function of a
myriad of factors other than the inputs of "improved seed" that is
tolerant to a number of biotic and abiotic adverse conditions,
fertilizers, chemicals etc. Their productivity is a function of a lot
more than than - including socio-cultural factors.
Therefore, as I look at this new technology, one question I ask
myself as an African is that if we failed to harness the benefits of
the green revolution - which was a much less problematic
technology - what hope do we have with agricultural biotechnology?
Fortunately, I am an optimist and in fact strongly believe that that
is all the more reason we should ensure that agricultural
biotechnology does not pass us by and leave our region even more
hungry and impoverished. Africa has many problems and these
are varied. Not least is the fact that our ecosystem is more fragile.
Therefore, to me, those technologies that will nurture this fragile
ecosystem - as some agricultural biotechnologies promise to do -
should be encouraged and adapted.
What we should however remember is that agricultural
biotechnology is not a panaceae for our hunger and food insecurity
problems. It is merely one building block in this complex
problem of food insecurity and hunger which may have synergies
with other building blocks. We should therefore not completely
ignore it and be left by the wayside yet again!
Tamala Kambikambi, Zambia
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-----Original Message-----
Michel Ferry [21 November] noted that Thailand has an estimated 24 percent
of its
population undernourished. This is sadly true, and it clearly
reflects how the economy is unavoidably intertwined with food and
hunger. What is happening in such a country as Thailand is that the
majority of the farmers do not grow their crops for their own
consumption any more. Instead they sell their crops to the markets
and in exchange they buy industrial consumer items such as the fridge
and the motorcycle. And that happens to only a few farmers who
own large enough plots of land. In most cases, the farmers remain very
poor and they are under- or mal-nourished because their income is not
sufficient to buy decent food. The earnings from exported rice fall
to the exporting companies and the milling factories, and very little
return to the farmers themselves.
As stated by Prof. Mazoyer in FAO's State of Food and Agriculture 2000,
"World food security, therefore, is not an essentially technical,
environmental or demographic issue in the short term: it is first and
foremost a matter of grossly inadequate means of production of the
world's poorest peasant farmers who cannot meet their food needs. It
is also a matter of insufficient purchasing power of other poor rural
and urban consumers, insofar as the poverty of non-farmers is also a
product of rural poverty and migration from the land."
[http://www.fao.org/news/2000/img/Sofafs-e.pdf]
It is very interesting how the recent advances in biotechnology could
change the equation here. It might be the case eventually that
biotechnology does have a direct role to play in enhancing food
security (by producing flood resistant crops for example). Problems
in developing countries are very complicated and involve a diverse
set of factors. But chief among these must certainly be a political
system that makes it the case for unjust regimes to channel resources
to themselves at the expense of the majority of the population, and
those, in the case of Thailand, allowing an unfair capitalist system
where rice exporters and millers earn the lion's share of income
earned from rice export, while farmers get a pittance.
What must be done, I think, is to keep in mind that politics, economy
and food security go hand in hand and must be tackled together. (The
FAO might have to team up with, say, the UN or the Commission of
Human Rights, for instance.) Biotechnology might be able to find a
super crop that resists draughts, floods, pest attacks and so on. And
that is all for the better. Intellectual property rights and trade
issues aside, what one needs is then an awareness that the technology
alone is only part of the solution. Identification of the problem in
need of biotechnological solution is crucial here. I am against the
idea that one solution can fit all instances. Flood resistant crops may not
be
appropriate for sub-Saharan Africa, but they are crucial in Thailand.
(As far as I know research is being done here to produce a strain of
rice that can survive under water for a long period.) What agency
could then produce biotechnological solutions that are geared toward
specific localities?
Soraj Hongladarom
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-----Original Message-----
I would like to put some questions that I think we all need to reflect on in
this debate. The first set of questions are policy/economic or political in
nature.
To what extent has public sector research not been encroached by the private
sector through contractual agreements? My sense is that many universities in
the developed countries now receive a great deal of contract work from
companies. How has this affected the direction of research?
Is there sufficient trust, and a sound policy environment that makes for
good public/private partnerships around the use of biotechnology?
To what extent would biotechnology entrench large scale farming, and have
negative effects on small-holder schemes and subsistence farming? Is there
merit in doing an international study on the cost/benefit of these impacts?
Have similar studies not been done for crops developed during the Green
Revolution? I know of one study done by Michael Lipton, at the Institute of
Development Studies (IDS) in
Sussex, England.
What is the cost differential between seeds and input cost? I would assume
that like other industries, the seed also comes with a package of other
services, which farmers are almost obliged to enter into?
What is the nature of the contractual agreements between farmers and seed
companies? How does this affect what farmers can and can't do?
How has the recent mergers and acquisitions within the agri-industry
influenced the agricultural industry?
What about european subsidies, indirect subsidies etc, and their influence
on global food prices, and the ability of developing countries to compete in
international markets? Would agri-biotech not perpetuate the current
lopsided
trade in agricultural products, and the price of food?
These are some question which are of interest to me, and I think there is
still room for discussion and development of insight.
Saliem Fakir,
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-----Original Message-----
Public money from the European program Fair and from the Swiss Federal
Institute has been also devoted to the research on the golden rice.
Just saying that big corporations are looking for profit, is not saying
something bad but is just saying evidence.
Fortunately, the viewpoints concerning food security development are much
more numerous and complex than the gross simplification proposed by Stanley
Roberts [22 November]. Fortunately also, we have, as biotechnologists or
non biotechnologists, other solutions than "simply make available whatever
there is" to assess the interest of biotechnology to fight against hunger.
We are not debating on proposing to the market a new brand of detergent.
Michel FERRY
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-----Original Message-----
Hi, I am Saliem Fakir again. I wish to provide an additional point to Peter
Rosset's input [23 November].
I think that the set of assumptions in the way
in which new seed development takes place, is perhaps based on the
assumption of property rights and onwership patterns as they pertain to
Europe or the US. In developing countries, there are different property
right regimes ranging from communal, leasing to freehold tenure. In
addition, if it is communal, the decision making and farm management
processes are very different from freehold tenure systems. At least in the
areas I have visited both in south Africa, and West Africa, decisions on
seed are based on using varieties that, with experience, enable farmers to
minimise crop losses due to weather and pests. Therefore, on-farm genetic
diversity and management of seed varieties in many of these rural areas is
crucial in managing risk. This is a key part of the food security strategy
that African farmers implement. The degree to which this is taken into
account in modern agricultural research funded by the private sector is open
to question.
In fact, ironically, paternalistic traditions of agricultural
research, such as that originally conducted by South Africa agricultural
research
institutions, meant that scientific institutions dominated decisions
concerning
which crops to focus on, and which crops to subject to genetic improvements.
Only in the last 5 years, and in fact as a result of political changes in
South Africa, South African agricultural researchers have for the first time
focused on
participatory research methods, because the assumptions that they worked for
were only applicable to white commercial farmers who had tracts of land
ranging from 100 hectares to 1000's of hectares. The management and
operational mode is very different to that of small scale farmers, who are
either subsistence or small-scale in nature. This shift demonstrates the
importance of economic status, cultural perspectives and the nature of
property
rights as it influences on farm decision making etc. For instance it is easy
for the USA Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suggest to US farmers
to set aside land for 'refuge', but
for resource-poor farmers, who either don't own land, or barely have land to
cultivate crops for one season, such recommendations hold no water.
Peter Rosset [23 November] is therefore right, that the risk premium that
small farmers may have to
carry is far greater. Remember also that commercial farmers in developed
countries have the ability to take out insurance or, in general, their
governments are more willing to bail them out of a crisis. They also have
money to take companies to court, so the risk profile, and risk management
strategies of resource-poor farmers is very different from subsidised, and
large scale commercial farmers.
Somebody mentioned the failure of the Green Revolution in Africa, or at
least it did not take off. [Tamala Kambikambi wrote today [23 November] that
Africa had failed to harness the benefits of the green
revolution...Moderator]. Perhaps we need to look at this. I am also not
convinced that if you do not deal with the underlying causes of food
insecurity, you can ever deal with the problems of malnutrition and famine,
no matter how much more surplus food one generates.
Saliem Fakir,
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-----Original Message-----
Thanks to Saliem Fakir for his excellent input [23 November]. I wish to
enlarge further.
Because peasant farmers have historically been displaced into marginal zones
characterized by broken terrain, slopes, irregular rainfall, little
irrigation, and/or low soil fertility; and because they are poor and are
victimized by pervasive anti-poor and anti-small farmer biases in national
and global economic policies, their agriculture is best characterized as
complex, diverse and risk prone.
In order to survive under such circumstances, and to improve their standard
of living, they must be able to tailor agricultural technologies to their
variable but unique circumstances, in terms of local climate, topography,
soils, biodiversity, cropping systems, market insertion, resources, etc. For
this reason, such farmers have over millennia evolved complex farming and
livelihood systems which balance risks -- of drought, of market failure, of
pests, etc. -- with factors such as labor needs versus availability,
investment needed, nutritional needs, seasonal variability, etc. Typically,
their cropping systems involve multiple annual and perennial crops, animals,
fodder, even fish, and a variety of foraged wild products.
Such farmers have rarely benefited from 'top down' formal institution
research and 'green revolution' technologies. Any new strategy to truly
address productivity and poverty concerns will have to meet their needs for
multiple suitable varieties. Peasant farmers typically plant several
different varieties on their land, tailoring their choice to the
characteristics of each patch, whether it has good drainage or bad, is more
or less fertile then the rest, etc. However, such varieties cannot be easily
developed with current research and extension structures and methods - the
same structures that biotech proponents use for genetically engineered
varieties.
Formal research methods are not able to handle the vast complexity of
physical and socio-economic conditions poor farmers face. This stems from
the discrepancy between hierarchical research and extension systems, which
value monocultural 'yield' above all else, and complex rural realities. The
result of the mismatch is that numerous variables important to farmers have
to be reduced in order to produce new technologies. Measured in a few
variables, new seeds are perceived by researchers to be better than old
ones, who are puzzled when farmers fail to adopt them widely.
In reality, seeds have multiple characteristics that cannot be captured by a
single yield measure, as important as this measure may be, and farmers have
multiple site-specific requirements for their seeds, not just controlled
condition high-yields. These interconnections stand in direct contrast to
formal breeding procedures where varieties are selected individually for
discrete traits, then crossed to combine these individual traits.
Given such conditions, the inescapable conclusion is that a different
approach, participatory breeding led by organized farmers, which takes into
account the multiple characteristics of both seed varieties and farmers, is
essential. Miracle seeds will not just be developed in laboratories and on
research stations and then effortlessly distributed to farmers. Yet genetic
engineering is the very antithesis of participatory, farmer-led research.
Proponents of genetically engineered varieties are repeating the very 'top
down' errors which led first generation green revolution crop varieties to
have low adoption rates among poorer farmers.
Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D., Co-Director
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-----Original Message-----
I want to return to the question of constraints. That is, is food
production by poor farmers constrained by genotypes, or by other
factors? This is crucial to judging the potential usefulness of
transgenics.
Our research indicates that poorer third world food producers
demonstrate lagging productivity not because they lack 'miracle'
seeds that contain their own insecticide or tolerate massive doses of
herbicide, but because they have been displaced onto marginal,
rain-fed lands, and face structures and macroeconomic policies that
are increasingly inimical to food production by small farmers. When
development banks are privatized by structural adjustment (SAPs),
credit is withdrawn from small farmers. When SAPs cancel subsidies
for inputs, small farmers stop using them. When price supports end,
and domestic markets are opened to surplus food dumped by Northern
countries, prices drop and local food production becomes
unprofitable. When state marketing agencies for staple foods are
replaced by private traders, who prefer cheap imports or buying from
large wealthy farmers, small farmers find there are no longer any
buyers for what they produce. In the end, they have no economic
incentive to produce for other than auto-consumption.
These then, are the true causes of low productivity. In fact, in many parts
of the third
world, especially in Africa, farmers today produce far less then they
could with presently available know-how and technology, because there
is no incentive for them to do so--there are only low prices and few
buyers. No new seed, good or bad, can change that, and thus it is
extremely unlikely that, in the absence of urgently need structural
changes in access to land and in agricultural and trade policies,
genetic engineering could make any dent in food production by the
world's poorer farmers.
When seen in this light, it should be clear that genetic engineering
is tangential at best to the conditions and needs of the farmers we
are told it will help - it in no way addresses the principal
constraints they face.
Peter M. Rosset, Ph.D.
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Professor, International Agronomy
384C Plant and Soil Sciences Bldg
Michigan State University, USA
517-355-2383517-353-3955 (fax)
freed@pilot.msu.edu
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 10:10 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Sub-Saharan Africa
tkambikambi@agric.unza.zm
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 10:22 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Economic problems in general
Department of Philosophy
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Tel. (+662) 218-4756 Fax. (+662) 218-4867
Science in Thai Culture Project: http://www.stc.arts.chula.ac.th/
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 10:35 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Private industry and the poorer countries
Is there merit in an international strategy for biotechnology that is
supported by public sector institutions ? Research that focuses on
alleviating povery and malnutrition. And, is this not what should be tabled
or discussed at the next World Food Summit?
head of the World Conservation
Union Country Office in South Africa.
sfakir@icon.co.za
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 11:21 AM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Two solutions on route to food security
Directeur scientifique
Station de Recherche sur le Palmier Dattier
et les Systèmes de Production en Zones Arides
Apartado 996
03201 ELCHE
Espagne
tél: 34.965421551
fax: 34.965423706
e-mail: m.ferry@wanadoo.es
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 2:12 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Environmental risks are important for.....
head of the World Conservation
Union Country Office in South Africa.
sfakir@icon.co.za
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 5:29 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: Environmental risks are important for.....
Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy
398 60th Street
Oakland, California 94618 USA
tel: +1-(510)-654-4400 x224 fax: +1-(510)-654-4551
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Office in Mexico:
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29220 San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico
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automatically bounces to me at no extra charge)
rosset@foodfirst.org
rosset@portalmundomaya.net
Note: Please do not send to both email addresses, as both are
checked with same frequency.
website: http://www.foodfirst.org
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Thursday, November 23, 2000 5:35 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: What are the causes of lagging productivity ?
rosset@foodfirst.org
rosset@portalmundomaya.net