On the same
day it became public knowledge that Germany has a messed-up energy policy
and will become a net grain importer because of a poor grain harvest, the
world's largest chemical company, BASF in Ludwigshafen, announced two far-reaching
decisions: namely, that research on green genetic engineering in Germany would
be relocated to the U.S. and – what is often overlooked – the
company will cease pursuing any projects for the German or European market.
The move, it said, was a reaction to the lack of acceptance of agricultural
biotechnology in many parts of Europe.
The bombshell announced the end of a process in plant breeding that had been
insidiously developing for some years. The signal is clear: the research goes
on, just not here in Germany and not for us. Plant research at universities
and other public institutions has changed: the scientists involved have either
turned to less contentious areas or they have emigrated, predominantly to
the Anglo-Saxon countries. These decisions derive from the prevailing climate
of opinion in our country and are only too easy to understand: panic and prejudice
here nip in the bud any rational debate about the pros and cons of green genetic
engineering (GM crops and foods). While doomsayers like Percy Schmeisser,
Vendana Shiva and, more recently, a certain Don Huber, tour through the German
countryside and rip off a credulous public with abstruse theories about the
supposedly monstrous dangers of biotechnology, scientists have to spend their
time defending reality from crazy conspiracy theorists from obscure 'project
workshops’. Destruction of field trials, including using serious violence
against guards hired to protect those approved trials from vandalism, is also
on the agenda (that is, if the same eco-terrorists are not too busy destroying
the rail tracks which serve to take nuclear waste to the designated storage
plant in the Wendland [1]).
Those actually responsible for this policy shamefully cower in terror before
the green zeitgeist and let research take the strain. The public
is more concerned with the alleged misconduct of the Federal President, whose
behaviour is hardly different from the other 95% of bargain hunters in our
society. They ignore the fact that we are skating on very thin ice: we in
Europe are stuck because of our immense national debts – for which the
give-away policies of recent decades are especially responsible – and
not only with respect to the massive crisis in our financial systems: we are
totally unprepared to deal with the emerging global problems of climate change,
global population growth and energy shortages.
To solve these problems, we need strong agricultural research, in all areas
and at all levels. This is especially true for issues for which conventional
plant breeding offers no readily accessible solutions; that is where we need
genetic engineering, both in the private and public sectors. In the longer
term our crops are unreliable: they are not adapted to the long, dry or hot
periods to be expected in future in our region. The bad red-green (2) decisions
promoting a biogas boom and cultivation of plants for “bio-fuel"
have exacerbated the situation because their clean energy balances are rather
negative, with unpredictable consequences for the climate. So what happens
instead? The public is lulled by promises of an allegedly ecological organic
agriculture which is based on erroneous calculations while it is increasingly
clear that such products are no better, or even safer, than conventional agriculture.
And their production demands much more land than we actually have at our disposal.
Conclusion: Only after the last fertilizer plant has closed and the last farm
has been forcibly converted to "organic", will you notice that hunger
is not fun. But by then Jürgen Trittin (3) will be comfortably settled
Tuscany and Claudia Roth (4) will have returned to her home planet.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Jacobsen is a professor of molecular genetics
at the Institute of Plant Genetics at the Leibniz University of Hanover. He
publishes regularly in NovoArgumente.
1. Gorleben in the Wendland is the site of a nuclear waste storage facility
in eastern Lower Saxony.
2. Refers to the left-green political alliances in German politics.
3. A German Green
politician. He was Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation
and Nuclear Safety from 1998 to 2005.
4. Claudia Benedikta Roth is a Green Party politician in Germany and erstwhile
press spokesperson for the Greens in the Bundestag.
Source:
Hans-Jörg Jacobsen (18.01.2012). BASF und Gentechnik: Nix wie weg!
Novo Argumente (http://www.novo-argumente.com/magazin.php/novo_notizen/artikel/0001048)
Translated from the original and reproduced here with the permission of
the author.
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