The Fear over “Frankenfood”

In the middle of the last century, India was in trouble. Following the end of the British Raj, the newly independent country teetered on the edge of mass famines. There were several reasons for that, but prime among them was financial instability, which included a lack of access to credit for farmers, and low yields due to inefficient farming practices and droughts. A rising population and the nutritional needs that came with it meant that even the slightest unforeseen change had the potential to cause a chain reaction that would cost countless lives. 

It wasn’t just India that faced the constant threat of large-scale famine around that time. The agriculture systems of Pakistan, Türkiye and the Philippines, along with many other nations, all were confronted with the very real possibility of falling short on feeding their people. 

Little of that came to pass. In India, agricultural scientists worked closely with government officials, international organizations and farmers to change the way crops were grown. High-yield wheat seeds were introduced, modern farm machines and fertilizers were purchased, and irrigation improved. By the late 1960s these new disease-resistant crops, modern farming techniques and flexible government policies helped stave off famine and grow the Indian economy. Better wheat seeds in Pakistan and Türkiye and better rice varieties in the Philippines helped those places increase food security and usher in the Green Revolution, a global technology transfer that saw the modernization of the agriculture sector expand across the developing world. 

Unfortunately, the challenges did not end there. The Green Revolution of the 1960s accomplished many things, yet it could not foresee the pressures that would be put on the agriculture sector at large because of extreme climate events, challenges in managing a global food supply chain and the economic and political instability that came with those problems. 

But just like the Green Revolution in the 1960s, today again new technologies are being introduced to help farmers weather the storm and make the global food supply more resilient in a world that will desperately need it in the coming years. 

Building better crops 

Since the beginning of farming 12,000 years ago, humans have been looking for better ways to breed crops to make them more resilient and plentiful. This used to mean selective breeding that aimed to keep certain traits in plants (say, a resistance to a particular parasite or a favorability to produce higher yields) while breeding out others (a susceptibility to heat, for example). This was a time-intensive process that relied as much on trial and error as on the environmental circumstances in which the crops were grown. 

Today, this refinement is done in a laboratory. The genetic modification (GM) of crops has the potential to relieve global food shortages. By combining genes from several species, these “super plants” can be bred to grow in harsher climates (reducing the reliance on fertilization) or tolerate chemical herbicides, which would eliminate weeds but leave the crop untouched. 

“GM crops will hopefully produce more yield on less land,” writes the biotechnologist Kaiser Jamil in the UN Chronicle, the United Nations flagship publication. “This may increase the overall productivity and may offer developing countries a means to sustain themselves and reduce worldwide hunger. Ninety percent of the world’s 13.3 million ‘biotech crop farmers’ are from developing countries.” 

Ms. Jamil, who is President of the Third World Organization for Women in Science, added that India is the fourth largest among the 14 “mega-biotech crop” countries and that 5 million farmers in the country are engaged in planting 7.6 million hectares of a strain of cotton which protects itself from insects without requiring pesticide. 

Yet these seeming miracle solutions are not without their pitfalls. As raised in a 2019 edition of the United Nations Frontier Technology Quarterly, if these new genetic technologies are not made available to farmers everywhere, then we may “exacerbate productivity gaps in agriculture, disadvantaging small farmers, especially in developing countries, who cannot access or afford genetically modified seeds.” In a world where demand (and necessity) may call for the exclusive use of GM crops, those that are not producing them are in danger of being left behind. 

There is also the risk GM crops could pose to the environment they are deployed in. Care must be taken that the new plants do not impact the natural biodiversity, such as inadvertently introducing GM traits into non-GM plants, or becoming invasive and overwhelming native plant life. The term “Frankenfood” may conjure images of an unnatural stitching together of two different species, but the concerns are very real. Care must be taken that GM foods do not pose an allergen or toxicity risk, or indeed comprise inferior nutritional content – one problem always at the core of food insecurity. 

Big data & AI 

Over the next few years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) will permeate almost every aspect of daily life, including the agriculture industry. A glut of data is already being put to use in monitoring levels of light, water, weather and waste. As global warming threatens to lower crop yields, harnessing big data’s computing power to monitor everything from identifying forests that suck carbon from the atmosphere to automated robot farms may help protect against the effects of a changing planet. 

Other areas of agriculture are seeing the application of all that data collection. Wearable technology isn’t just for fitness enthusiasts. Some dairies have implemented e-collars to track their animals’ vital signs, as well as robotic milking machines that promise calmer cows that create higher milk outputs. 

For all the wonders and possibilities offered by AI, there remains the same core issue for developing nations: Is the technology cheap enough to be deployed en masse, or will there continue to be costly barriers to entry? As with the development of a unique variety of efficient seed, there also remains the issue of data propriety. Imagine a scenario where a large agriculture corporation has used complex data analysis to discover the most efficient way to grow wheat in warming environments. Farmers with limited means to access this information may be priced out of a solution needed for them to continue to stay in business. 

Precision farming 

Roughly a billion people are employed in the agriculture industry worldwide, most of which are found on “pintsized, fragmented lands” in developing countries, according to the International Center for Agriculture Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). These smallholder farmers are susceptible to climate-related variables that can change quite quickly. 

Enter the practice of precision farming. The days of being able to reliably plant the same crops year after year and expecting similar results are well in the past. A resilient farmer is a well-prepared farmer who can quickly adapt when things change. 

“Precision farming leverages advanced digital tools and breakthroughs in agricultural big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to fast-track value creation for farmers by saving on input costs,” writes Vinay Nangia, ICARDA Research Team Leader in Soil, Water and Agronomy in a blog post for the institute. 

Data from satellites, drones and other sensors can tell farmers exactly how much water and fertilizer to use depending on the conditions. For smallholder farmers, saving essential time and money can mean the difference between being able to grow for another season and seeing the collapse of a livelihood. One of ICARDA’s current pilot projects involves implementing precision farming tools in the agricultural-rich central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in order to increase farmers’ incomes. 

In the first OPEC Fund Quarterly issue of 2022 we reported on several organizations that are implementing precision techniques that farmers in developing countries can use, e.g. via apps containing information on weather data, satellite imagery, the ability to create yield forecasts and what seed varieties work best for a given region and climate. These apps are a perfect example of the potential technology transfer holds for smallholder farmers in helping them navigate a changing environment. 

Innovations often promise a bright future, but the real change depends on the democratization of skills, tools and information. The ease and openness of technology transfer to the developing world will be the litmus test for smallholder farmers – and the vulnerable communities that depend on them for surviv