Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture

http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=485

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ETC Group Headquarters, 1 Nicholas Street, Suite 200 B, Ottawa, ON Canada K1N 7B7

Date: November 23, 2004

ETC group, formerly RAFI - the Rural Advancement Foundation International - encourages wide dissemination of our publications by any means. We request only that the author, ETC group, and our web site (http://www.etcgroup.org) be cited as the source of the information.

Issue: Nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules (a nanometer [nm] is one-billionth of a meter), is rapidly converging with biotech and information technology to radically change food and agricultural systems. Over the next two decades, the impacts of nano-scale convergence on farmers and food will exceed that of farm mechanisation or of the Green Revolution. Converging technologies could reinvigorate the battered agrochemical and agbiotech industries, igniting a still more intense debate – this time over "atomically-modified" foods. No government has developed a regulatory regime that addresses the nano-scale or the societal impacts of the invisibly small. A handful of food and nutrition products containing invisible and unregulated nano-scale additives are already commercially available. Likewise, a number of pesticides formulated at the nano-scale are on the market and have been released in the environment.

Impact: From soil to supper, nanotechnology will not only change how every step of the food chain operates but it will also change who is involved. At stake is the world’s $3 trillion food retail market, agricultural export markets valued at $544 billion, the livelihoods of some 2.6 billion farming people and the well-being of the rest of us who depend upon farmers for our daily bread.[1] Nanotech has profound implications for farmers (and fisher people and pastoralists) and for food sovereignty worldwide. Agriculture may also be the proving ground for technologies that can be adapted for surveillance, social control and biowarfare.

Policies: The GM (genetically modified) food debate not only failed to address environmental and health concerns, it disastrously overlooked the ownership and control issues. How society will be affected and who will benefit are critical concerns. Because nanotech involves all matter, nano patents can have profound impacts on the entire food system and all sectors of the economy. Synthetic biology and nano-materials will dramatically transform the demand for agricultural raw materials required by processors. Nano-products came to market – and more are coming – in the absence of regulation and societal debate. The merger of nanotech and biotech has unknown consequences for health, biodiversity and the environment. Governments and opinion-makers are running 8-10 years behind society’s need for information, public debate and policies.

Recommendations: By allowing nanotech products to come to market in the absence of public debate and regulatory oversight, governments, agribusiness and scientific institutions have already jeopardised the potential benefits of nano-scale technologies. First and foremost, society – including farmers, civil society organisations and social movements – must engage in a wide debate about nanotechnology and its multiple economic, health and environmental implications. In keeping with the Precautionary Principle, all food, feed and beverage products (including nutritional supplements) that incorporate manufactured nanoparticles should be removed from the shelves and new ones prohibited from commercialisation until such time as laboratory protocols and regulatory regimes are in place that take into account the special characteristics of these materials, and until they are shown to be safe. Similarly, nano-scale formulations of agricultural input products such as pesticides, fertilisers and soil treatments should be prohibited from environmental release until a new regulatory regime specifically designed to examine these products finds them safe. Governments must also move immediately to establish a moratorium on lab experimentation with – and the release of – "synthetic biology" materials until society can engage in a thorough analysis of the health, environmental, and socio-economic implications. Any efforts by governments or industry to confine discussions to meetings of experts or to focus debate solely on the health and safety aspects of nano-scale technologies will be a mistake. The broader social and ethical issues must also be addressed.

At the intergovernmental level, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) standing committees and commissions on agriculture, fisheries, forestry and genetic resources should be monitoring and debating the new technologies – with active input and feedback from peasant and small farmers’ organisations. FAO’s Committee on Commodity Problems should immediately begin to examine the socio-economic implications for farmers, food safety and national governments. The UN/FAO Committee on World Food Security should be discussing the implications for agro-terrorism as well as food sovereignty. Additionally, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity should review nanobiotech’s potential impact, especially on biosafety. Other UN agencies such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and International Labour Organization (ILO) should join with FAO to examine the impact of nanotech on the ownership and control of the world’s food supply, commodities and labour. The international community should establish a body dedicated to tracking, evaluating and monitoring new technologies and their products through an International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies (ICENT).

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