Agricultural Biotechnology Reconsidered: Western Narratives and African Alternatives (review)

Ostensibly, this is a book focusing on agricultural biotechnology in Zimbabwe. In many respects, however, it is two books in one. The author is supremely competent to write the one on the colonial and postcolonial injustices that Zimbabwe has suffered, but for the other part—on agricultural biotechnology—he is not. His chapter on Zimbabwe's colonial inheritance is an absolute gem, succinct and to the point. This inheritance down through and including the Lancaster House Agreement is replete with injustices to the indigenous African population, and Noah Zerbe does a magnificent job of identifying and analyzing them.

Though opposed to agricultural biotechnology or biotechnology in general, he unexpectedly comes out in favor of an "appropriate" biotechnology. Zerbe seems not to know that there has been a graduate program in biotechnology at the University of Zimbabwe since 1991. Its graduates have gone on to prestigious molecular biology programs in South Africa or around the world for their Ph.D.s, and many have returned to Zimbabwe where they are engaged in research. He could also have interviewed internationally known molecular biologists in Zimbabwe, including one who did a post-doc with James Watson quite literally at the dawn of biotechnology. To be sure, Zerbe is not alone in simply being unaware of African work on biotechnology.

In 2002, when the NGOs raised such a fuss about the dangers of biotech food for famine relief in Africa, they totally ignored a U.N. Economic Commission for Africa report, "Harnessing Technology for Sustainable Development in Africa" (August 2002), which was almost entirely about the potential for biotechnology in agriculture ("green biotechnology") and in pharmaceuticals ("red biotechnology"). There is an African Journal of Biotechnology in which African scholars from around the continent publish. In July 2000, the Third World Academy of Sciences joined with the national academies of science in Brazil, Mexico, India, China, and the U.S., along with the Royal Society of the U.K., on the safety of transgenic food production. Early in 2006, another report was issued by this group in which other academies of science in Africa and Asia joined in.

Today there is NEPAD Science and Technology Forum and a Biotechnology Advisory Group for the African Union. Obviously, some of these organizations were not in existence when Zerbe turned his dissertation into a book, but enough were to make one wonder why their views on biotechnology were ignored then in favor of non–peer-reviewed activists' publications—and why they are still ignored. Since Zerbe is interested in practical uses for agricultural biotechnology, why did he ignore "Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the Needs of the Poor? The State of Food and Agriculture 2003–2004" (FAO, Rome, 2004), along with the earlier UNDP Human Development Report arguing for the potential of biotechnology to meet the needs of the poor. Over the last few years there have been any number of meetings on biotechnology in Southern Africa and Africa in general with participant scientists from Africa and around the world. There have been so many scientific reports in favor of biotechnology by national and international scientific organizations that one questions the claim that there is controversy on this issue among scientists. Zerbe's insistence that GM crops are not suited to the needs of small third-world farmers is contradicted by the fact that the fastest current growth in GM crop plantings is with smallholders in developing countries (though planting by acreage or hectare is still greater in developed countries) and this group constitutes the largest number of farmers planting transgenic crops (19). Zerbe further maintains that the major GM crops—cotton, maize, and soybeans—are not appropriate to African smallholders. Hybrid maize or corn has become one of the most widely grown crops in Africa. Zerbe's argument is that there is Bt yellow corn while in Southern Africa they eat only white corn (81–82). GM white corn has been grown in South Africa since the...