According to a recent critique published in Scientific American magazine, “GM crops are rooted in a colonial-capitalist model of agriculture based on theft of Indigenous land and on exploiting farmers’ and food workers’ labor, women’s bodies, Indigenous knowledge and the web of life itself.” The Alliance for Science was singled out as implicated in this supposed model of exploitation. Yet this political rhetoric is itself problematic, obscuring urgent needs to improve food security and tackle environmental challenges and denying the role of science in solving real-world problems. In this live event, our panel of expert fellows — all from the Global South — address head-on the so-called “agroecology” critique and show how critics of biotechnology risk harming the interests of resource-poor farmers in countries like Bangladesh, Kenya and Ghana by denying them access to new tools.
Speakers include Arif Hossain, CEO and Executive Director of Farming Future Bangladesh (FFB); Patricia Nanteza, AfS associate director of training and founder of Science Stories Africa; and Nassib Mugwanya, doctoral candidate of agricultural and extension Education, North Carolina State University. Joseph Gakpo Opoku, journalist from Ghana, will moderate. Note: Dr. Maywa Montenegro de Wi, an agroecology professor and co-author of the critique, was invited to dialogue but she declined.
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