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46. Golden Rice – a food fight to enhance the unsustainable monarch of mega-crops

E. Small

Published 2014 in Biodiversity

ABSTRACT

All major cultivated crops contribute to the ‘ecological footprint’ of human activity that robs biodiversity of habitat. However, only about a dozen of the leading crops (here termed ‘mega-crops’) have provided the food that has permitted the world population to expand to 7 billion. These have become indispensable to the maintenance of the current food supply, but are deleterious to biodiversity in important respects. They are also so nutritionally limited (most produce starch and not much else) that their overconsumption is harmful. Indeed, excessive dependence on the leading carbohydrate crop staples by poor people is the leading cause of world hunger. To address malnutrition, attempts are underway to genetically engineer the principal crops so that they will produce vitamins and essential minerals that they currently cannot supply adequately. Regrettably, this would increase dependency on these staples, whereas promoting the growth and consumption of a wider array of foods would be more beneficial for both humans and biodiversity. The previous 45 articles of this series emphasised relatively poorly known but promising crops, which at least in some ways are biodiversity-compatible. By contrast, this contribution examines Rice, the world’s most valuable crop, a staple of over half of humanity, supplying a remarkable 21% of human food energy. Rice constitutes the premier example of how we have become over-dependent on a single food source to the detriment of ourselves and the ecology of the world. This contribution examines a dispute over the merits of Golden Rice, a genetically engineered form with improved nutritional properties. Golden Rice is regarded as the most controversial and instructive case of how biotechnological advances in food production need to be evaluated in the broad context of long-term societal and ecological outcomes, not just for narrow, short-term gains. The thesis advanced here is that while Rice is indeed an admirable cereal, too much of this good thing is a bad thing, and sustainable production of other crops should be emphasised. This presentation sequentially reviews (1) key background considerations for evaluation of the problems associated with continuing to expand human reliance on dominant crops like Rice at the cost of investing in alternative sustainable crops; (2) the contentious difficulties associated with Golden Rice; and (3) strategies to reduce human reliance on mega-crops like Rice. One of these strategies is to reduce consumption of mega-crop-based obesogenic foods while favouring a biodiversity-rich diet. Paradoxically, as will be pointed out, eating a much wider representation of our fellow species can be good for them.

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