Intellectual property rights might exacerbate world hunger!

There are an estimated 200 million hungry children in the world now, and most of them lived in squalid conditions in countries that are inundated with floods, drought and man made war. Their sustenance is being partially supported by world food aids from developed nations. But as these poor malnourished children numbers are increasing at an ever alarming rate, the availability of food aids is decreasing due largely to pilferage from organized corrupted groups operating with or without the knowledge of local authorities. So what can be done to alleviate the situation? What about those wonder foods created by biotechnology that the developed countries have been espousing?

True, there have been much progress in the development of genetically modified (GM) strains of corn, wheat and rice but there has been a great fear from the under developed countries that widespread cultivation of these wonder crops might shackled them to the patronages of companies who have made the GM possible. The reason is that GM species of food crop comes with intellectual property rights. The patents belonged to the companies, most of which are giants from the west. Developing countries would not like to be chained to their necks. Could they not develop their own varieties, even though they might not be as good as the GM species? But when you are poor, and in need of aids, there is no resource to develop it on your own and receiving aids is the only solution.

It does look as if the developed countries are just biding their time with their GM programs. They know that sooner or later, the poor and the destitute will have to plant these GM species. What not when the world’s weather pattern is rapidly changing with global warming. Freak weather report is almost as frequent as the local scandals, and mankind just can’t do anything about it in the short term. So feeding the world will become a big task and the only way is to plant better crops, with or without the blessings of the patent holders. Will a time come when the GM patent holders have to give away their properties just to avert world hunger and in somebody’s courtyard? Certainly not by any measure! So it would be good to assume that intellectual property rights will exacerbate world hunger instead of its stated intention of helping mankind to progress.

December 10, 2009.