[chuckee]

> No one is out there forcing people to switch to GM crops when those seeds become available.

Just like if steroids became legal in sports, no-one would be forcing top athletes to take them. If you want to maintain food sovereignty, you can't ignore market forces.

[ch4s3]

> food sovereignty

This always seems like a really squishy concept. What does culturally appropriate food mean? It seems like an ultra-conservative and condescending concept. Why should people in the global south let a Quixote Belgian farming movement trap them in agrarian poverty?

A nation state a large, and well educated as India could surely develop its own domestic GMO tech and deploy it in a way that their citizens approve of via their democratic system of government. They developed their own pharmaceutical manufacturing industry which is the largest in any developing nation, so why not this? Are GMO seeds any more unnatural than statins or artificial insulin?

[chuckee]

I have no idea what "culturally appropriate food" has to do with this. Food sovereignty means a nation is not dependent on foreign entities for their food supply (or if they are for some elements, e.g. tractors, they can easily find someone else to buy them from). It has nothing to do with culture, and does not prevent India from growing non-local crops - or trading for them.

As for banning (foreign-made) GMOs trapping people in poverty, that's debatable at best. There's considerable evidence that unrestricted free trade hinders economic development [1], by keeping countries from developing their own industries. Every country that has climbed out of poverty so far, has done so without GMOs (granted because they were not widespread at the time, but the same should still be possible today) - and without unrestricted free trade [2].

The comparison with pharmaceuticals is apt. For one, pharmaceuticals don't displace anything, so there is no existing local industry harmed by their import (prior to developing local pharma industry). And if India developed their own GMO industry, you are correct, using those GMOs would not harm their food sovereignty. Of course issues with loss of crop biodiversity and farmers becoming dependent on a single giant (albeit Indian) corporation would remain, but at least viewed on a national level, sovereignty would not be harmed, even if individual farmers would still lose some independence. But at least the entities they became dependent on would be within their democratic reach.

And regarding how natural GMOs vs. pharmaceuticals are - I was not making an appeal to nature, so that is irrelevant. For the sake of argument, lets say they are equally unnatural.

[1] https://fpif.org/kicking_away_the_ladder_the_real_history_of...

[2] "... none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules." - James K. Galbraith, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

[ch4s3]

> I have no idea what "culturally appropriate food" has to do with this.

It's literally part of the initial declaration from the first global forum on food sovereignty. It's their thing, not something I made up.

> As for banning (foreign-made) GMOs trapping people in poverty, that's debatable at best.

That's not what I meant, I was criticizing the food sovereignty movements assumptions about small scale agriculture. Small scale agriculture basically always means poverty, and people rarely choose it freely. India's agricultural policies absolutely trap people in poverty now.

> For one, pharmaceuticals don't displace anything

There's a very large industry of traditional medicine in India that would probably beg to differ. Not that this quibble matters.

> Of course issues with loss of crop biodiversity and farmers becoming dependent on a single giant (albeit Indian) corporation would remain,

There's no reason you could produce a wide variety of slightly modified seeds that are 1 to 1 replacements for what people are growing. You could even spin this out of universities and establish regional seed banks.

> none of the world's most successful trading regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and now mainland China, reached their current status by adopting neoliberal trading rules.

That has nothing to do with banning a technology.