Does Africa need GM crops?
By Ishbel Matheson in Lusaka On the rolling, fertile plains of Southern Zambia, farmer Barry Coxe surveys his fields of tall cotton. This is harvest-time, and within days, the fluffy cotton heads will be picked and on their way to market. Mr Coxe is one of Zambia’s big commercial farmers – but the cotton crop is equally important to the country’s 200,000 small-scale producers. “If we could use this new genetically-modified cotton, we could push up our crop yields, and so help the poorer families,” Mr Coxe says. “If we don’t embrace the new technology, Africa will be left behind, and we will carry on starving.” Biotech firm visits GM crops can be used to gain better yieldsGenetically-modified cotton is already grown widely in the United States, Argentina and China. Stories of bumper crops, with increased yields of up to 30%, have so impressed Zambian agriculturists, that they invited the US biotechnology giant, Monsanto, to give its first seminar in the capital, Lusaka. “They were very
