Why the Lugar-Casey Global Food Security Act will Fail to Curb Hunger

Senate bill sponsored by Senators Lugar and Casey called the Global Food Security Act (S. 384) sailed through committee two weeks ago. Members of the US Working Group agree that the bill presents failed solutions to the global food crisis and misguidedly advocates a leadership role for the United States in implementing failed food strategies in developing countries. Notably, developing nations have not been consulted about the wisdom of the strategies proposed in the bill, much less the farmers and consumers of those developing countries. Our colleagues at FoodFirst developed a Policy Brief, vetted by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis, that demonstrates how science and experience are being ignored by the strategists of the Lugar-Casey bill and why those strategies will fail to a address the global food crisis while exacerbating climate change. In addition, one of the primary strategies put forward in this bill stipulates that foreign assistance for agriculture shall include genetically modified (GM) technologies. This would be significant change in US policy and one that most of the scientists who worked on the UN sponsored IASTAAD Report would not support. In fact, our colleagues at the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report this week that speaks directly to that question. Their report called "Failure to Yield: Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops" shows that the claims of the biotechnology industry, promising better yields since the mid-1990s, do not hold up to scientific scrutiny. "Failure to Yield" documents that the industry has been carrying out gene field trials to increase yields for 20 years without significant results.