Genetically Modified Crops are The Future We Must Embrace

In the onset of a new system, persons who have benefited from the older systems often vehemently oppose change.
 
While this assertion by Niccolo Machiavelli is almost trite, we still painfully await a change of heart by our policy makers. This declaration applies to all fields, where the adoption of genetically modified (GMO) crops is not an exception.

While this assertion by Niccolo Machiavelli is almost trite, we still painfully await a change of heart by our policy makers. This declaration applies to all fields, where the adoption of genetically modified (GMO) crops is not an exception.

This declaration applies to all fields, where the adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops is not an exception.

In this somewhat hot topic, it may not always be clear what constitutes the ‘old system’. This is especially so if we are so drowned in the old that we have discounted any and therefore all benefits accruable from foresight.

The old ways include but are not limited to waiting for fertilizer from the Government of Kenya in the manner we are accustomed to, coupled with the expected substitution of DAP with NPK (as seen recently in Eldoret) by policymakers who know these as being only labels (all due respect to the dutiful storekeepers).

The mental conflict between keeping some seed from last December for planting or quenching the pangs of hunger that are promptly at our door. Quite commonplace.

In Kenya only have we defrauded Agriculture of its globally affirmed position at the forefront in setting the pace for any development.

With the greater chunk of our disposable income now financing our food and the Government colluding to be ignorant of this, our debts have soared higher than our ambitions.

 Lucky for the majority of we Kenyans who care less about where the national budget is headed provided our salaries ‘reflect’ in good time, we don’t have sleepless nights.

This overdue insomnia will set in as soon as all insufficiently informed farmers have cooperatively acidified all soils with ineffective fertilizer and the cost of your ugali is thrice that of Chapati, so to speak.

Meanwhile, USA and China, countries that have long adopted GM crops, are feeding their livestock to the fill with 40% of the maize they produce. Opponents of GM crops cite discretion as being their motivator owing to the purported overbearing risk associated with GMO crops in the past.