Estimados:

Creo este nuevo tema, pues se trata de otro asunto a debatir sobre el ingreso de transgénicos al Perú.

Voy a partir con un reciente intercambio de correos entre Luis De Stefano Beltrán, Ph.D, yo y otras personas que estaban en la lista del correo enviado. Lamentablemente el artículo inicial está in inglés. (Las frases resaltadas fueron destacadas por el Luis De Stefano Beltrán, Ph.D):

Developing world's food crisis seen as ripple effect of over-regulation

By Benjamin Mann

The dramatic rise in global food prices was high on the agenda of the 2011 World Economic Forum on Africa, held from May 4–6 in Cape Town, South Africa. According to a leading Catholic economist, excessive government regulations are to blame for the rise in prices. A complex combination of factors – including natural disasters and higher oil prices, as well as a rising standard of living in countries like China, India and Brazil – have made food less affordable in recent months. The United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization has warned that the “food price shock” could have devastating effects upon the world's poorest people.

At meetings in Cape Town, South Africa this week, African leaders discussed a “road map” to help the continent cope with rising prices through market-based approaches that would encourage local agriculture. Some factors behind higher food prices, such as natural disasters, cannot be controlled. But Dr. Samuel Gregg, an economist at Michigan-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, said other factors – especially agricultural subsidies and the manipulation of oil supplies – were preventing poorer countries from bringing their productive capacities to bear in the global market.

The result, he told EWTN News on May 6, is an under-supply of food, and higher prices.

“All the subsidies that go into agriculture – through things like import taxes and tariffs, as well as direct subsidies – have the paradoxical effect of reducing the incentive for investment in agriculture in developing countries,” Gregg observed.

Without the ability to sell their products at competitive prices on the global market, these countries end up producing less food, and attracting fewer investors.

“They end up saying, 'We can't compete because of subsidies in the European Union and the United States.' Consequently, the supply of food starts to be reduced, because there isn't the incentive for agricultural investment.”

“This effort to protect American and European farmers has the unintended consequence of reducing the supply of agricultural products from other people.”

He said farm subsidies, going mainly to large corporations rather than individual growers, were a “very good example” of how “a government program can have a completely unintended negative effect” on a critical area of the world economy.

If the barriers to competition were lifted, Gregg said, developing countries could attract more investment and increase their own productive capacities, to cope with global demand and bring food prices down. But agricultural subsidies have the backing of powerful interest groups, and are often perceived as vital to the national interest. Gregg also holds oil-exporting nations of OPEC responsible for high fuel prices that translate into more expensive food.

“The energy sector of the economy is not a free market – it's a cartel,” he stated. “That's something to keep in mind with all discussion about energy prices. This is why we worry about what OPEC is going to set as the price for gas, or for the production of barrels of oil.”

“It's not the market that is controlling the price, for the most part. Generally speaking, it's a cartel – which means that OPEC and other oil-producing countries introduce a whole range of price-distortions into the energy sector, resulting in higher prices.”

Oil prices, he said, “don't reflect the true state of supply and demand.” Rather, Gregg said, they tend to reflect the will of countries exporting oil, and the inefficiency of frequently nationalized oil production. Elsewhere, government regulations surrounding the refinement of oil into gas also play a role in raising prices, when refining capacity fails to keep pace with crude oil supply.

“There's plenty of oil,” Gregg stated. “The problem is, there's a disparity between supply and demand.” Meanwhile, this imbalance in the oil market has a ripple effect. “Just as energy prices go up,” he explained, “so do food costs.”

Another obstacle to meeting rising demand for food may come from ideological opposition to genetically-modified crops.

“There are all sorts of restrictions in place around the world, upon the development of genetically modified food,” Gregg noted. Genetic modification is highly controversial, and skeptics worry such crops could harm local ecosystems or human health. But Gregg said that these concerns had to be weighed against the world's urgent food needs, given that genetic modification could enable crops to be grown “in conditions where they might not otherwise be able to be produced.”

Many of these crops are also designed to resist natural occurrences – such as droughts, floods, and disease – that destabilize food prices.

“There's no question that if more countries were enabled by law to engage in genetically modified agriculture, the supply of food would go up, and prices would come down,” he observed.

Gregg's advocacy of what he called a “true free market in agriculture,” geared toward attracting investment in the developing world, reflects priorities that Pope Benedict XVI outlined in his 2008 encyclical “Caritas in Veritate.”

In that encyclical, the Pope said that “the problem of food insecurity” had to be addressed by “eliminating the structural causes that give rise to it, and promoting the agricultural development of poorer countries.”

“This can be done,” the Pope wrote, “by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology.”

Pope Benedict stated said the developing world's most urgent need in this area was “a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food.”

Gregg believes a general draw-down of government involvement in agriculture, as well as energy, would allow these kinds of economic institutions to develop locally and compete globally.

The result would be a boost in developing countries' food production capacity, and more affordable food for the world.

“Obviously you need some kind of regulatory framework,” Gregg said.“But if it were a less onerous regulatory framework, and different groups weren't trying to influence the process for political and ideological reasons, I think you'd find that the price of food – and the price of energy – would fall.”

Read more: http://ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/Wo...#ixzz1LtZ02rPm

Luis De Stefano Beltrán, Ph.D.
Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
Av Honorio Delgado 430
Lima 31, Perú
E-mail: luis.destefano@upch.pe
Skype: ludes1982

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
- Groucho Marx

Temas similares:

• Artículo: Pleno del Congreso aprobó moratoria de 10 años a ingreso y producción de transgénicos
• Artículo: Ejecutivo observó ley que declara moratoria de diez años para ingreso de transgénicos
• Artículo: Pleno del Congreso aprobó moratoria de diez años para el ingreso de transgénicos
• Ideas y propuestas para trabajar durante la moratoria a los OGM's en el Perú
• Ministro de Agricultura espera que Congreso apruebe esta semana Ley de Aguas

jajajaja esta buena la comparacion Bruno, me gusta el comentario pero no pensemos de ese modo, porque los transgenicos yaaaa hace mucho tiempo que se estan utilizando y en referencia a la agricultura y se siembran y se cosechan millones de has. con semillas manipuladas geneticamente.
No se trata tampoco de magia,no, sino que hoy en dia gracias al mejor conocimiento de los genes, y de los mapas geneticos que podemos descifrar y entender,tenemos la posibilidad de transferir caracteres que sean utiles de una especie a otra.
Cuando decimos y es normal esta reaccion: Ahhh como vamos a transferir un gen de un animal a un vegetal o viceversa!!!! Pues se sabe que no existe mucha diferencia entre la composicion genetica de animales, vegetales y el hombre; es minina la diferencia, por algo la vida tubo un origen comun.
Tal vez parezca magico, pero por ejemplo en Argentina, con los productos transgenicos de maiz y soya, este pais ha logrado duplicar la produccion de estos alimentos.
Brasil con el EMBRAPA, tiene mucha gente preparada en estos temas y en unos anos mas adelante sera el primer productor de trigo en el mundo...porque tienen un trigo transgenico que soporta climas tropicales.
Acaso nuestro deseo como peruanos no seria ser autosuficientes en alimentos??? no nos gustaria que el precio del pan baje y este al alcance de todas las mesas??? Acaso no nos gustaria autoabastecernos de trigo, para que ese dinero que se paga por comprarlo se utilice mas en Educacion o en Salud???
Podemos, Bruno, podemos....tenemos tierras no aptas para la agricultura tradicional, dependiente de las lluvias,del clima y otros factores, pero un dia podremos disponer de semillas transgenicas que originen plantas que soporten estas caracteristicas que impiden que hoy en dia podamos cultivar mas areas.
Tu como crees que el ichu o paja de las alturas soporta esas temperaturas bajas y esas heladas??? debe tener un gen que hace que esta planta soporte ese clima... por lo tanto ya vislumbramos una luz que nos puede abrir esa posibilidad.
No podemos seguir con algunos comentarios algo informales...como cuando leo la respuesta de un Sr..Consultor Agrario. a mi comentario en el que dije...Posiblemente Buda ya comia transgenicos hace 2,500 anos atras.. y este senor dice...Ahhhh claro seguro que Buda le metia genes a sus alimentos.....no pues no puede ser..me imagino debe ser un profesional para ser consultor..asi no llegamos a una conversacion seria...y asi cosas por el estilo.
Gracias Bruno por tu enorme interes en el tema, mas adelante recogeras los frutos de tu preocupacion que merece el reconocimiento en especial de la comunidad agraria peruana...