por ALBERTO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/NEWSROOM
Today in Mexico, with the policy and philosophy of the Fourth Transformation, we see the world optimistically because we are precisely in a battle for life that is advancing without a doubt, despite many resistance, thanks to all efforts and as a result of the accumulation of critical knowledge and the participation of many organizations, affirmed the Secretary of the Environment, Víctor M. Toledo.
The 2nd. Meeting of the GLocal Network of Food Sustainability and Dialogue of Knowledge for Latin America and the Caribbean, Toledo Manzur opened it with the keynote: Food sustainability and comprehensive health in question, in which he explained that faced with the dilemma between life policies or death, agro ecology emerges as an alternative to agro-industrial production, based on transgenic crops and the use of agro-toxins such as glyphosate.
“The dialogue of knowledge is the cornerstone through which it tries to promote a science committed to social processes and in defense of peasants and indigenous territories,” he said.
He explained that a large part of the problems we face today in terms of food production and health are the consequence of neoliberal administrations, which have co-opted the critical nature of science for the interests of capitalism in its corporate phase, so that today close to the 70% of the almost eight million scientists in the world are at the service of large corporate companies, and only 30% fit an academic profile.
As an example, he cited the document signed by 110 Nobel laureates in favor of transgenic foods on the grounds that they are harmless and safe, and for the same reason they criticized the actions of the environmental organization Greenpeace. This should lead us to reflect that science “by itself is not necessarily beneficial”, as it may be conditioned by the economic interests of large corporations that for many years have tried to introduce the use of aggressive agrochemicals such as glyphosate and seeds transgenic. He warned that, contrary to what many of these groups have argued: “The environmental and sanitary damage to human health caused by glyphosate, soybeans and transgenic corn are already a public health phenomenon in South American countries,” therefore that another challenge is to recover the critical and conscious character of science.
