The way trade agreements and so called aid and economic policies such as the structural adjustment policies have been formulated with respect to agriculture is such that the diversity of crops and species is to be sacrificed for monocultures for their hard cash that exporting would earn. As seen in the biodiversity section of this web site, diversity is important because of the free services offered by nature, that allow species to survive, resist disease and provide resources for everyone. Reducing genetic diversity is therefore extremely costly. More grain from two or three commodities arrived on national and international markets, but less food was eaten by farm families in the Third World. That is why, as more grain is produced and traded globally, more people go hungry in the Third World.
Wasting resources creates hunger.
By wasting resources through one-dimensional monocultures maintained with intensive external inputs, the new biotechnologies create food insecurity and starvation. And while the next section will describe how food dumping in the recent past has created hunger and poverty that doesn't suggest it has stopped today. In fact, recent protests by farmers in Brazil are an example of the continuing policies under current trade regimes. Simply click on one of them to find out more.