Hi-tech crops are bad for the brain

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" Hi-tech crops are bad for the brain "

 

Geoffrey Lean

Environment Correspondent

Independent

April 23, 2000

 

" Miracle " crops, hailed as the answer to global famine, are contributing to

widespread brain impairment in the developing world, a new report concludes. It

says that the high-yielding rice and wheat varieties that brought about the

much-heralded " Green Revolution " are among a range of environmental factors

undermining human intelligence.

 

The study, which looks at environmental threats to human intelligence, is part

of the £15m Global Environmental Change Programme, financed by Britain's

Economic and Social Research Council. It is published tomorrow. It concludes

that a deadly combination of soil erosion, pollution and inadequate diet is

affecting the intelligence of millions of people, with effects ranging from

severe intellectual disabilities to " sub-clinical decline " in whole populations.

 

The Green Revolution crops, introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s,

produce several times as much grain as the traditional varieties they replaced,

and they spread rapidly. They enabled India to double its wheat crop in seven

years, dramatically increasing food supplies and averting widely predicted

famine.

 

But the report says that the new crops, unlike their predecessors, fail to take

up minerals such as iron and zinc from the soil. So even as people consumed more

calories, their intake of these key " micronutrients " fell. " High-yielding Green

Revolution crops were introduced in poorer countries to overcome famine, " the

report says. " But these are now blamed for causing intellectual deficits,

because they do not take up essential micronutrients. " The report is written by

Dr Christopher Williams, a research fellow with the Global Environmental Change

Programme. Using already published UN data he has calculated that 1.5 billion

people ­ one quarter of the earth's population ­ are affected by " Green

Revolution iron deficiency " . He claims the condition impairs the learning

ability of more than half of India's schoolchildren. He concludes that,

eventually, the evolution of the brain could go into reverse as humans develop

more extensive digestive systems to cope with the lack of nutrients ­

sacrificing intelligence in the process.

 

The professor's sources include the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the

United Nations which has compiled evidence that the amount of the metal in

people's diets fell throughout most of the Third World in the 1970s and 1980s,

making iron deficiency the only form of malnutrition to increase over the two

decades. The greatest drops in the intake of iron took place in South and South

East Asia, the very areas where the Green Revolution was most successful. Other

UN figures show that half the world's pregnant women are anaemic, because they

have too little iron, putting both them and their babies at risk. The condition

is thought to be responsible for 200,000 deaths a year. And the World Bank

reckons that deficiencies of iron, iodine, and vitamin A together wipe out some

5 per cent of the GDP of developing countries, a crippling blow to poor

economies.