Scientists Map the Wheat Gene: But It Won't Stop Millions From Starving To Death

Will There Be More Wheat To Eat?

There are almost 5 million acres of the globe reserved for the production of wheat. Wheat is the world's most important food crop and has been grown by humans for thousands of years.  Some experts consider the high yield plant as one of the main reasons for the end of the hunter gatherer. Scientists have now sequenced the wheat genome as they once did the human gene.  This is being lauded as a major breakthrough as  crop breeders will have a road map or a wheat atlas that they can study to determine the best strain possible; which strain is the most resilient and gives the highest yield.  Which one is the most resistant to drought or disease.

According to reports, the information will be posted on the internet so all interested parties will be able to study them. The world demand for food is estimated to grow 50% over the next 20 years as world population increases and the discovery, it will be claimed, will go a long way to eliminating world hunger.  Scientific advances in everything from food production to medical research should be welcomed.  But all the technological innovations developed over the years have not ended world hunger, it is little to do with population.  Millions of children die every year from hunger that is not caused by our inability to produce enough food for them to eat.  Millions die from diseases that we learned to cure long ago.  The reason for this catastrophe has nothing to do with the lack of technology or resources. It is a by product of the economic system in which we live.  Most people die from starvation and disease simply because the resources that can prevent them are denied them; there is no profit or little profit in it.  Most water borne diseases are the product of the lack of social infrastructure, including medical assistance, drugs and other great products of social Labor.

Capitalism causes this, it can't prevent it

There is much controversy over GM food production and whether or not it is environmentally destructive etc.  People are weary of cloning and other such scientific meddling. But  science, the study of nature and the material world cannot be separated from society.  The study of our material world is not independent of class influence.  And that is the major issue with such advances like the sequencing of the wheat genome.  Food production is a business. The means by which we produce food, distribute food and study the biology of food crops, is done under the direction of the capitalist class and in their interest. Food production must be profitable. 

Huge amounts of productive land is used to produce soy for the feeding of cattle for the markets of the developed world, particularly Western Europe and the U.S. that consumes huge amounts of beef and are encouraged to do so by the same folks that control the production of soy and wheat. It takes about 75 times more water to produce a pound of beef than it does to produce a pound of wheat.  According to the OECD, about 70% of the world's water goes to irrigation as one billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion are denied the necessary sanitation that would prevent most child deaths. In California, one fifth of the state's power is used for watering Southern California.

The issue is not technology in itself.  We should not follow the lead of the Luddites and smash the machines. The issue for us is the ownership and control of the production process, all aspects of it, including our own Labor time, whether it be wheat, beef or transportation. And I can't help leaving us (I know I have before but you can't put it any plainer)  to ponder Marx's dead on statement about goal of the Labor process under capitalism when he wrote:

“A schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.”