In a repeat of claims made when he was in office, former environment secretary Owen Paterson will this week accuse environmental organisations of condemning people in the global south to death by campaigning against genetically modified crops.

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On top of this, he added, rice varieties have been bred that can tolerate drought, flood, disease, and saline soils, and in India over 2,000 indigenous rice varieties carry local adaptations that allow them to rests environmental fluctuations, pests and diseases.
 
Countering the argument that golden rice is being held back by well-meaning ‘luddites’ in Europe, Melchett said, “Meanwhile, according to authorities in the Philippines, the so-called Golden Rice supported by Paterson is still years away from commercial use, not because of opposition from local farmers and environmentalists, or Greenpeace, but because in the most recent trial its average yield was lower than that from comparable local varieties already preferred by farmers." 

Mr Paterson’s opponents have, in turn, accused him of taking a neo-colonial attitude in his emotional appeals for GM crops. In response to Paterson’s comments about GM in 2013, Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace, said, “Global hunger is a complex problem, and is as much a matter of economics and politics as of agriculture itself… If the UK government really wants to adopt the slogan "feed the world and save the planet" as policy goals rather than just PR gloss for a corporate agenda, then it should be supporting the ecological farming solutions offered by the United Nations International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).

“I fear that GM crops corporations, and Owen Paterson, are using the ‘feed the world’ argument as a Trojan horse for a new form of colonialism.”