Recently I was able to show for the first time this trailer of Silenced Crops. This is what I said, roughly, as I didn’t write my speech, I said it as it came out, spontaneously:
Sixteen years ago we had advanced biotechnology in Venezuela. Today, we are starving.
More than 60% of Venezuelans cannot eat three times a day. I am not telling you this because I read the statistics, I am telling you this because some friends and relatives are going through this right now.
16 years ago, a group of zealots destroyed a field of transgenic papayas and managed to make fierce opposition to GMOs part of the government policy.
Now, I won’t tell you that we are starving because we don’t use GMOs. That would not be true. But there is a connection between the food crisis and the GMO rejection. Hunger is what happens when your agricultural and economic policies are not based on facts, science and evidence. It’s what happens when your policies are based on rumors, lies, dogma and blind ideology.
I am making this documentary not only to tell you what happened 16 years ago, but to show that hunger is the price that people pay for the irrationality of their rulers.
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