As Long as We Have Minister Šuker, We Don’t Need GMO

Let us be clear – personally, I have nothing against GMO crops. I have no fears that GMO will cause me or my descendants or my descendants’ descendants to grow hair in their mouths. When it comes to my descendants and their descendants, I do have fears related to food. I fear that in the future there will not be enough food for all people in the world. Unless primary food production opens up to GMO.

As usual, opponents of GMO have a different view of the world than I do. For them, the world consists only of this small piece of land we call Croatia, where everything that the overpopulated world will experience in the future will stop at its borders. According to them, climate change will bypass Croatia, there is no threat of increased radioactivity in Croatia (because, as we know, there are no nuclear plants in Croatia), there will be no pressures for the immigration of Asian populations into Croatia, we will all engage in organic farming in Croatia, and therefore we simply do not need GMO. That’s how it is.

The awareness of the need to preserve the world from ecological disasters is no longer enough. The number of people on Earth has become a key factor determining what the world will be like tomorrow. We can and must ensure that oil spills do not occur in waters, we can and must protect ourselves from increased radiation and similar threats, but we cannot prevent people from seeking food. And there will be more and more people. Conventional agriculture has its limits. The growth of the world’s population has almost none. GMO is one of the answers to that problem.

In accordance with the European Commission’s proposal that national authorities decide whether to allow genetically modified organisms to be grown on their territory, Croatia should adopt a national strategy this autumn, which they say already anticipates the coexistence of GMO and conventional agriculture from the start. This has already alarmed all possible opponents of GMO, from the famous Marijan Jošt to the masses of people who automatically associate the term GMO with chemical and biological poison that kills you the moment you approach it within ten meters. Advocates for allowing GMO cultivation are already condemned to be labeled in public, at the very least, as lobbyists for insatiable foreign companies that want to destroy Croatia with genetically modified organisms, that seed of evil, as GMO is titled.

And what now? Croatia can, of course, remain outside the global flows in the development of GMO technology and peacefully grow crops in a conventional way. As long as there is the Croatian state budget, as long as there are farmers in the ruling coalition, and as long as there is Minister of Finance Šuker, known for his skill in the new borrowing of the country, there is no worry for conventional agriculture. After all, we do not engage in agriculture in Croatia because we could earn from it, but because we can live decently from it without earning anything. So as long as it goes – it goes.