Read the following text and answer "thinking about the essay" (All 7 questions). Some questions might have different parts to them, make sure to answer everything and specify which part of the question you're answering. Answers must be concise, and well written.

Anuradha Mittal: Technology Won't Feed the World's Hungry

Autobiography:

Anuradha Mittal, a native of India, is founder and director of the Oakland Institute, a policy think tank that works to promote public participation and democratic debate on economic and social policy issues. Mittal is known internationally as an expert on trade, human rights, and agriculture issues.

She has traveled widely as a public speaker and has appeared as guest and commentator on television and radio. Her articles on international public policy issues have appeared in The New York Times and in other journals worldwide. In the following article, which appeared in the July 12, 2001, issue of Progressive Media Project, Mittal argues that biotechnology cannot solve the problem of world hunger.

TEXT:

1 Don't be misled. Genetically engineered food is not an answer to world hunger.

2 The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) released a report last week urging rich countries to put aside their fears of such food and help developing nations unlock the potential of biotechnology.

3 The report accuses opponents of ignoring the Third World's food needs. It claims that Western consumers who do not face food shortages or nutritional deficiencies are more likely to focus on food safety and the loss of biodiversity, while farming communities in developing countries emphasize potentially higher yields and "greater nutritional value" of these crops.

4 But the UNDP has not done its homework.

5 In my country, India, for example, the debate pits mostly U.S.-trained technocrats, seduced by technological fixes, against farmers and consumers who overwhelmingly say no to these crops. The people who are to use the modified seeds and eat the modified food often want nothing to do with them.

6 The report rehashes the old myth of feeding the hungry through miracle technology. As part of the 1960s Green Revolution, Western technology created pesticides and sent them to developing countries for agricultural use, which may have increased food production, but at the cost of poisoning our earth, air and

water.

7 What's more, it failed to alleviate hunger. Of the 800 million hungry people in the world today, more than '200 million live in India alone. It's not that India does not produce enough food to meet the needs of its hungry. It's that organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have slashed public services and social-safety nets so that the food can't get to the needy.

8 More than 60 million tons of excess, unsold food grain rotted in India last year because the hungry were too poor to buy it. In desperation, some farmers burned the crops they could not market and resorted to selling their kidnevs and other body parts, or committing suicide, to end the cycle of poverty.

9 A higher, genetically engineered crop yield would have done nothing for them. And if the poor in India are not able to buy two meals a day, how will they purchase nutritionally rich crops such & rice that is engineered to contain vitamin A?

10 The report compares efforts to ban genetically modified foods with the banning of the pesticide DDT, which was dangerous to humans but was effective in killing the mosquitoes that spread malaria. The Third World had to choose between death from DDT or malaria. It's appalling that even today the debate in developed countries offers the Third World the option of either dying from hunger or eating unsafe foods.

11 Malaria, like hunger, is a disease of poverty. When economic conditions improve, it disappears, just as it did in the United States and Europe.

12 The focus ought to be on the root causes of the problem, not the symptom. The hungry don't need a technological quick fix. They need basic social change.

13 In the Third World, the battle against genetically engineered food is a battle against the corporate concentration of our food system. Corporations are gaining control of our biodiversity and even our seeds.

This is a potential stranglehold on our food supply. In response, developing countries are imposing moratoriums on genetically engineered crops. Sri Lanka, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico and China, among others, have already done so.

14 The UNDP has been snookered about genetically engineered food. The rest of us shouldn't be.

Thinking about the Essay

1. How does Mittal frame her paragraph-long paraphrase of the claims of the UNDP within the opening paragraphs of the essay?
2. Does Mittal's reference to India as "my country" have any effect on her argument?
3. Would the argument be as strong without the personal element? Why or why not?
4. How does Mittal characterize the advocates of biotechnology who are the authors Of the UNDP report?
5. According to Mittal, what is the role that corporations play in the promotion of biotechnology?
6. How does this claim change her characterization of the motives for promoting such technology?
7. How effective is the colloquial language of the two-sentence concluding paragraph? Are there other examples of such language in the essay?