A new fight is gearing up over GM food… and Bristol is at the forefront of the battle
By By Susie Weldon
British consumers don’t like genetically modified crops much. They’ve largely shunned GM products since they were first introduced 20 years ago, and UK organic and environmental campaigners have led intense campaigns against the technology.
But now it seems a new fight is gearing up over GM — and it’s one which will see the Bristol-based environmental charity the Soil Association right at the forefront of efforts to keep it out of Britain.
Yesterday the Soil Association sharply criticised a call by the Government’s chief scientist for “a new and greener revolution” in GM and high-tech agriculture to help combat the effects of climate change and feed a predicted global population of nine billion people within 30 years.
Professor John Beddington used his keynote speech at the Oxford Farming Conference yesterday to say GM and other scientific developments such as nanotechnology would be vital in helping avert a looming global food crisis.
He said the world would have to produce 50% more food by 2030 which could only be done by growing more crops on less land.
He added: “It is predicted that demand for energy will rise by around%, and for fresh water by 50%, all of which must be managed while mitigating and adapting to climate change. This threatens to create a ‘perfect storm’ of global events.”
Prof Beddington has long been known as a supporter of GM technology and his words yesterday were widely interpreted as a new move by the Government to push GM back up the national agenda.
However, Emma Hockridge, policy manager of the Soil Association, rejected the idea that GM could feed a growing world population sustainably “now or in the future”, describing it as an “outmoded techno-fix”. What was really needed, she said, was far-reaching changes in farming systems.
She agreed that climate change and diminishing resources, such as oil and phosphates (used heavily in conventional agriculture) were impacting negatively on farming and required scientific expertise to tackle them.
But she said GM had “consistently failed to deliver food security” despite millions in public and private research expenditure.
Instead efforts should go into marker assisted selection (MAS), she said, which uses knowledge of the genome to speed up the selection process, but uses conventional cross‑breeding that allows the plant to maintain its own safeguards on gene expression. The technology is supported by environmentalists and organic farmers.
“Research into marker assisted selection, which is now leading the way in new crop developments, is enormously important and should be supported,” she said.
“We also need to highlight the contribution that agro-ecological and organic farming, with its lower-oil and chemical inputs, can make, as well as encouraging citizens to adopt sustainable diets that change with the seasons and to support local production.
“These actions will provide greater resilience for our food supplies than outmoded techno-fixes.”
The Soil Association highlighted a report published last month by the US Organic Center which showed that GM seed prices in America had increased dramatically compared to non-GM and organic seeds.
In the 25 years from 1975 to 2000, non-GM soybean seed prices rose by just 63%. Since 2000, as GM soybeans came to dominate the market, the price rose by a massive 230%.
The report by Organic Center chief scientist Dr Charles Benbrook also showed:
- Farmers buying Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready 2 soybean seed in 2010 will pay 42% more per bag than they paid in 2009,
- Maize (corn) growers planting the new GM variety ‘SmartStax’ will pay more than twice as much as farmers planting conventional non-GM seeds;
- GM cotton seed now costs $700 – six times more than non-GM cotton seed. From 1975 to 1996, the price of cotton seed only doubled, but in the GM cotton era, it has risen from $73 to $589;
- In a recent speech Monsanto head Hugh Grant said its goal was to double gross profits in 2012, from 2007 levels. He said that increases in the price of new GM RR 2 soybeans and GM ‘SmartStax’ maize hybrids would create about one-third of the company’s gross profit growth in 2012.
Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett said the new data should serve as a stark warning to UK farmers: “If GM crops are allowed here, UK farmers could find themselves contributing to another doubling of Monsanto’s profits.”
Worrying for environmental campaigners, the report also highlighted that far from reducing pesticide use, the Organic Center found that farmers had applied 318million more pounds in weight of pesticides over the last 13 years as a result of planting GM seeds. In 2008, overall GM crops required over 26% more pounds of pesticides per acre than non-GM varieties.
Despite Prof Beddington’s call for more GM in agriculture, Emma Hockridge noted that it was not echoed by his boss.
“It is striking that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural affairs Hilary Benn didn’t mention GM in his speech to the Oxford Farming Conference yesterday,” she said. “This is the most half-hearted and feeble endorsement of GM since the technology arrived twenty years ago.”
I am to say the least confused. I am a farmer who wants to help to feed the world and to do so using the best and most advanced scientific methods. I have studied plant breeding at university and consider that GM plant breeding offers some very real opportunities as long as it is managed appropriately.
I have The Welsh Assembly telling me that they do not want me to use it and yet ALL the pigs, cows, sheep and many other animals in Wales and The UK are allowed to eat it and do so without any signs of harm, GM soya in particular.
Yet politicians seem to want it both ways, the bloody Welsh Assembly seem to ignore the fact that GM feed is used by almost all Welsh farmers BUT want us NOT to grow our own.
What am I to do? Move to the US or Brazil or India or Australia or Portugal or Spain where they grow it openly and with the full support of their governments?
I despair of the ignoramuses who continue to campaign against something they seem to know nothing about OR like the Soil Ass have a vested commercial interest in blocking.