GM crops blooming

In the 14 years since the first genetically modified crops were planted commercially, their descendants, relatives and remixes have gone forth and multiplied like profitable, high-tech pondweed.

A new report shows 25 countries now grow GM crops, with the total area under cultivation now larger than Peru. Three-quarters of the farmland used to grow soy is now sown with a genetically modified variant and the figures for cotton are not that far behind, thanks to its success in India.

China recently gave the safety go-ahead to its first GM rice variety and a new GM maize that should make better pig feed.

More and more plants are having their genomes sequenced: A full sequence for maize was published late last year, the soy genome in January. Techniques for altering genomes are moving ahead almost as quickly as the genomes themselves are stacking up, and new crops with more than one added trait are coming to market.

Such stories of success will strike fear into some hearts, and not only in GM-averse Europe; a GM backlash is underway in India, focused on insect-resistant eggplants.

Some of these fears are understandable, but lacking supporting evidence, they have never been compelling. On safety, the fear that cuts closest to home, the record continues to look good. Governments need to keep testing and monitoring but that may be becoming easier.

More precise modifications and better technologies for monitoring stray DNA both within plants and in the environment around them, mean that it is getting easier to be sure nothing untoward is going on.

Then there is the worry that GM crops are a way for big companies to take over the livelihoods of small farmers and, in the end, a chunk of nature itself. Seen in this light the fact that 90 per cent of the farmers growing GM crops are comparatively poor and in developing countries is sinister, not salutary; given Monsanto's dominance in America's soybean market, it seems to suggest incipient world domination.

It is certainly true that big firms make a lot of money selling GM seeds: the GM seed market was worth $10.5 billion in 2009 and the crops that grew from that seed were worth over $130 billion.

But multinationals are not the only game in town. The governments of China (which has increased agricultural research across the board), India and Brazil are also developing new GM crops.

In 2009 a GM version of an Indian cotton variety, developed in the public sector, came to market and a variety engineered by a private Indian firm has been approved for commercialization. Charities, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are also funding efforts in various countries to make crops more hardy or nutritious.

GM seeds that come from government research bodies, or from local firms, may not arouse quite so much opposition as those from large foreign companies, especially when they provide characteristics that make crops better, not just easier to farm.

Moreover, where the seeds come from is a separate question from who should pay for them, as Gates points out. As with drugs and vaccines, it is possible to get products that were developed with profit in mind to the people who need them using donor money and clever pricing and licensing deals.

In the longer term, if the seeds deliver what the farmers require, the need for such special measures should diminish. After all, the whole idea is not that poor farmers should go on being poor. It is that poor farmers should get a bit richer, be able to invest a bit more, and thus increase the food available to a growing and predominantly urban population.

There is another worry about GM technology, though, that should be taken seriously. It is that its success and appeal to technophiles may, in the minds of those who pay for agricultural research, crowd out other approaches to improving farming.

Because it depends on intellectual property that can be protected, GM is ripe for private investment. There is a lot of other agricultural research that is less amenable to corporate ownership but still needs doing.

From soil management to weather forecasts to the preservation, study and use of agricultural biodiversity, there are many ways to improve the agricultural systems on which the world's food supply depends, and make them more resilient as well as more profitable.

A farm is not a just a clever crop: it is an ecosystem managed with intelligence. GM crops have a great role to play in that development, but they are only a part of the whole.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 27, 2010 H11