Biotech food – promising potential but no panacea

According to the FAO’s report, called The State of Food and Agriculture 2003-04​, biotechnology offers significant potential to farmers in developing countries, but only if there is a shift of focus away from western markets and a significant improvement in the entire supply chain and regulatory framework.

Basic food crops of the poor such as cassava, potato, rice and wheat receive little attention by scientists, the FAO said. "Neither the private nor the public sector has invested significantly in new genetic technologies for the so-called 'orphan crops' such as cowpea, millet, sorghum and tef that are critical for the food supply and livelihoods of the world's poorest people,"​ added FAO Director-General Dr Jacques Diouf.

"Other barriers that prevent the poor from accessing and fully benefiting from modern biotechnology include inadequate regulatory procedures, complex intellectual property issues, poorly functioning markets and seed delivery systems, and weak domestic plant breeding capacity,"​ he added.

The GM food debate in developed markets is also something of a red herring, the FAO suggested, adding that it could also potentially stop those most in need of the improvements biotechnology can bring from benefiting from them.

“While the potential benefits and risks of GMOs need to be carefully assessed case by case, the controversy surrounding transgenics should not distract from the potential offered by other applications of biotechnology such as genomics, marker-assisted breeding and animal vaccines,”​ the FAO said.

Agriculture research vital​

The need for more efficient and productive agriculture has never been more acute, the organisation said. Agriculture will have to sustain an additional 2 billion people over the next 30 years from an increasingly fragile natural resource base, according to the United Nations organisation, making it vital that new technologies be developed to help increase yields and reduce costs, protect the environment, address consumer concerns for food safety and quality and enhance rural livelihoods and food security.

More than 70 per cent of the world's poor still live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their survival, and agricultural research – including biotechnology - holds an important key to meeting their needs. But biotechnology should complement - not replace - conventional agricultural technologies, the FAO said.

Biotechnology can speed up conventional breeding programmes and may offer solutions where conventional methods fail. It can provide farmers with disease-free planting materials and develop crops that resist pests and diseases, reducing use of chemicals that harm the environment and human health. It can also provide diagnostic tools and vaccines that help control devastating animal diseases. Additionally it can improve the nutritional quality of staple foods such as rice and cassava and create new products for health and industrial uses.

But poor farmers can only benefit from biotechnology products if they "have access to them on profitable terms,"​ the report said. "Thus far, these conditions are only being met in a handful of developing countries."​

Moreover, with a large part of the private-sector investment in biotechnology concentrated on just four crops - cotton, maize, canola (oilseed rape) and soybean – with two traits - insect resistance and herbicide tolerance – and planted in just six countries - Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, South Africa and the US – most of the people who could benefit most from GM technology are clearly failing to do so.

“One of the key constraints many developing countries are facing in adopting and adapting biotechnology innovations is their lack of agricultural research capacity particularly in plant and animal breeding,”​ the FAO said.

The private sector dominates global biotechnology research. The world's top ten trans-national bioscience corporations spend nearly $3 billion per year on agricultural biotechnology research and development, but private biotech research in most developing countries is negligible. Furthermore, Brazil, China and India, which have the largest public agricultural research programmes in developing countries, spend less than half a billion dollars each annually.

However, in the few developing countries where transgenic crops have been introduced, the benefits are already being seen. Small farmers have gained economically and the use of toxic agro-chemicals has been reduced, the FAO said.

"Transgenic crops have delivered large economic benefits to farmers in some areas of the world over the past seven years,"​ the report said. In several cases, per hectare gains have been large when compared with almost any other technological innovation introduced over the past few decades.

In China, for example, more than four million small farmers are growing insect-resistant cotton on about 30 per cent of the country's total cotton area. Yields for insect-resistant cotton were about 20 per cent higher than for conventional varieties and pesticide costs were around 70 per cent lower.

Pesticide use was reduced by an estimated 78 000 tonnes in 2001, an amount equal to about one-quarter of the total quantity of chemical pesticides used in China. As a result, cotton farmers experienced fewer pesticide poisonings than those growing conventional varieties.

Wider implications​

But while reducing pesticide use is clearly beneficial to both the environment and human health, the broader implications of transgenic foods are yet to be completely assessed, the FAO said.

"Scientists generally agree that the transgenic crops currently being grown and the foods derived from them are safe to eat, although little is known about their long-term effects,"​ said Diouf.

"There is less scientific agreement on the environmental impacts of transgenic crops. The legitimate concerns for the safety of each transgenic product must be addressed prior to its release. Careful monitoring of the post-release effects of these products is essential,"​ he added.

The FAO recommends a case-by-case evaluation that considers the potential benefits and risks of individual transgenic crops. The report says that, while some benefits have been observed, adverse environmental effects have not been detected in commercial production, although it stressed that continued monitoring was needed.

"Where crops have not been cleared through biosafety risk assessments, a greater risk of harmful environmental consequences exists. Unauthorised varieties may not provide farmers with the expected level of pest control, leading to continued need for chemical pesticides and a greater risk of the development of pest resistance."​

No major profits – yet​

The FAO’s report also found that while transgenic crops had been delivered through the private sector in most cases, the benefits had been widely distributed among industry, farmers and consumers.

"This suggests that the monopoly position engendered by intellectual property protection does not automatically lead to excessive industry profits,"​ the report said.

The private sector companies involved in the biotechnology industry not surprisingly welcomed the FAO’s report.

"Today's report from the United Nations confirms the promise and importance of agricultural biotechnology to fight hunger and raise the standard of living for millions of people in developing nations,”​ said Dr Michael J. Phillips, vice president for food and agriculture, science and regulatory policy, at the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), which represents more than 1,000 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, biotechnology centres and related organisations in 34 countries.

"While biotechnology alone cannot overcome infrastructure constraints, the technology provides important tools to understand how to grow crops in challenging climate and soil conditions, to naturally fight insects and disease for survival to harvest, and to make them more nutritious. This report should quell the 'global war of rhetoric' and encourage a collaborate effort to redirect that energy into building strong infrastructure and harmonised regulatory policies to realise the promise of this technology."​