Bionic Growth For Biotech Crops

Gene-Altered Agriculture Trending Global
By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; D01


Since genetically modified crops were first planted a decade ago, the
acreage devoted to them worldwide has been growing at double-digit
rates, and it did so again last year, jumping 11 percent to 222 million
acres, according to a new report.

The crops are gaining popularity in middle-income countries such as
China, India and Brazil, the report says, with small cotton farmers in
particular embracing a technology that allows them to grow more cotton
while reducing the use of chemical pesticides.

The report notes that the world's most important food crop, rice, could
be on the verge of a transformation. Iran has already commercialized
gene-altered rice and China appears nearly ready to do so, the report
says. Widespread acceptance of such rice could put crop biotechnology
into the hands of the tens of millions of small rice farmers who grow
nearly half the calories eaten by the human race.

Commercialization of rice that has been genetically altered to resist
insects "has enormous implications for the alleviation of poverty,
hunger and malnutrition, not only for the rice-growing and -consuming
countries in Asia, but for all biotech crops and their acceptance on a
global basis," says the report, compiled by the International Service
for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. The group publishes
an annual review, funded partly by the Rockefeller Foundation, that is
considered the definitive global analysis of trends in crop
biotechnology.

Proponents of the technology welcomed the findings, saying the spread
of biotech crops demonstrates their usefulness for farmers and society.
But two advocacy groups preemptively attacked the new report before it
was published, putting out reports of their own this week that
questioned industry "hype" and disputed the impact of gene-altered
crops.

The Polaris Institute, an anti-globalization group in Ottawa,
acknowledged that biotech crop acreage appears to be increasing but
noted that the technology is still concentrated in a handful of
countries, with the United States, Argentina, Canada and Brazil
accounting for 90 percent of the world's biotech acreage. The group
pointed out that the technology is widely used in only a few crops --
mainly cotton, corn, soy and canola.

Industry claims that the technology would help alleviate poverty in
Africa have proven illusory so far, the group said, a point echoed by a
report from environmental group Friends of the Earth. And the groups
said growing biotech crops can hurt farmers' export markets in
countries that are skeptical of the technology.

"Instead of wholesale adoption, we are seeing at most experimentation,"
David Macdonald, a Polaris Institute analyst, said in a statement.
"Worldwide farmers have good reason to be wary."
It's clear, in fact, that even after a decade of growth, biotech crops
are grown on only a small fraction of the world's arable land -- well
under 1 percent. But the trend is also clear: When they were first
commercialized in 1996, biotech crops were planted on 4.3 million acres
in six countries, but the report says that by 2005 farmers were
planting them on 222 million acres in 21 countries. "Biotech crops
deliver substantial agronomic, environmental, economic, health and
social benefits to farmers and, increasingly, to society at large," the
report says.

Almost a third of the agricultural land in the United States is planted
in gene-altered crops, and more than half in Argentina and Paraguay,
the report shows. Brazilian farmers had been illegally planting biotech
crops for years, but that country has now legalized them and the
acreage there is growing rapidly, the report says.

The report says China stands to become a major player in the field.
Clive James, chairman of the group that published the report, estimated
that 2,000 scientists in China are working on numerous gene-modified
crops. "If we look at the investment in China in biotech crops, it is
very significant," he said in a conference call yesterday from Sao
Paulo, Brazil.

Agricultural companies, led by Monsanto Co. of St. Louis, created the
first biotech crops in the 1990s by moving genes from other species
into plants. Bacterial genes give some plants the ability to resist
worms, and others gain the ability to survive heavy applications of
herbicides that kill nearby weeds.

But a controversy erupted over the technology in Europe in the late
1990s, with advocacy groups saying the crops posed unnecessary
environmental risks and much of the European public agreeing.

The United States has been trying to pry open the European market, with
some recent success. The new report notes that five of 25 European
countries are now growing at least small quantities of biotech crops,
though only Spain has embraced the technology in a big way.

The United States filed a complaint against Europe over the issue with
the World Trade Organization, and a ruling is expected soon. The
European Commission in Brussels has been battling resistance by
individual countries and this week ordered Greece to permit a variety
of gene-altered corn.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company


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