I’ll be a panellist on Farmers Guardian’s live web discussion, answering all your questions about the Schmallenberg virus. Join the discussion on Friday, February 10 from 1pm.Experts will recommend British farmers to grow GM
A MAJOR new policy report will recommend UK farmers grow genetically modified crops to avert a food crisis, it has been claimed.
Leaked extracts from a report due to be published by the Royal Society later this week appeared in the national press over the weekend.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the Royal Society, a respected national academy of science, will call on policy makers to adopt GM technology in order to feed a world population due to hit 9 billion by 2050.
A source told the Daily Telegraph: “The report will say the right GM crops should be used in the future to alleviate food shortages.
“Where GM has been proved effective at either increasing yields or else resistant to diseases it should be used in the UK.
“GM crops need to be looked at one by one. They are not the only solution to world hunger but they are part of it.”
The Royal Society report ‘Reaping the benefits: Science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture’ will face a strong backlash from anti-GM campaigners.
Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director, told the Farmers Guardian last week that GM technology was ‘inherently risky’ and should not be adopted.
“Consumers in the UK, and in most countries throughout the world, want to be able to buy food that doesn’t contain GM ingredients.
“They feel that GM is an inherently risky technology with unknown consequences, and science supports their views,” he said.
The year-long Royal Society study will be formally published on Wednesday, October 21.
It will examine the current and predicted threats to food-crop production, the contribution that science and technology can make to future food security, and the likely consequences and impacts of the technologies discussed.
The study will make recommendations as to how UK Government, funding bodies, academia and industry can begin to address the challenge at a local and global level.
Readers' comments (4)
Anonymous | 19 October 2009 12:11 pm
Does every scientist in the Royal Society recommend this. Or just a handful of biology oriented scientists? What are the voting figures?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Oliver Dowding | 20 October 2009 11:59 am
Experts? Who says so?
What kind of yield advantages are they suggesting?
How do they suggest, farmers will cope with resistance to glyphosate when the weeds develop it and are no longer controllable with this single herbicide in use? Evidence is emerging in America and other countries of serious problems with, for example, glyphosate resistant maize in the following glyphosate resistant soya crop, and farmers being paid by the company to use other chemicals to control the volunteers. This is really the way we want our agriculture to go?
I find it depressing that people might be prepared to accept such as GM technology without investigating the suppression of many of the research projects which have shown problems, and to which all we ought to be paying much more attention.
This is not a solution to anything, other than farmers and government handing over control of agriculture to corporations, even more so than they have already. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Rod | 20 October 2009 9:19 pm
Where is the Royal Society coming from? Defra's chief scientist, Professor Robert Watson, led a review that concluded global hunger is as much to do with power and control of the food system as with growing enough food.Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City Uni' and government adviser on sustainable development is reported as saying: "But the problem with GM is the way it has been introduced, primarily as a way of maintaining the sales of pesticide companies." Intellectual property rights have been applied to 82% of the global seed market, according to the Guardian (Sat' 17th Oct'). Three powerful US-based commodity trading corporations - Cargill, ADM and Bunge - now control nearly half the global market in proprietary seeds, worth $22bn. Bayer, BASF and Dow AgroSciences plus the three above control 75% of the global agrochemical market. What would the Royal Society say about soya production? John Fagin, chief scientist at Cert-ID, says: "Brazil has more than enough GM-free soya to keep the UK going and will continue to plant non-GM so long as it gets paid to keep different supplies segregated." Say no to a few companies - at present! - controlling world food supplies. I am very, very afraid of these giant corporations.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 2 September 2010 12:12 pm
If you do not want to buy it, don't. No one is forcing you too, but people around the world in places like Africa where the soil is too hard and dry to grow any other crops, need food. And GM crops that are resistant to pests and weather conditions are brilliant for supplying food. We can miexport it as well, and just get money to import organic things if your so hung up on that. By the way, most GM crops are STERILE, therefore they cannot transmit or mix with any other crops!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment