Time for Australia to join the GM revolution

Despite enjoying the successful fruits of a multi-century history of openness towards new ideas, products and technology, today's Australia is one where fear is turning it into an agriscience backwater. In fact, its approach to foreign ideas in agriculture is so bad that some states even ban the production of natural crops which are not native to Australia.

Suffocating regulations, commercial release bans and state based marketing restrictions all presently work to undermine Australia's ability to embrace of the latest Columbian Exchange. As a result, Australia has become a GM transference laggard.

The international scene

Between 1996 and 2012, GM crop hectares have increased 100-fold from 1.7 million hectares to 170 million.

America is presently the world's largest agricultural exporter and grower of GM crops. It has 69.5mha of active GM crop land representing 41 per cent of total GM crop land in use. It also enjoys a near 90 per cent average adoption rate across all GM crops. Despite persistent claims that America is becoming anti-science, its agricultural community remains fervently pro-technology.

Twenty-eight nations across every other continent have also embraced the latest Columbian Exchange. Brazil (36.6mha), Argentina (23.9mha), Canada (11.6mha), India (10.8mha), and China (4mha) all have vast tracks of land in GM crop production. Combined, these five nations represent 51 per cent of global GM production – 124 times Australia's share!

What is at stake for Australia

The risks facing Australia in not embracing the latest Columbian Exchange are extremely serious. There are three areas of risk:

1. the loss of international competitiveness;
2. an inability to unlock the continent's full agricultural potential; and
3. the loss of agriculture's best entrepreneurs and scientists

International competitiveness

International agricultural markets are amongst the most competitive in the world. Therefore, it goes without saying that increasing productivity will always be vital for maintaining long term market share and growth.

As demonstrated above, GM technology is playing an increasingly larger role in determining how effectively agricultural products are being produced around the world. If Australia does not keep pace with world's best practice, it runs the risk of losing market share to its more productive rivals.