The benefits of GM crops

Today’s agricultural practices are different from yesterday’s and tomorrow’s agriculture will be different from today’s. Winston Churchill said, “The farther backward you can look the farther forward you are likely to see”. He was emphasising change and improvement.

Today, farmers know they have to look after natural resources, maintain the fertility of the soil, be careful with water use, use chemicals wisely and use the biological advantages of rotation farming.

The difference between yesterday’s and today’s agriculture has depended upon better management, better varieties (as in increased yield, more drought resistant and so on) and a better understanding and response mechanism to market requirements. In turn, these improvements have depended on research and the translation of new knowledge into farming practice. Further research will lead to enhanced management techniques and better product varieties to meet increasingly differentiated specifications of the global markets.

There has never been a time when improvement in agricultural performance has been needed so much. As the world’s population increases, we need to produce more food reliably, with greater empathy for the environment and with more nutritious products. Every person on Earth should have the right to enough food, but it should be good food - as good as we can make it.

Biological research has been transformed by technologies which allow us to comprehend the workings of genes, providing a new understanding of how plants function in their environments and of the molecular and cellular bases of their development. These are areas critical to crop performance and food production.

Understanding genes and their role in crop performance has been important for our cotton industry. The industry has used chemical insecticides recklessly to protect crops from insects which can reduce yields to zero. But the insects soon became resistant to the pesticides. The new technology modifies the crop’s biological software so that it can protect itself against its worst pest. It has enabled the plant to produce specific molecules in its leaves and bolls which kill the major pest, moth larvae. Another gene construct has provided protection against the best “weedicide”, revolutionising weed control in the cotton farming system.

These transgenic cottons put important management constraints on farmers - to preserve the value of the impacts of the new technologies. Yield, quality and profits have gone up, and chemical usage has gone down drastically. The environment has benefited enormously and farmers and farm workers have a better quality of life.

This is not the end of needed improvements, though. There are severe challenges from pathogens, and although our breeders have given us a wonderful quality of fibre, we need to further differentiate our products from those of other countries’.

In a non-drought year, new technologies support a $1.7 billion Australian cotton industry, which exports 98 per cent of products and has a planting seed industry within Australia worth $175 million. Australian varieties of seed make up 30 per cent of the planting seed in the US and the seeds are becoming a significant component of the cotton industry in southern Europe and South America.

Canola is the next crop being considered for transgenic technologies in Australia, but faces state-based moratoria against its introduction. Currently, the advantages being offered through transgenic varieties relate to herbicide resistance and the introduction of high-yielding hybrids. Canadian canola growers have had plentiful yield using transgenic hybrids when compared with Australian canola farmers’ output.

Canola growers and marketers should unite as an industry to get behind transgenic varieties and model their actions on the introduction of transgenic cotton in Australia. The industry, through the Australian Cotton Growers Research Association, played a major role in interacting with the researchers and government regulatory bodies. The transgenic crop was introduced gradually with strict controls of management. Regulatory bodies made decisions based on recommendations from industry committees who examined the performance of transgenics in relation to conventional varieties. These were crucial factors in the successful adoption of the transgenic crop.

There are three major markets for our canola and at least two of these countries have cleared the way for the use of transgenic canola. Other oft-cited dangers of super-weed production have been dispelled by careful research studies. The industry should easily be able to organise itself with necessary segregation procedures.

Breeders of cereal crops, wheat and barley, have enormous challenges ahead of them. In many cases, the germplasm is not available to meet the challenges of disease and environmental stresses. New technologies may be able to significantly increase breeders’ capabilities, but that doesn’t mean we have to move to transgenic crops. What it means is that we can define the ways forward, either in asking for better input traits or in developing new quality features for these grains.

One area where transgenic technology will be critical in the near future is in matters related to public health. The diseases of western societies are largely a consequence of lifestyle changes, including diet. Many diet-related diseases, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and colonic cancer, result in large part from the way we live. Diabetes is the epidemic of the 21st century. This is as true in developing countries as it is in western countries like Australia.

Modified staple foods will help guard against the onset of these diseases and will reduce the enormous expenditure of therapeutic medicine. If the starch component of wheat, rice and maize had a low glycemic index, for example, we would be close to reducing the incidence and severity of diabetes. As well as starch, proteins, fatty acids and antioxidants can all be adjusted to better fit human nutrition requirements.

A good example is barley, where changing a single genetic letter in the starch biosynthetic pathway makes it a low glycemic index food. This barley is so close to barley changed by mutagenesis and conventional breeding that it could be introduced to the market right now. In fact, we are likely to see it soon in breads and breakfast cereals.

We can now teach plants to make long-chain omega 3 fatty acids, oils that we currently get through the consumption of fish, which in turn feed on microscopic algae that produce it. Researchers have taken these algae’s genes and infused our crop plants with it so that they too can make long-chain omega 3 oils, so important for cardiovascular and other body systems.

Our food will be an important component in our preventative health system.

Are genetically modified crops safe? Our regulatory bodies say that there is no reason to suspect that genetically modified crops will be any less safe than the food we consume at present. There are 80 million hectares of GM (genetically modified) crops around the world and the area is increasing rapidly - 5 per cent of agricultural production in the world is a convincing safety recommendation, particularly since there have been no substantiated negative effects on human or environmental health. Thirty million farmers are growing GM crops: we should see this as a wake-up call.

Australian agribusiness faces the challenge of cheaper imports. Consumer preference and acceptance for Australian agricultural products will be hard to achieve because most people are urban dwellers and do not know where their food comes from. A product grown with 86 per cent less chemical insecticides means little to the consumer. It is not until we have direct health benefits at fair prices that we can expect real acceptance and preference for our agricultural products - transgenic or conventional.

The same applies to our export markets. If we want to be assured of markets for our products, we have to make sure that the whole business chain for any crop and its products has an integrated drive for export performance. Consumer countries need to be persuaded, as we have done in the past, that Australian products are superior quality products.

Where we have a market opportunity we need to make sure we do not make any mistakes. While transgenic cotton was a big success, it was dependent not only on the new genetics, but on farmers who adopted appropriate management protocols. It is the genetics and the management together that will make a lasting success.

Biotechnology’s contributions to future agribusiness has already seen some major successes and we can expect many more. Biotechnology is like any other business -the opportunities and objectives need to be carefully defined in the early stages. We need to develop a realistic business plan, extending from basic research to intellectual property claims, to the cost of adhering to regulatory requirements and finally to forming partnerships that will be needed along the business chain.

Finally, I want to emphasise the need for effective communication at all levels of the community and of business, and extending to decision makers. It is important for parliamentary representatives to fully understand what is being proposed so they can assess the benefits and risks based on factual evidence. In Australia, we have a number of regulatory bodies to examine the safety, performance and environmental impacts of GM crops and all food products. Their recommendations deserve to be recognised. It is sometimes easier for a politician to say no to any proposition, for example to a new technology, than to have the courage to say yes, even though to say no may ultimately have untoward and serious negative consequences to business, to the environment and to human health.