GM wheat and Prof King

Professor King was interviewed on the BBC's Today programme this week and said that GM crops were needed to cope with a growing population and climate change. At the same time he went on to defend Europe's rigorous safety assessment for GM crops and foods. Scroll to bottom for two polls re GM.

Photo: Taken last week on the edge of Stroud on the way to Bisley

It is clear however that he greatly exaggerated the progress made in developing new GM crops around the world and of ignoring the other ways to tackle global climate and poverty challenges - see the two quotes below - there are still a huge number of reasons as to why we need a Moratorium on GMOs - indeed evidence seems to only accumulate about the risks. Yet as we've seen the Government is set on pushing Gm at every opportunity and giving vast amounts of public money to it - see recent local Green party letter here.

Money instead should be invested in developing non-GM like Drysdale a semi-dwarf strain of high-grade wheat capable of increasing grain yields in drought-affected areas by up to 10 per cent - utilising available soil moisture more efficiently than other dry-area wheat varieties - however we also need to look at all the other issues about why food doesn't reach the poor, why instead of developing more sustainable farming we are destroying soils etc.

Commenting on the BBC interview Pete Riley of GM Freeze said: “Listening to David King you would think that there is a GM magic wand that will enable farmers to overcome all challenges facing them – drought, pests, poor soil. He is guilty of exaggerating the progress that has been made in developing GM crops for extreme conditions. GM drought resistant crops have been talked about for well over a decade and are still not close to being available to poor farmers, who rarely get asked what they think or want from plant breeding or agricultural development. Professor King studiously avoided the socio-economic and political blockages to progress. We wish Professor King well in his retirement. We hope his successor will take exaggerated claims about GM crops with a large pinch of salt and that the UK research is directed to the right solutions that the people in the Global South actually want.”

King's views also contrast markedly with those of Ossama El-Tayeb, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Industrial Biotechnology at Cairo University: “I wish to add that transgenicity for drought tolerance and other environmental stresses (or, for that matter, biological nitrogen fixation) are too complex to be attainable in the foreseeable future, taking into consideration our extremely limited knowledge of biological systems and how genetic/metabolic functions operate. Those who propagate the ideas that any biological function could be genetically manipulated are optimists who are probably victims of a consortium of ‘arrogant’ scientists and greedy business who have strong control on policy making and the media. Having said that, I feel we should not lose hope of reaching such noble goals and should continue to fund such research whose fruits may be reaped by a future generation. These goals have been used by the proponents of currently available genetically modified organisms (GMOs) under the control of big business, who propose that GM crops will alleviate poverty soon while in fact currently available ones mostly contribute negatively to poverty alleviation and food security and positively to the stock market. The holders of intellectual property rights for present day GM crops keep teasing us about the potential of GMOs resistant to abiotic stresses and the like while doing nothing about developing such crops for this generation. These are simply not easily exploitable in a business market and are accordingly not on their agenda. Basic research in this area is being funded almost exclusively by public funds.”

There is lots more we could write re wheat - in fact as I've mentioned before wheat prices are rising to record levels (see also 29th Sept 2007 blog entry re view of IPCC) - passing $9 a bushel in Asian trading - are we reaching peak wheat? Reserves of the grain in Canada, the world's second-largest wheat exporter, plunged 29 percent at the end of July from a year earlier while the forecast for the crop in Australia maybe revised to 18 million tons, from 23 million metric tons. Wheat prices have more than doubled in the past year....and no time in this post for a discussion of all this and biofuels....another time...

Two GM polls:

Farmers Weekly is running a poll on their website "Is it the right time
to grow GM crops": www.fwi.co.uk
And another poll here:
http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/