If it and many other articles like it were written 10 or more years ago they might well have a shred of credibility.
Time has passed, crops have been grown and the jury is back: there have been less than credible gains for those, wherever they are on the globe, who have used GE seeds for broadacre farming, compared to those who have continued with traditional seed development techniques.
The best illustration of this is to compare the yield data from North America for the GE crops and western Europe for the the non-GE yields.
Paraphrasing a lengthy and complex article, the yields have been all but static in the GE crops while significant gains continue to be made with traditional breeding techniques.
Exacerbating that issue is that the chemical spray regimes required to support the GE crops mean that there have been truly spectacular increases in chemical application in North America versus very significant reductions in the western European crops (includes herbicide and pesticide references).
In addition to the above it does not seem to matter whether you use the data from a smaller farming operation such as the Rodale Institute in America, which has been running trials for some decades now, comparing organic production techniques, yield etc to other production techniques – in this case GE.
The findings are pretty clear: there is seldom a gain (from GE) and in the event of a dry year, yields will invariably be significantly down in the GE crops.
Or, if you want a bigger trial sample to give data that should be more accurate, then comparing one continent, North America, to another, Europe, is a good start.
But you still arrive at the same conclusion: GE crops have less reliable yields and are more susceptible to challenging seasons, of which we are apparently expecting more, and there is a huge increase in chemical use to support these modest unreliable yields.
Why do I care?
Farmers are being fed a one-sided, inaccurate picture of the opportunities that GE technology offers by people who know of the above data.
The latest wonder plant being promoted in the Farmers Weekly article by Federated Farmers leader William Rolleston is an AgResearch Grassland variety of ryegrass, which apparently offers high metabolisable energy that grows 40-50% more grass with 10% higher ME and potentially 30% lower water demand.
To be fair to Rolleston et al, I cannot say for certain that the above is bull but I can say for certain that it is totally at odds with the GE broadacre crop results to date.
It is inaccurate to say, as the quoted article does, that “co-existence of GM and non GM is possible”.
This is totally and unambiguously at odds with the experience of farmers the world over who have the misfortune to farm alongside GE growers.
It is greater nonsense to suggest that GM and organics can coexist but the point of this article is to encourage farmers, in particular, to do their own homework on the productive merits or otherwise of genetically engineered crops.
This is secondary to issues of what our markets might or might not say about the contamination of our once-pristine products with GE material.
Could GE offer NZ agriculture great things in the future? Quite possibly but if existing farmers were being offered a bull or a ram or a seed with the track record of GE, they would not touch it with a bargepole.
The difference here is that in NZ we can easily check out the story of the bull or ram breeder but it has been made very difficult to do the same with GE.
The other critical difference between the GE technologies and the bull/ram analogy is that if you decide that your expensive bull is rubbish, you can send him and his progeny to the processor. You cannot do that with GE crops. You and your neighbours are stuck with it.
In the interest of disclosure, I farmed 1200ha organically for 10 years till 2014 in south Otago after 20 years of chemical farming and recently joined the Soil and Health Association’s national council.
I retain a passion for the farming industry and the health of its practitioners.
I support any development that helps NZ farmers to produce increasingly nutritious food for the select, wealthy markets we should be targeting – importantly, while making sustainable returns, way better than today, without stuffing the environment we are lucky enough to call home.
