A couple of years ago I spoke at a breakfast in Queanbeyan, near Canberra, on GM food crops. I explained the benefits of the technology from an environmental perspective.
At the time, bans on the commercial production of GM food crops had just been introduced in most Australian states following campaigning by Greenpeace against GM canola.
Yes, it's now illegal to grow GM crops in most parts of Australia, with GM cotton exempt on the basis it is grown primarily for fibre - not food.
Senator Bill Heffernan was in the audience when I spoke at that breakfast and he continually interjected, in particular, he claimed that GM technology was unproven and that GM canola would become a weed.
So, I was a little surprised to see the headline in today's The Age newspaper: 'Heffernan calls for a rethink on GM crops'.
It seems the Senator, himself, has had a rethink as part of his push for agricultural development in northern Australia and is now enthusiastic about GM food crops.
In the article, The Senator suggests some southern farmers would be prepared to move north and that our attitude to GM needs to change if "the water-drenched Top End" is to be developed as the nation's "food bowl".
But, agricultural development in the north doesn't need southern farmers or the Senator and his federal government committees.
It needs less, not more, government interference and in particular:
1. A lifting of the bans on GM food crops in Western Australia,
2. A lifting of the ban on cotton growing in the Northern Territory (yes, it is illegal to grow any sort of cotton in the Northern Territory), and
3. Queensland legislation, in particular the Wild Rivers Act and Vegetation Management Act, needs to be changed so there is potential for some land development and some water infrastructure development in north Queensland.
There is always more information on breaking GM news at David Tribe's blog at http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/.
Yes, Schiller, starvation chic is the only look that makes junkies look healthy. It is all about surrounding themselves with self affirmation messages (aka delusion).
Funny how greens are at the forefront of chemical free food and chain of custody certification for just about everything but the pills taken by teenagers at rave parties.
Where is their campaigning for clearly identified vendors and manufacturers, list of ingredients, date, time and place of manufacture and appropriate warnings on side effects and risks? Nowhere to be seen.
We have an opposition spokeman on environment who flogged a lot of records by matching the poor quality of his singing voice with the impaired judgement of his audience. He got his start in music by providing the mood music to the "stock exchange" of the Sydney drug scene.
And with all that exposure to the drug scene he appears to have written very little about its consequences. I guess it wasn't green/left cool enough. One could say that he not only slept while those beds were still burning, he made a bucket of money with trite platitudes to boot.
Well it sure is a good thing that Greenpeace and others are saving Africans from GM crops. The Africans can keep on posing for the cameras of National Geographic magazine. The Lefties just love preserving those quaint, all-natural nature-balancing starvation folkways.
As biofuels boom, will more go hungry? By Ruth Gidley
Wed Mar 7, 10:11 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Using plants to feed our fuel needs may be a great idea, and the biofuel goldrush could be a moneyspinner for several poor countries, but some experts warn people may go hungry as food prices rise.
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Fans of biofuels give the impression we could soon be running cars on maize, producing electricity with sugar, and getting power from palm oil.
Even though the biofuel boom is only just beginning, it has already pushed up the cost of staples in places like Mexico where rocketing tortilla prices have sparked angry protests.
Some experts foresee a permanent change in food economics if farmers scent higher profit in fuel crops than in growing plants to feed people.
"We're into a new structure of markets," said British food aid expert Edward Clay. "It could have profound implications on poor people."
World leaders promised in 2000 to halve by 2015 the proportion of people, estimated at 1.2 billion or a fifth of humanity in 1990, who live on less than a dollar a day and who suffer from hunger.
According to the 2006 review of progress toward the goal, an estimated 824 million people in the developing world were affected by chronic hunger in 2003, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.
Oil prices have roughly tripled since the start of 2002 to above $60 a barrel and as oil resources held by Western firms dwindle, biofuels have seemed viable and the message about climate change has gone mainstream.
Governments and oil companies are seeking alternative fuel sources and President Bush has made it clear he supports a major shift toward biofuels.
Farmers in the United States are raising production of maize, now a lucrative material for biofuel production. Soaring U.S. demand for ethanol -- produced from crops like maize and sugar cane -- has sent maize prices to their highest level in a decade.
Mexicans are feeling the impact. Tens of thousands took to the streets in January when the price of tortillas tripled to 15 pesos ($1.36) a kg. There are about 35 of the flat maize patties that are Mexico's staple food in a kg.
Since half of Mexico lives on $5 a day or less, that's no small jump, and President Felipe Calderon -- a conservative who is a firm believer in free markets -- intervened to cap prices.
NEW ECONOMIC ERA?
Food costs as a proportion of incomes have been on a downward slide since World War Two, at least in the West. Clay says one of the big questions now is whether biofuels could reverse that process and take us into a new economic era which might be yet harder on the poor.
Although he says the current spike in prices will be temporary, he is not convinced food prices will fall back to pre-biofuel boom levels.
"By next year, (food) prices will begin to fall away," he predicts. "But that doesn't mean they'll ever fall to what they were before."
The United States and Brazil, the world's top biofuels producers, are not the only countries jumping on the biofuels bandwagon. China has joined them and now ranks in the global top four for biofuels output.
The incentive to switch land use from food crops to fuel crops mounts with rising biofuel demand, potentially underpinning prices.
Also maintaining upward pressure on food prices are the twin needs of economic boomers China and India to be self-sufficient in fuel, but also in food. China's expanding middle classes want to eat more meat, which requires grain production for feed, in turn keeping food prices high.
While food prices are likely to be dampened by farmers increasing food crop production in the short term, the scope for switching is limited.
Numerous scientists and economists say China and India do not have enough water to increase grain production, whether for animals or fuel.
LESS FOOD AID?
The biofuel boom may also change policies on food aid.
Now U.S. farmers can make good money selling grain to make ethanol, there could be a shift in its policy of giving 99 percent of food aid contributions in goods, rather than cash.
It might now actually be more convenient for the United States to buy its food aid allotment elsewhere, food aid expert Clay says.
The United States is the world's largest food aid donor but has come under heavy criticism, especially from Europeans, who say aid in kind distorts local markets, often takes a long time to arrive and is more expensive to ship than buy locally.
Bush has been trying to persuade Congress to change the law to allow up to 25 percent of the country's food aid in cash, but the bill has been rejected under pressure from farmers who did not want to lose what was more or less a subsidy for their grains.
Bush's bill is up before Congress again this year. For the last few years, the world's annual food aid donations have been around 10 million tons, in line with an international agreement in place since the 1960s for wealthy countries to give at least 5 million tons of food annually.
Donations fluctuate depending on prices, and relief organizations are already bracing themselves for a likely cut in volumes donated.
Clay says when food prices last rose in 1995, parts of the world where food aid was used in development projects -- like school feeding programs -- were the most vulnerable to cutbacks in the following year.
The same places -- Bangladesh, Central America, Eritrea, Ethiopia and North Korea, for example -- will probably be first to feel the pinch now.
(Additional reporting by Nigel Hunt in London and Alister Doyle in Oslo)
Schiller , yes exactly. It is a fringe group doing the slander. Not the organic farmers, who are merely cashing in on the marketing appeal of "organic".
I have no problem with these groups being sucked out of a little cash. I do feel sorry for those not as well off who think they have to buy organic produce for their families because of such slander.
Rojo,
I wouldn't disagree with anyone making an honest living. Accent on 'honest.'
Check out http://www.organicconsumers.org/ and tell me if it isn't slander-based marketing.
No not subsidy but moral support. Too much derision exists from mainstream farming, which points out the fragility of the organic market place and tend to be critical of it. Yet in reality organic production cannot support all requirements, and lack of productivity will lessen supply, boosting conventional returns.
I don't see too many Organic farmers "slandering" , it's mainly the fringe groups who wish the "natural" life for all. If organic farmers can squeeze more money out of these consumers good on them. In the long run conventional farmers will benefit. We might even learn few tricks along the way.
Rojo,
Interesting that you say organic production "should be supported." Organic certification groups in Europe have been clamoring for that for years. They say that without more subsidies, they can't compete on the market.
What "support" do you envision? If you mean the standard approach of slandering conventional farmers, some will become upset. I will be among them.
If you mean subsidies, well, that just means organic can only get around on crutches.
So, what do you mean?
It will be interesting to see the long term consequences of organic production and bio-fuel production on stockpiles . Throw in climate uncertainty and produce prices may be in for a upward run. Not before time.
For this reason I've decided organic production is a good thing for farming and should be supported.
Jennifer,
You would be surprised at the extent of the ulterior motives behind opposition to GM crops. In Europe, for instance, blocking GM canola imports for domestic use raises the price of domestic soy by ~20 cents per bushel.
Domestic seed companies who don't have the technology don't want to lose market share to those who do. And the use of insect-resistant and herbicide tolerant crops has driven some manufacturers of older crop protection into financial straits and beyond.
Africans don't want GM food relief because it interferes with the annual profits made by famine profiteers during the traditional "famine season." The US doesn't segregate GM crops, so that's an ideal way to block the profit-busting food aid.
And of course the rich Africans--the only ones in a position to *export food* from starving nations--are afraid they'll lose the lucrative European market.
Activist groups are right behind them, saying people should donate money, not food. And the money goes to the famine profiteers and activists. Or do I repeat myself.
States poised to join the European Union are anxious to see the welfare payments which will be pumped into their farm economies in hard Euros, so of course they want to block GM technology. Especially since they've heard of the vast premiums available for "organic" crops. Nobody tells them that the premiums don't cover the cost of production, and that's why so few farmers are going organic. Most of Europe's organic food has to be imported as a result.
Which leads us to the organic contingent. Their primary marketing angle is to scare consumers into buying what they sell. The angle isn't what's *in* the food, but what's *not* in the food. Genetic technology has been a marketing miracle for these people. Who are, increasingly, corporations.
Amid all of this, the farmer's voices are generally lost or ignored. They're a minority voting group and tend not to be strident or radical. And, since they make their living selling what they grow into a fickle market, they live in fear of that market--and what fear-peddlers can do to that market.
Our children will look back on this age and wonder at how culture and technology can be trashed by fear and mendacity.