Agence France Presse / Richard Ingham
PARIS, April 26 (AFP) - Genetically-modified food faces a confused future that depends on overcoming consumer scepticism and resolving a host of ethical and regulatory problems, the OECD warns.
In its annual report on the state of world agriculture, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says the revolutionary crops have a glittering potential -- but one that remains clouded by doubt.
The next wave of these inventions could help ease food shortages for the world's two billion malnourished people, for instance by enabling farmers to grow high-protein rice in areas where the climate is harsh or the soil degraded by misuse, it says.
Other crops could have great benefits for the consumer and the environment, such as coloured cotton plants that alleviate the need for chemical dyes and plants that exude biodegradable plastic.
"The potential for such developments seems very large and thus envisioned benefits of the agricultural applications of this technology are substantial," the report says.
But the document describes a bruising experience for the first wave of engineered crops, highlighting the array of challenges facing the agribiotech industry.
These first crops are predominantly corn, soybean and cotton that have had genes added to make them resistant to herbicides or thwart pests. The United States, with 72 percent of sown acreage, Argentina (17 percent) and Canada (10 percent) account for virtually all of the production, although China is also expanding transgenic output fast.
Among the problems encountered:
-- Consumer concerns about the long-term impact of modified crops on health and the environment. These fears are far more prevalent in Europe than elsewhere, and North Americans are overall quite in favour of the use of biotechnology for food production, the report says.
Public worries have driven governments to adopt differing and sometimes conflicting approaches.
Among OECD countries, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand joined the European Union (EU) and Switzerland last year in requiring genetically-modified ingredients to be labelled, but this is not the case in the United States and Canada.
-- Confusion about whether transgenetic crops offer a clear benefit to farmers, arguably the biggest factor in whether these novel products will really take off.
Genetically-modified seed is more expensive than conventional rivals but offers potentially big cost savings because it requires less insecticides and weedkiller.
But, the report says, the view is far more complex than that and no overall conclusion on profitability can be made.
With the exception of cotton, which had a "positive and significant" impact on the bottom line, the profitability of herbicide-resistant crops has been mixed, it says.
This is because crops in some areas have required more spraying than expected and there have been differences, year to year and region to region, in the intensity of the pest problem.
Fuelling profit uncertainty is the possibility that farmers, distributors and food manufacturers may have to separate genetic crops from standard crops in order to meet labelling requirements.
In bulk crops, that would entail an enormous increase in costs, which could only be recouped if farmers sensed there was a big premium in the offing: that conventional corn, for instance, can command a higher price than the engineered variety or vice versa.
-- Worries that the development of food biotechnology may be stifled from within, and ethical issues such as whether a living organism should be patented.
The report notes that the sector is dominated by half a dozen major corporations, which have aggressively bought up smaller firms and now have a vertical involvement from research and development to field inputs and food processing.
"Their growing concentration may not just lead to the loss of economic efficiency but also have a negative impact on future innovation," the OECD warns.
(posted without permission)
