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17 May 2004
GM Crops Could Greatly Benefit Poor, FAO Reports
Both farmers and consumers can benefit, U.N. report says
Washington -- Biotechnology and genetically modified (GM) food crops have enormous potential for improving the lives of both poor farmers and poor consumers, but they should not be viewed as a perfect solution to the developing world's agricultural problems.
That is the conclusion of "The State of Food and Agriculture, 2003-2004," an annual report produced by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
Dr. Prabhu Pingali, director of the FAO's Agricultural and Development Economics Division, summarized the findings at the release of the report May 17 during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.
Pingali, who is also president of the International Association of Agricultural Economists, told reporters, "Biotechnology should be seen as one tool in a whole basket of tools that are available, that includes other conventional technologies, conventional seeds, crop management technologies, integrated pest management and also better policies that help farmers come out of poverty."
Biotechnology, according to Pingali, can help poor farmers by raising their productivity and can help poor consumers by reducing food prices through productivity gains and the reduced use of pesticides and fertilizers due to new varieties of seeds that are hardier and resistant to blight. Lower food prices are especially important to poor consumers, he said, because they tend to pay a disproportionately large share of their meager incomes for food.
"We know from the experience of the Green Revolution that technical change, investment in research and technology generation have led to an improvement of livelihoods, food security and income of millions and millions of farmers around the world. Particularly farmers in Asia and Latin America have gained substantially from the Green Revolution that took place in the early seventies -- the Green Revolution that took place for rice and for wheat," Pingali said.
The question that the current report addresses, he said, is can the "Gene Revolution" (the use of biotechnology) achieve the same result?
When looking at the Gene Revolution, the potential is very clear, Pingali said. However, he warned, there is a very big difference between the Green Revolution of yesterday and the Gene Revolution of today. That difference, he said, is that the locus of agricultural research has shifted.
"In the Green Revolution, agricultural research was predominantly a public sector enterprise. Governments and public research institutions drove the process of technology change, drove the process of disseminating and delivering these technologies. The public sector was not just the national public sector but was the international public sector as well," he said, and that helped provide an international medium for exchanging those technologies.
Looking at the Gene Revolution, he said, much of the investment in agricultural research and biotechnology is driven by the private sector and thus the private sector is understandably targeting commercial agriculture, where profit returns are high. For that reason, he explained, the types of genetically engineered products in the market today are mostly restricted to four crops: cotton, canola, corn and soybeans.
Pingali said that 99 percent of the genetically modified crops, he said, are restricted to just six countries: the United States, Canada, Argentina, China, Brazil and South Africa.
"So one finds that while the potential is there, the existing capacity, the existing adoption levels are very much restricted to a very small section of the global agricultural system and very much restricted to commercial farming households," he said.
The gap that now exists between the current situation of poor farm communities and what they could potentially achieve is a gap that needs to be bridged, he added.
For that reason, Pingali said, the report argues that there is an urgent need to address the subsistence crops that are of particular importance to poor farmers -- rice, wheat, white maize, cassava, sorghum and millet.
Pingali said the report also argues that the public sector must be much more actively involved in biotechnology research. So far, he added, that has not happened because of intellectual property right protections and a lack of money.
Pingali stressed that the difference between what the public sector can invest and what the private sector is investing in biotechnology today is "quite enormous." The private sector is now pouring some $3 billion into biotech research annually, he said, versus $500 million each by the governments of countries like India, China and Brazil.
"Even where the will exists in the public sector, the ability of public sector institutions to target the needs of the poor is constrained by serious institutional barriers" such as a lack of regulatory capacity, a lack of capacity to deal with intellectual property issues, limited national agricultural research capacity and limited market infrastructure, he said.
Pingali noted that "the public sector also faces a challenge in dealing with the controversy" over genetically modified crops. "The debate ... often seems to degenerate into a global war of rhetoric in which supporters and opponents hurl accusations at each other," he lamented.
The FAO, Pingali explained, believes the debate should be more "nuanced. It is not appropriate to be either for or against biotechnology," he said.
"Biotechnology is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. The impact of biotechnology -- like any tool -- depends on how it is used, and that is the big message that we try to bring out," he added.
The report stresses, according to Pingali, that a "balanced view" is needed on the potential and ultimate use of biotechnology.
The FAO report, according to Pingali, spends "quite a lot of time" looking at the impact of biotechnology. Existing evidence points out, he said, that the current genetically modified crops in the field show yield improvements stem from reduction of pest damage and lower costs.
In China, he said, documentation shows that for up to 400 million small farmers who are growing biotechnology (BT) cotton (on about 30 percent of the cotton area in China), the average yield has increased by about 20 percent relative to conventional varieties. Pesticide costs have dropped by 70 percent, he added, and that has led to a "fairly significant" increase in farm profits.
Pingali said it is incorrect to assume that advantages from the use of bio-engineered crops largely just benefit the seed manufacturers. The report clearly demonstrates, he said, that the benefits "have been shared much more widely than believed" by both farmers and consumers, and industry as well.
On the health effects of GM crops, Pingali said the report concludes that with regard to the existing GM crops in the field today, there is no evidence to show that there are any adverse health effects to consumers.
He noted, however, that conclusion on the environmental impact of GM crops are less clear.
For biotechnology to reach poor farmers, Pingali said, there must be a "strong and vibrant" public research system at both the national and international levels as well as strong private-public partnerships, which require incentives for the private sector. Clear protections on intellectual property rights, a good regulatory system and capacity-building for agricultural research must also be in place, he concluded.
The State of Food and Agriculture report, one of the oldest annual U.N. reports, has been published continuously since 1947. Each year, the report examines a different global agricultural trend.
This year the FAO report focuses on biotechnology and genetically modified crops because 68 million hectares of cropland worldwide -- about 5 percent of the world's total crop area -- currently are growing such crops. That area is expanding at a rate of 15 percent annually, the report says.
The full report is available electronically at www.fao.org/es/esa.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
