The recent ABARE report on the impact on organic producers of the introduction of GM canola states "Only very small amounts, even none, of organic canola oil or organic canola meal were produced in recent years." and "...this study concludes that the commercialisation of GM canola would be expected to have very little, if any direct impact on these organic sectors in Australia,…". It goes on to state that "...it is possible that organic producers might benefit from needing to implement less costly agricultural chemical contact avoidance measures."

The organic industry has continued to oppose GM crops, despite the possible benefits identified by ABARE. While organic growers may decide not to embrace GM crops themselves, it is reasonable to ask what right they have to deny access to this technology which has delivered worldwide benefits for over a decade. In Australia, every representative farm organisation from the peak body The National Farmers Federation down now support the removal of the moratoria to provide farmers with choice

Worldwide, 95 per cent of soy that is traded is GM, 75 per cent of traded corn, and 70 per cent of traded canola are GM. ABARE with many others, Nuffield Scholars, and our largest canola exporter CBH all state that there is no premium for our conventional canola over our GM competitors.

Yearly we import 10 times as much GM soy meal as we grow, we import significant amounts of GM corn products, our major commercial cooking oil comes from GM cotton varieties, and this year we even imported a boatload of GM canola as a result of the drought impact.

These products met stringent environmental and human health requirements and were handled along the supply chain in a manner that ensured specific customer needs were met and there was no adverse impact on anyone or any industry.

Being an Australian cotton grower, I am one of the few fortunate farmers in this country allowed to choose whether or not I access biotechnology. From a tenuous start 11 years ago, my peers now choose to plant over 90 per cent of their area to GM varieties. The outcome: an 85 per cent reduction in pesticides applied, more fibre, oil and meal from every acre and ounce of water, and cheaper food and fibre for the consumers of this country and the world.

The environment and rural society has improved by a magnitude that could not have been even imagined 10 years ago.

At the beginning, we were told it was the end of the world as we knew it- forests of resistant weeds, poor yields, uncontrollable secondary insects, our farms and souls being owned by Monsanto, and our neighbours devastated by our GM use.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now we are on the verge of biotech developments that will shape the world for the betterment of mankind for generations to come, and my farming peers in the grain industry are still not allowed to even to choose whether or not they grow GM crops.

In this country, we have identified novel frost, drought and salt tolerant traits which could have the most outstanding beneficial effects on our economy, our environment, and the world's greenhouse challenge, but under current law they will be sold to our competitors to use against us.

Against formidable subsidies of our competitors, Australian farmers have always stayed competitive by the application of innovative technology before our competitors. In this case, we are being denied the most productive and beneficial technology of our lifetime.

A well respected UK study shows the greenhouse gas reduction with biotech crops to already be equivalent to removing 4 million cars off roads annually! One of the major ways we will overcome our greenhouse problems is to produce more food off less acres. Now that we are also being called on to produce fuel in the form of ethanol and biodiesel, it becomes doubly important to stop ploughing up more forests to produce our requirements, and the advancements being made by biotechnology across the world will be shown by history to be one of the most important reforms that will help save the world.

The reality is that just as we all have an obligation to reduce our greenhouse footprint, farmers have the same obligations, and those farmers allowed access to biotechnology are already well down that path.

But, although farmers in more than 22 countries that encompass 53 per cent of the world's population already grow GM crops, even they are just at the dawn of this exciting new era. Healthier foods from biotech crops, crops that are drought, salt and disease resistant on top of the ones that are already insect resistant will reform the world of agriculture. We will make real contributions to a healthier wellbeing. An example is that even a 10 per cent ethanol mix in our fuel would reduce hydrocarbon particulates by 50 per cent which would reduce respiratory deaths which are currently 2-3 fold our road deaths, by more than 50 per cent. But we can only produce ethanol by growing more crop, and cutting down more forests is not the answer to growing more crop.

Farmers are always concerned about maintaining fair trading relations with any major supplier; not just Monsanto and Bayer, but also BP, Shell, Toyota, GM, and Microsoft spring to mind. The only way to have a strong bargaining position is to have a strong alternative, and with cotton and canola, conventional crops are the alternative. For multinationals to charge us too much is to drive us to the conventional alternatives, and they lose completely.

Instead of being dominated by Monsanto, Australian farmers have had their access to technologies blocked by pressure groups including the multinational green groups. Australian canola farmers are losing completely by being denied their rights of access to this safe and tested technology.

Freedom from choice is not freedom of choice.

Source:

Jeff Bidstrup (22.5.07). Opinion: Farmers need freedom of choice on GM. ABC News (Australia) (http://www.abc.net.au/news/opinion/items/200705/s1928104.htm) Reproduced with permission of the author

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