London (15.5.08) – In an earlier article (http://www.cropgen.org/article_135.html) we reported on the approaching problems for the European livestock industry resulting from the snail’s pace at which the EU approves new GM varieties and the consequent likelihood of European farmers being deprived of essential animal feed as new strains of GM soya are adopted by farmers in producer countries.

With such strains not approved in the EU, their import will be forbidden and a crisis will develop. European meat production and exports will fall, perhaps with replacement supplies of meat having to be imported from the very countries that will be producing the new soybeans and feeding it to their cattle! “Absurd”, you might think. Daft, indeed, but then the EU does seem to have an endless capacity for getting GM matters wrong.

Things are moving forward as expected: Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybean seed is coming along in the US with their expected introduction to the market later this year.

The new seeds offer the same weed control protection as the first generation coupled with higher yield potential following further genetic improvement.

Experience from the introduction of the earlier GM traits suggests rapid uptake not only in North America but also in Argentina and Brazil, two other major areas of soybean production – and of meat exports.

How long does Europe have to get its act together? Survival in 2008 seems likely as this year’s soybean crop will not yet reflect the use of the new beans. But next year, as the second generation product enters the North and South American soya market which are not segregated with respect to GM/non-GM and will not distinguish between first (EU approved) and second (EU non-approved) generation product, Europe will face a major problem.

Just how bad that may be is shown in the following pie charts (reproduced by permission of the American Soybean Association). Fig. 1 shows how important soybean imports are to the European meat industry; at a time of high global food prices reflectin various supply shortages, it is not going to be easy to replace imports from the US (and later from Argentina and Brazil) with EU-approved vartieites from elsewhere.

Contrast that with the relatively small part exports to Europe play in the US soybean export market (Fig 2) and the problem becomes all to clear. With global food short, the US will have little diffiiculty finding replacement markets for the soybeans Europe will no longer be able to imported because of its failure to approve the new strains.

And what will poor Europe do then?

Source:

Next generation of RR soybeans arriving soon. American Agriculturalist (30.4.08) (http://www.americanagriculturist.com/index.aspx?ascxid=fpStory&fpsid=33539&fpstid=2)

The two pie charts are reproduced by permission of the American Soybean Association

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