The Observer (UK)
As the world begins to starve it's time to take GM seriously
With the Earth's population continuing to soar, it will be the poor
who go hungry, not the eco-warriors destroying modified crops
By Robin McKie,
Sunday April 27 2008


http://www.guardian.co.uk:80/commentisfree/2008/apr/27/gmcrops.food

As front pages go, the cover of Nature is scarcely a stunner. It
depicts two rows of trees facing each other across the page. One row
is tatty, the other clean and healthy. And apart from a few grubby
bushes in the background, that's your lot. It makes a gardening
catalogue look exciting.

But this restrained imagery rewards closer inspection. Those trees,
bearing papayas, are growing in a Hawaiian plantation and the
difference between the two rows has critical importance to the world's
mounting food crisis.

It transpires that the stunted trees on the right, each bearing only a
handful of fruit, are victims of papaya ringspot virus, a disease that
devastates yields and is endemic in Hawaii. By contrast, the papaya
trees in the other row, on the left, are healthy and disease-free,
because they have been genetically modified to resist ringspot.

As a demonstration of the potential of modern plant technology, the
image speaks volumes. Transgenic crops may be disparaged and dug up
every time scientists grow them as part of their trials in the UK, but
as Nature's cover shows, the technology seems ripe to help feed a
planet whose population will rise from 6.5 billion people, many of
them already hungry, to around nine billion by 2040.

It is a point stressed by crop experts such as Professor Chris Pollack
of the University of Wales. 'To stop widespread starvation, we will
either have to plough up the planet's last wild places to grow more
food or improve crop yields. GM technology allows farmers to do the
latter - without digging up rainforests. It is therefore perverse to
rule out that technology for no good reason. Yet it still seems some
people are willing to do so. That picture of transgenic papaya plants
on Nature's cover shows how wrong they are.'

The trouble is that GM crops represent everything that the environment
movement has come to hate, though it was not the technology itself
that originally made greenies froth at the mouth. It was its promotion
and marketing by international conglomerates such as Monsanto a decade
ago that raised the hackles. As a result, GM crops have become a
lightning rod for protests about globalisation. 'GM technology permits
companies to ensure that everything we eat is owned by them,' claimed
campaigner George Monbiot.

Perhaps he is right. However, it is questionable to go one step
further and insist, as some campaigners do, that because GM technology
has been misused by biotechnology conglomerates, it is therefore
justifiable to ignore its usefulness completely. The science can still
help feed the world, particularly through the introduction of drought
and disease resistance to staple crops such as potatoes and rice.
'Britain and Europe have isolated themselves from the rest of the
world over transgenic crops,' says Bill McKelvey, principal of the
Scottish Agricultural College, in Edinburgh. 'We have decided the
technology, for no good reason, is dangerous. The rest of the world
doesn't thinks so and has got on with using it. For example, GM soya
is grown throughout America and Asia. It doesn't worry people there
for the simple reason that no one has ever died of eating GM food. On
the other hand, a lot of people could soon die because they have no
food of any kind.'

Tough luck, you might say. That's not Europe's problem. It's the
developing world that will get it in the neck. Why should we care?
What have we got to gain by turning to GM? These are interesting
questions to which there are several answers and one of the most
important concerns climate change.

The world is warming and is destined to do so for decades to come as
cars, factories and power plants continue to pump out carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases. As a result, many grain-producing regions
- in North America, Australia and parts of Africa - are expected to
suffer significant changes in climate that will devastate crop
production. By contrast, other regions - northern Europe and Canada,
in particular - will find weather changes will boost crop growing.
They will become the world's food stores, an issue highlighted by
Professor Les Firbank of North Wyke Research Station in Devon.

'Our best knowledge suggests Canada and countries in Europe will have
to take on an even greater share of world food production,' he says.
'It is therefore important to ask now if we have the moral right to
continue to ignore technologies, including the genetic manipulation of
crops, that in a few years could insure this food production reaches
an absolute maximum and will help the planet provide enough food for
the nine billion people who will be living on it.'

Britain and many other European countries have considerable expertise
in plant and crop biology research, it should be stressed. But that
work is constantly frustrated. Crop trials are dug up and funding is
blocked by governments embarrassed to be seen backing such work. The
effects are rarely beneficial. Consider the example of potato blight.
Its prevalence rose rapidly last year, threatening a crop that is a
staple foodstuff for many people round the world.

Yet scientists insist it would be relatively easy to introduce a basic
gene construct into potatoes that would make them resistant to blight.
Europe has the expertise but is thwarted by gangs of men and women who
trash GM crop fields. As Sir Robert May, the government's former chief
scientific adviser, once remarked, these individuals display 'the
attitude of a privileged elite who think there will be no problem
feeding tomorrow's growing population'. May was speaking, with
remarkable prescience, at the turn of the century.

This is not to say that transgenic crops alone will save the world
from starvation. Major improvements in transport, which will allow
fresh food to be taken to market without rotting, are needed, for
example. Simply bringing political stability to a country would also
help. 'Zimbabwe's food problems won't be helped through GM crop
technology,' admits McKelvey. 'It needs a political solution.
Nevertheless, the technology has a key role to play in tackling the
overall problem of global food shortages - but only if we let it.'

That is the crucial issue. Is society ready to change its attitude to
GM crops? Major companies - Debenhams is the latest - still announce
GM bans, no doubt under pressure from protest groups. But given the
science's growing role in helping world food shortages, such decisions
should really be seen as acts of shame, not pronouncements of pride.
And some scientists believe they can now detect shifts in public
attitudes. 'I think we are approaching a tipping point when society
will start looking at this as a science that is not going to damage
the planet but actually help it,' says McKelvey.

I hope he is right, though I am not so confident. Environmental
campaigners, although they do great work, can often display remarkable
intransigence. For example, they remain committed to the idea that
nuclear energy has no role to play in helping to combat global
warming. They react with equal scorn to GM crops. The latter is
certainly not a panacea for the ills we will face. On other hand, it
certainly has a role to play in helping to save people from
starvation, a fact that is worth repeating now and again.

• Robin McKie is The Observer's science editor