Forum Conf 1 (biotech and crop sector)

So far there has been much focus on Bt products by both the pro and the anti-biotech viewpoints in this forum. I don't think of myself as anti-biotech per se but the example of Bt only serves to highlight my concern.

When one considers the recent US Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on both Bt cotton and corn for the 2000 growing season and the request for increased monitoring of resistance as well as the recent studies from New York University that indicate Bt exudates from Bt-Corn roots and may have unknown consequences for soil ecosystems there are some serious problems that Monsanto, Novartis, DeKalb, Mycogen et al did not consider. Not even the EPA considered these issues until recently.

If one just took the potential impacts on soil ecosystems, developing country farmers could be in a potentially disastrous position. If the fertility of soils is lost due to disruptions in the ecosystem it won't matter how pest or drought resistant your seed variety is. Thus once again taking the example of the farmers in Mindanao [the Philippines, see message on 'Philippines-GM corn - field trial' from Dr. Halos, 24 March...the Moderator], Bt may be a very attractive prospect in the short term but unless adequately monitored it could take away whole livelihoods in the future.

The ultimate problem is that developing countries are still too tied to accepting what the transnationals give them in terms of seed and information relating to that seed if they enter this new market. Bearing in mind that it is possible that NO studies have been done to date on the effects of Bt-crop toxins on communities of insects living in the soil, we need to take far greater strides in developing, and to be realistic, even developed, country capacity building for the purposes of biosafety.

I agree that pesticides involve many of the same problems as GMOs, both in terms of resistance and side effects, but that's why we need to be open in approaches to crop development using only the technology we have to in a given situation - restraint. IPM may be more time consuming, and in some instances have its own problems, but its certainly far more certain a technology than GMOs. Using a GMO because its significantly easier, with a consequent rise in risk, seems like a parallel with "get rich quick" schemes.

Robert Lettington
Law and Policy Consultant
International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
Kenya.

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org For further information on the Electronic Forum on Biotechnology in Food and Agriculture see http://www.fao.org/biotech/forum.asp ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 12:54 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Crop biotechnologies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

From Edgardo Moscardi, Executive Secretary of FONTAGRO (Regional Fund for Agricultural Technology)

Fontagro has been established as a financial and competitive mechanism to promote agricultural projects of cross country interest in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). More in the web page. To discuss the issue of availability of biotechs in our Region, it is useful to distinguish those countries located between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn and those outside this belt. The area within includes all of LAC except for the southern cone of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay , south of Paraguay and Brazil, and northern part of Mexico. These more temperate regions have not been hit severely by globalization and more open economies, and the countries are basically following their traditional competitive advantages in cereals, oil seeds,beef and milk, temperate fruits and vegetables. The use of modern technologies is largely spread and integration with agroindustry and value added to primary production are very significant. More important for these countries, is that the stock of scientific knowledge to support gains in productivity for those products is, as well, quite large, both because the national agricultural research systems (NARS) are more developed and due to international technology transfer from other developed temperate countries of the world. Availability of new tools and biotechs products (GMOs in corn, soybean and tomatoes for example) for these countries is quite good. At the same time these countries have put together IPRs and biosafety rules.

But for the countries located between the Tropics, the situation is quite different. Traditional export crops (sugar cane, coffee and bananas) have maintained their share in total agricultural production, but cereals, oil seed, pulses and tubers have lost pace as price subsidies and other protective measures have been removed. New products entering diversification and crop substitutions in those countries are: tropical fruits, some vegetables, fast-growing tropical trees, aquaculture, medicinal plants for nutraceuticals, among others. Problem is that for these new crops and products, availability of biotechs and the like is in very short supply. The private sector is not expected to invest in research for these products and the public sector resources allocated to agricultural research are scarce. So for the more tropical and subtropical areas, where most of the poor people live, technologies as international public goods are desperately needed. Who can help?? Thanks.

________________________________________
Edgardo R. Moscardi
Secretario Ejecutivo
Fondo Regional de Tecnología Agropecuaria
FONTAGRO
Tel: 202-623-2873
Fax: 202-623-3968
E-mail: edgardom@iadb.org
Web-site: www.fontagro.org
________________________________________

-----Original Message-----
From: Biotech-Mod1
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 3:32 PM
To: 'biotech-room1@mailserv.fao.org'
Subject: Re: crop biotechs - economic/technical/socio-political factors

From Romain Berruyer Ph-D student [berruyer@cirad.fr]. Centre International de Recherche Agronomique pour le developpement(CIRAD), Montpellier, France. The purpose of my Ph-d work is to clone and study a (natural!) resistance gene from rice.

I wish to answer the arguments of Mr Lettington [24 March] who seems to have a critical but constructive point of view.

> A) Economic

It seems true that the biotech industries do not have interest in giving citizens the tools for judging them. We can hope that more information ( eventually biaised ) would be given to populations by biotech industries in the future because of the pressure brought by public opinion. About which dictate the other, between market and technologies, I think this issue is not so important, because both of them are blind systems that are not good guides for mankind, neither democratic. Biotechnologies, and generally technologies, are just tools, and the way they are made or used is not a technological but a political issue.

> B) Technical

> Could this not have tremendous implications for both human and > environmental health?

Yes, but remember that these implications can be tremendously good. It is of course not a reason to use them thoughtlessly. I agree when you say that the side effects of these techniques have to be carefully studied before the widespread use of them at the field level. It is impossible to definitely prove that GMOs do not make any risks, in the same way that one can't prove that a knife is not risky. One can't neither prove that organic crops do not present a risk for human health. Of course, this risk is far higher with strongly DDT treated crops. The use of GMO carrying herbicide resistance, especially in areas wich contains near wild species has to be forbidden. On the other hand, the use of Bt toxin-transformed corn seems more sustainable than the use of the classical hybrids that need massive pesticide income. Alternatively to pesticides, Bt toxin only lies in the plant and rhyzosphere, and has a very small retentivity.

> C) Socio-political

In the most part of Africa, traditional agriculture is not sustainable because of the demographic pressure. The use of GMOs in Africa can be helpful in developing a new sustainable agriculture for a tremendously increasing population. On the other hand, it is undoubtable that GMOs won't give what Africa needs first: roads, scools,peace, and stable democratic states.

> D) Conclusion

For my conclusion, I would say that the problem with biotechnologies is not the tool, but who has the tool. Genetically modified cultivars made by international institutions for local producers and freely distributed to them is a solution: Most of the cost of GMO is not the cost of the transformation itself, but the cost of the isolation and study of a potentially interesting gene. Today, the patents on GMO's are often patents on the natural genes used in the constructions. This point has to be debated for two reasons :

First, genes are part of nature and are the property of mankind. The one who discovers a gene does not invent it. Inventions can be patented, and patent system is a fairly good way to promote inventions and technological progress, but discoveries can't.

Secondly, the impossibility to patent natural genes would lead to the wide use of them in "local GMOs" obtained by transgenesis of local cultivars: biotech industries can patent Bt corn, and the rights of this patent can be paid by farmers in developed countries, but it would be useful, for example, to make freely available Bt-modified traditional corn cultivars in Mexico or Bolivia. Such a GMO proliferation would have, of course, to be strictly controlled in an environmental point of view, but would permit to harvest benefits of Biotechnologies without endangering global biodiversity and without falling into the power of international biotechnological industries.

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