Graham Brookes speaks at seminar in Chicago

CHICAGO — Farmers worldwide enjoyed nearly $20 billion in net economic benefits from the adoption ofgenetically modified crops in the year 2011 alone, according to a new report.

“The economic benefits farmers realize are clear and amounted to an average of over $130/hectare in 2011,” said Graham Brookes, director of PG Economics, and co-author of the report. “The majority of these benefits continue to increasingly go to farmers in developing countries. The environment is also benefiting as farmers increasingly adopt conservation tillage practices, build their weed management practices around more benign herbicides and replace insecticide use with insect resistant GM crops. The reduction in pesticide spraying and the switch to no till cropping systems is continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.”

Insect-resistant traits have been especially important in the developing world, Brookes told CBI in an interview, while herbicide tolerance has provided the largest benefit in North and South America.

“Insect resistance has delivered increased yield from increased control of pests in cotton,” he said, which has been very beneficial in countries such as India where pest control has traditionally exposed farmers to pesticides.

“IR technology has solved a lot of the problem,” he said. “We’ve put insect resistance in the seed, and this has delivered health and safety benefits to farmers.” Farmers in India and China have enjoyed $25 billion in net economic benefits -a staggering amount considering India adopted Bt cotton only in 2002.  Cotton yield in India has shot up 40 percent since biotech cotton was introduced, making India a major exporter of cotton, he said.

In North and South America, herbicide tolerance has had economic benefits but also “non-pecuniary benefits” in making it easier for farmers to manage their operations and has encouraged no-till farming, which has had environmental benefits such as more carbon sequestration and less soil erosion, Brookes said.

The report can be viewed here:  http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/

“Often lost in the debate about GMOs is the need for poor farmers to have choices in the face of hard conditions.”

With those words, the world’s greatest philanthropist and one of its richest men, Bill Gates, reminded his more than 10 million Twitter followers that using agricultural biotechnology is a choice that poor farmers around the world should be able to make. It’s a choice that some countries have chosen to deny to their farmers, unfortunately for political reasons rather than scientific ones.

Gates was calling attention to an article on the Gates Foundation blog by Sam Dryden, director of the foundation’s agricultural development team. A native of Kentucky, Dryden has worked all over the world and now oversees effort to help millions of the world’s poorest farming families raise their productivity and incomes.

“What is so often missed in the debate about GMOs is choice,” Dryden pointed out. “The choice for a poor farmer to consider planting a maize crop which could cope with droughts that are becoming ever more frequent; the choice to grow rice that provides the nutrition her child needs to prevent blindness; or put simply, a choice that we in the West take for granted.”

Giving farmers access to solutions that deliver more productive or more nutritious crops should be a “decision based on scientific debate and research” and subject to approval by national regulatory bodies, he wrote.

“Once proven (and so far, GMOs have been proven safe and effective), the use of these tools must be a choice for farmers to make,” he wrote. “And farmers are choosing GMOs in their millions: GMO crops are the fastest growing technology (in the U.S., in Brazil, in India, Argentina) - because when farmers have access to more productive, less resource-intensive crops, they seize the opportunity.”

Dryden also noted that 90% of the cotton crop in Indian is genetically modified. The 19 million acres of GM cotton in India were planted by six million farmers - meaning that the average GM cotton farm in India comprises only about three acres. These varieties require much less spraying of insecticide, he notes. It is “the farmers themselves who are seeing the benefits of all the tools in the box,” Dryden wrote. Read more.

British Environment Secretary Owen Paterson voiced his support this week for the production of genetically engineered crops in the UK, stating that there were “real environmental benefits” to the technology, BBC News reports. In an interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph, he emphasized the potential role for ag biotech in advancing the British farming sector. Paterson also said accusations that biotech crops are unsafe are “nonsense” and “humbug.”

Secretary Paterson’s pro-biotech stance was echoed by the British government, which confirmed that it was encouraging European Commission officials to make it easier for farmers to grow GM crops. “We think this should be based on the science and we need to ensure public safety, but if we can speed up a slow [regulatory] system then we should do that,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson explained. Read more.

Earlier today, we introduced some of the farmers who will participate in the Global Farmer-to-Farmer Roundtable. Here is what other farmers have to say about the state of global agriculture.

What misperceptions about global agriculture would you most like to correct? Why do you think the misperception exists?   

Grant Dyck (Canada): The biggest misconception is around biotechnology.   Many activists would have you believe it is harmful to the environment and yet I see it as having a very positive effect on producing crops in a more sustainable way (i.e. more production per acre with less harmful environmental impacts relating to soil, water and energy use).

Roberto Peiretti (Argentina): The greatest misperception about global agriculture is the lack of a proper comprehension of the crucial and so far non-replaceable role that the agricultural global food system plays at producing the food for humanity. Our civilization, as we know it at the present, would not be viable without agriculture. To properly understand the meaning of the previous statement it should have taken into consideration that if hypothetically agriculture would stop its operation today, the global food stock in average would be exhausted in around sixty days.

Next week, farmers from around the world will gather in Des Moines for the Global Farmer-to-Farmer Roundtable, held in conjunction with the Word Food Prize Symposium, hosted by Truth About Trade & Technology (TATT), and sponsored in part by CBI. The farmers will discuss the future of agriculture and how innovations in farming can promote food security around the globe. In preparation for this exciting event, we asked the farmers to share their thoughts on agriculture. Meet a few farmers below and hear their thoughts on food security.

This year, the theme of the World Food Prize Symposium is “take it to the farmer.”  How would you describe the role of farmers in feeding the world?

Jose Luis Romeo Martin (Spain): I think Norman Borlaug gave us the correct answer: If you can feed the world you must give the technology and the seeds to the farmers. In many countries in Africa hunger could be solved giving the farmers good seeds and good fertilizers and teaching them the best way to use them. And giving the seeds to the farmers doesn’t solve only hunger. It solves poverty also. In Asia I think the problem is different. There are a lot of people in Asia and they are using all the land they can. And I think the only way to increase the yield is using the new biotech crops.

Giorgio Fidenato (Italy): The role of farmers is analogous to that of other entrepreneurs. Food production is an entrepreneurial activity like any other and must respond to the law of supply and demand. Like all activities it continuously evolves toward the goal of greater efficiency. If the farming sector were left alone and there were a truly free market, innovation in agriculture would be continuous and could certainly solve world hunger.

Camilla Illich (Brazil): Data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that by the year 2050, the world will have around 10 billion people, in other words, from the current situation there would be 4 billion-plus people to feed. Compounding the problem of feeding the world, emerging countries like Brazil have been reducing the number of farmers who have the responsibility to feed urban populations. Given this reality, the focus of the farmers in agriculture is to promote high productivity, or yield average (plant and animal), with help of technology and biotechnology. Farmers are one of the most important players in feeding the world.