Don’t let the GM crop wars obscure the agbiotech vision

Science|Business’s Nuala Moran

But the area remains mired in a controversy that has already cost Europe dear in terms of research and investment in agricultural biotechnology, and the failure to develop any meaningful commercial sector.

While this spilt milk represents a significant economic loss, the greater problem is that the continuing argument over first-generation genetically modified crops – remember, we’re talking 1980s technology here – has created a massive roadblock to future, more sophisticated and more refined agbiotech developments.

Europe’s concerted anti-GM mindset is standing in the way of crucial advances in biotechnology that will promote sustainability and protect the environment. Locked in an impasse over first-generation GM crops, Europe is failing to notice that the technology has moved on.

The agbiotech aversion

These early products may indeed be clunky and unsuited to growing conditions here, but such reservations have been allowed to develop into an aversion to all aspects of agbiotech. Think what would have happened if the public had so firmly, and in such a once-and-for-all way, rejected mobile phones because the early models were as big as house bricks.

It has been estimated that by 2030 around a third of chemicals and materials will be produced from biological sources and through biocatalysis. Achieving this will depend on the development of novel plants, providing increased yields and suitable for industrial processing.   

But the row over GM crops continues to obscure this larger vision of biotech applied to develop sustainable industrial processes, biofuels being called up to combat global warming, genetically modified plants being used as factories for therapeutics proteins, enzymes and biopolymers, and – following on from their first generation cousins – increasing crop yields and bringing marginal land into production.

The failure to win acceptance of biotech crops has been put down to public aversion to risk.

But the public should be told: doing nothing is riskier.

Of course there are risks, and there will be setbacks in the development and adoption of next generation biotechnologies. That’s why we have regulators, assessing products as they are developed, and monitoring them when they reach the market.

But the inescapable fact is that the consequences of not applying these green technologies will be greater, both environmentally and economically.