2 Reports At Odds On Biotech Crops

A researcher works a type of soybean genetically modified to resist Roundup herbicide. (Photo: Courtesy of Monsanto)

Countries worldwide are largely shunning biotech crops, Freese said in an interview, with virtually all the increased acreage in a handful countries such as Argentina and Brazil that are growing "Roundup-ready" soybeans on huge corporate farms -- not for poor people but for export to rich countries and as animal feed.

Meanwhile, Freese said, studies such as a recent one in the journal Nature Biotechnology have found that insecticide-exuding Bt cotton is increasingly failing to control insects, so farmers "end up having to buy pesticides anyway, after paying roughly threefold more for the bt cotton seeds."

Each camp accused the other of using data selectively.

James said that farmers reaped $7 billion in benefits from biotech crops in 2006. He said that because of those crops, 289,000 fewer metric tons of the active ingredient in pesticides were applied to fields between 1996 and 2006, resulting in a 15 percent reduction in negative environmental effects. Huge amounts of fuel were saved by not having to spray those pesticides, shrinking carbon dioxide emissions by 2.6 billion pounds in 2006, equivalent to taking half a million cars off the road, he said.

The Friends of the Earth report says that the growing use of Roundup-resistant crops has brought a 15 percent increase in the use of that herbicide on soybeans, cotton and corn from 1994 to 2005, with a 28 percent jump in 2006 alone.

Meanwhile, the resistance gene has spread to several weed species, making them immune to the herbicide. And some biotech genes have contaminated conventional crops, forcing major recalls and losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Freese and others noted.

"Significantly, biotechnology companies have not commercially introduced a single GM crop with increased yield, enhanced nutrition, drought tolerance or salt tolerance," the report finds.

Hope Shand of the ETC Group, a civil society organization based in Montreal, said that as the number of biotech acres has swelled, the seed industry has shrunk.

"In 2006, Monsanto's biotech seeds and traits accounted for 88 percent of the total world area devoted to genetically modified crops," she said. "This is a staggering level of corporate control over the world's seed supply."