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GM Issues
Opinion to The West Australian: Kim Chance Blind to GM Facts
Bill Crabtree (M.Sci) and Rick Roush
Multi-award winning sustainable agricultural scientist and Morawa farmer
Dean of Land and Environment, University of Melbourne
Former Agricultural Minister Kim Chance has continued to ignore the widely documented environmental and economic advantages of GM crops, with statements almost as wild as his claim in the WA Parliament that eating GM food would make you grow a tail! Limited by space, we correct here just some of the claims that Mr Chance made about GM crops on 28 January in The West Australian (page 20).
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 24 March 2010 |
Consumers do consume GM foods. GM canola oil has no DNA or protein and cannot be distinguished in any way from non-GM canola. For the past 15 years, most of us have been eating fish and chips cooked in Australian cottonseed oil produced from GM cotton, which also has no GM component. Most pork and poultry and some beef and sheep meats grown in WA come from animals fed GM soy meal imported from the Americas. Yeasts and enzymes produced by GM organisms have been used to produce wine, cheese, bread and beer since the 1980s.
The EU allows GM crops. The EU has been importing Canadian canola oil derived from GM canola through the United Arab Emirates and China for about five years and has been consuming it safely. GM corn is grown in some EU countries, and the EU has imported millions of tonnes of GM soybeans for more than a decade.
Consumers and farmers benefit from GM crops. GM crops have reduced the use of persistent pesticides and reduced tillage around the world, with huge benefits in reducing soil erosion and carbon emissions, and have done so with increased yields in canola, which ultimately lowers production costs and prices. GM canola will reduce our over-reliance on the herbicide atrazine, which is being increasingly banned around the world.
Canadian growers recognize GM canola as an outstanding success story. More than 90% of the Canadian crop is GM and exports have continued to soar. In the early 1990s, Australia grew about 1.7 Mt of canola while Canada grew about 2.5 Mt. Since the advent of Canadian GM canola in 1996, canola production has quadrupled to 10 Mt, but Australia’s has dropped.
Independent GM trials showed yield advantages. Last year, the 12 Australia-wide GM canola trials showed the best open pollinated GM canola had 13% higher yields than the best non-GM atrazine-tolerant canola. This is a 240 kg/ha grain yield increase with GM canola. With canola currently achieving $420 per tonne, this is $100 per hectare more. While GM seed may cost $50/ha more, the GM herbicide package is about $20/ha less than for atrazine tolerant canola. So a farmer would be in front by $80/ha and, for some farmers, this may be all the profit there is in some years. This is why GM canola is important to farmers and rural communities.
GM Crops are supported by growers. Chance notes that 90% of 400 submissions to the GM Crops Free Act were against GMs. What Chance fails to point out is that many of the anti GM submissions were form letters, not from farmers, and most did not address the issues raised in the review. The WAFarmers and the PGA, representing thousands of farmers in WA, sent only one submission each and both requested a lifting of the ban on GM crops. Not one credible representative farmer organisation in WA is against letting farmers have a choice of growing GM crops. Shouldn’t farmers decide their market opportunities, not non-farmers? Would you let someone else tell you how to run your business if they had no risk of harm, and you were at risk for a lower income?
There is no strong market demand for remaining GM free. The Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and many other independent studies consistently show no market premium for non-GM canola. The internet also shows this – compare Fremantle (non-GM) canola with Vancouver (GM) canola. The international canola exchange is based on Canadian GM canola and there is actually a discount for our non-GM canola over GM canola of $20 (or 5%) per tonne.
Growers can continue to produce non-GM canola. Two years of GM canola cultivation in the Eastern states show segregation is possible, and farmers are able to grow and sell non-GM canola and co-exist. The 2009 WA government trials confirmed this.
GM companies do allow testing of their products. There are hundreds of papers in the scientific literature by University and Government scientists worldwide looking at everything from agronomic performance to fitness for consumption.
Many of ex-Minister Chance’s other erroneous arguments over many years are addressed on this website. We are not blind to the concerns about GM, and indeed reject some proposed applications of GM, but it is Chance who remains blind to the evidence that GM crops can help reduce environmental risks while increasing the financial survival of farmers. Fortunately, with the issue tested in an election, Western Australia has moved on without him.
GM defence
Bill Crabtree, Consultant and Morawa farmer
Bee Winfield and Stewart Seesink in their letters on 10th December are quite illogical and aggressive to Terry Redman and Ian Edwards. But do their emotional claims stack up? I wonder if either of them have ever visited Canada and witnessed firsthand GM canola over there.
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | January 2010 |
Newman’s motives revealed?
Bill Crabtree, 19th November 2009, Letter to Editor – Farm Weekly WA.
Letter to the editor –17th January 2010
Julie Newman makes more inaccurate GM claims in the Farm Weekly on 7th January. I was approached by Borden farmer John Stone to see if we could develop a frost tolerant wheat using GM technology. John was one of the three Directors for Green Blueprint which was set up for this purpose. John has been saying for over 10 years (to GRDC included) that frost is a serious issue that needs the best science to manage.
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 17 January 2010 |
GRDC and frost event
Bill Crabtree, 19th November 2009, Letter to Editor – Farm Weekly, WA
It is pleasing that GRDC see frost as an important issue. I note that Neil Young is taking much of the credit for the recent GRDC event that gathered together those with an understanding of frost. I am disappointed that Neil’s invitation list did not include anyone from the WA group who tried to launch a project on frost tolerant wheat.
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 19 November 2009 |
GM wheat response
Opinion or Letter to Editor
GM wheat will happen, and the sooner the better! Those that get the jump on the rest of the world with this technology will make the first stronger dollars. In contrast to the Flat Earth Society, I believe it should be us rather than the Russians, who have the world’s largest gene store bank at the Vavilov Institute (www.vir.nw.ru/), with “Its global gene collection representing plant diversity encompassing 320,000 accessions of 155 botanical families, 2,532 species of 425 genera.” To infer that the Russia and Ukrainians, with their fertile soils, will only get into GM wheat on our Western coat tails is either misleading or naive.
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 21 July 2009 |
Beware of the pseudo greens – like Greenpeace
By Bill Crabtree
Could Greenpeace actually be fighting against the environment? Is it possible that Greenpeace has a greater desire to maximise their own profits than do the best thing for the environment and the community in general? Could they be trying to scare well-meaning people on the street in order to attract donations? Indeed, is Greenpeace a multinational? Or worse still could Greenpeace be obstructing the truth?
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 28 October 2009 |
Response to GM concerns
GM canola has shown how powerful it will be for weed control and improved yields at the WA Crop Updates last week in many presented papers. Of the 380 people in attendance, which included leading agronomists and farmers, Department staff, interstate experts and some of WA’s best scientists, the mood with GMs was: “it’s about time we stopped talking about it and just got on with it.” There were no dissenters on GMs at this most powerful agricultural event. This tone contrasts the regular paranoia that comes through the newspapers each week. So why is there such a contrast in views?
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 28 February 2009 |
Misleading comments
By Bill Crabtree
Yet again Julie Newman puts together throw-away comments that are just not true and have no credibility. It is sad that she seems either not capable of, or willing to, learn from the world’s best in plant breeding and agronomy. Julie for four years I have been asking you to visit typical farmers in Canada, USA, South America and Spain to test you GM assertions. Sadly, this request is to no avail and yet you still speak with such “authority”.
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download a pdf version of the document >>> | 22 August 2008 |
Review of Information Forums on GM crops in WA
By Bill Crabtree
Three GM information sessions were held in WA on the 4th, 5th and 6th of March at Dalwallinu, Corrigin and Dongara. At all three events Mr Scott Day from Canada was the keynote speaker on the “Impact of GM canola on Canadian Prairie Farming”. |
download a pdf version of the document >>> | 16 May 2008 |
GM Issues
– and earlier issues here >>>