Benefits seen in GM crop

MELBOURNE - The benefits of introducing genetically modified grain food crops to Australia were likely to outweigh any costs, the Australian Government's commodities analyst said yesterday.

GM crops boosted production, while there was scant evidence of price premiums paid for non-GM grains, said Max Foster, principal economist, biosecurity and food, at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Australia would need a price premium of about 16 per cent on world canola markets to make it better off by staying out of GM production, Foster told the National Agricultural Commodities Marketing Association.

Introducing GM canola would increase Australia's production of the oilseed, commonly used as a cooking oil, by about 17 per cent and its exports of oilseeds, mainly canola, by about 23 per cent a year, he said.

In its last pre-drought year of normal production, in 2001-02, Australia produced 1.8 million tonnes of canola and exported 1.4 million tonnes, the world's second largest exporter after Canada, which produced mainly GM canola.

Australia's Gene Technology Regulator recently cleared Australia to grow its first commercial GM canola crop, but moratoriums by state governments mean the first GM canola crop will not be able to be grown this season.

Australia at present grows only GM cotton and carnations and does not produce a GM food crop.

The world export trade had come to be dominated by GM producers in canola, cottonseed, maize and soybeans, Foster said.

Consumer resistance to GM products in Europe had not stopped product which would have normally been sold there being sold by exporters into other markets, he said.

- REUTERS