US pushes for GM crops

The global debate over genetically modified foods moves to California this week, where the Bush Administration will tout the technology to dozens of agriculture and health ministers from developing nations.

The three-day conference beginning in Sacramento today will be led by US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.

Veneman has argued that biotechnology can go a long way towards feeding the world's 800 million people who consistently suffer from hunger by boosting global production of grains and other crops.

"To meet the goal of food security, agriculture productivity must be accelerated in areas where hunger and malnutrition are worst," Veneman said last week.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will spend about $US3 million ($5.2 million) on the Sacramento conference, largely to showcase agricultural biotechnology.

President George W. Bush was also due to address a biotech industry conference in Washington today. In a May 21 speech, Bush took on the European Union and its five-year-old ban on approving new biotech products.

Bush argued that policy had rippled across the globe, raising opposition to GM foods and hindering anti-hunger efforts in Africa.

Bush's remarks stirred biotech opponents, who viewed his speech as another attempt to globalise American products to the detriment of human health, the environment and small farmers in developing countries.

Protest marches, "teach-ins" and other anti-GM events are scheduled for Sacramento by activist groups including Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club.

"It's a false promise to say that current engineered crops will feed the world when US officials are saying current crops would not perform well under African growing conditions," said Larry Bohlen, spokesman for Friends of the Earth.

Amadou Kanoute, regional director for Consumers International Office for Africa in Zimbabwe, said the spread of US biotechnology would put small-scale African farmers, the backbone of the continent's farm sector, at a disadvantage.

"You will plunge Africa into greater food dependency," Kanoute said.

Biotech crops now grown are mostly for animal feed. But with Missouri-based Monsanto's recent move to commercialise a human food staple, biotech wheat, the debate has become more emotional.

Genetically modified seeds are engineered to repel predatory insects and to withstand weed-killers. The result, proponents claim, is higher-yielding crops that are easier to grow and maintain.

In the 1990s, American farmers began embracing the new technology and now 75 per cent of soybeans, 34 per cent of corn and 71 per cent of cotton come from gene-altered seeds.

A May 2002 USDA report concluded that biotechnology reduced total pesticide use by about 6.2 per cent in 1997. Those savings can be significant in a country that, said the report, used 74 million kilograms of herbicides on corn fields alone.

The USDA report said that for crops such as soybeans that did not see much decrease in chemical use, the environmental benefit of biotech crops was that farmers could use less toxic chemicals.

But some consumers, especially Europeans, argue that not enough is known about the health and environmental impact of biotech food, even if chemical use is reduced.

- REUTERS