Compare that with organics which over the same time and with the same opportunity has barely reached one per cent of hectares grown.
According to the ISAAA over 18 million farmers in 28 countries planted a record 181 million hectares of biotech crops in 2014. A global meta- analysis of 147 studies over 20 years indicates that biotech crops have on average reduced chemical pesticide use by 37%, increased crop yields by 22% and farmer profits by 68%.
The reduction in CO2 production in 2013 alone because of biotech crops was equivalent to taking 12 million cars off the road while production increases have effectively saved 132 million hectares of land for conservation biodiversity.
Is this a future to be feared? Perhaps.
Any casual search of the internet will reveal farmer suicides in India, cattle dying in Germany, rats developing tumours in France, pigs with inflamed stomachs, poor yields and allergies - all from GM crops and the list goes on.
We have also heard that our markets will be destroyed if we use any GM in New Zealand and that coexistence of GM and non GM is not possible.
Federated Farmers supports all forms of agriculture from organics to modern biotechnology. It is important that we are honest about the expectations of the farming methods we choose.
Farming becomes a fundamentalist religion if we cling to our assumptions in spite of the evidence.
To ensure we have an honest debate we need a public who are science literate.
In the public discourse on fluoridation, immunisation and 1080 we are seeing the public starting to back science and reject the worn out and unsupported rhetoric of the anti-science campaigners.
In the debate and science of genetics the world is thundering past us. But while 15,000 anti-GM submissions on the NES for plantation forestry might suggest otherwise, there are signs the much-needed discussion and reconciliation with science is happening in GM too.
If we are to see agriculture prosper we must avail ourselves of all the tools of modern science and technology.
Some researchers have told me that as much as 15% of their resources are spent on paperwork involving use of low-risk GMOs.
These are the same low-risk GMOs which are deregulated in Australia.
Opportunities exist for New Zealand agriculture to benefit from each of these GM technologies if only the regulations reflected the real risk.
Our dream of a pest-free New Zealand could be realised through the use of gene editing to produce possums or rabbits who only have male offspring. Like the techniques being used against the Egyptian mosquito in the fight against Zika, these genes would spread through the population ending in eradication of these mammalian pests from New Zealand's shores. No guns, no poison, no traps, no pain.
Should we be cautious about these technologies? Yes of course we should. We need good regulation appropriate to the risk. Should we fear the future. No. Just as the Royal Commission said fifteen years ago we should proceed with caution.
We stand at the dawn of the biology revolution. If we are to contribute to the global challenges of food production and climate change, if we are to achieve better outcomes for our society, our economy and our environment we must play our part.
We must be cautious, we must be responsible but we must not be paralysed by fear.
- Dr William Rolleston is President of Federated Farmers. This is an edited version of a speech he gave recently to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) Internal Science Conference in Wellington.
- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
