Agbiotech's field of opportunity

In many places in the world, 'biotechnology' only means agricultural biotech. The same can't be said in Australia, where GM technology is a dirty word. But could economics and technology force Australia to change its views on biotech crops to keep up with the rest of the world?

Ask anyone who works in agricultural biotechnology in Australia for a definition of irony, and the reply you get could well be something like this: "How about 'running a national biotechnology conference in a state where there's a government-imposed moratorium on commercial biotech crops' -- that ironic enough for you?"

It wasn't lost on the delegates of AusBiotech 2005, in Perth in November, that while state premier Geoff Gallop and development minister Alan Carpenter were happy to sing the praises of Western Australia's strengths in biomedical research, agriculture minister Kim Chance kept a lower profile.

Despite lobbying by biotech industry and farmers' groups, Chance has remained resolute on the state's decision to ban commercial plantings of biotech crops, singing instead the "clean, green image" mantra.

Nonetheless, if there is one other assumption you can make about the agbiotech sector, it's that it knows its own faults pretty well. "We have done a lousy job at communicating," Dr Clive James, the chairman and founder of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), told the AusBiotech meeting.

If Chance did not attend James' plenary lecture at the meeting, the industry should be hoping now that he has at least been briefed on its content.

James used his lecture to review the last 10 years - effectively the first decade of crop biotech - and ask what it had delivered ("Biotech is the science of promises," he quipped - "it's always promising, promising... when will it deliver?"), as well as to explore the future for the technology. The ISAAA, which James described as a not-for-profit group whose goals are to alleviate poverty and share knowledge, publishes an annual review of biotech crops.

He said that while biotechnology had achieved success in the former in the last decade, it had failed in the latter.

'Enormous challenge'

It was important for biotech proponents and policymakers to remember that the food industry was the largest in the world, James said.

James quoted the Biotechnology and Biotechnological Sciences Research Council, which said, "In the next 50 years, mankind will consume twice as much food as the global production since the beginning of agriculture 10,000 years ago".

"But if you stopped 100 people in Sydney and asked them to describe the dimensions of global hunger, I doubt any of them could do it," he said. "The challenge is to double and triple food and fibre production in the next 50 years. Conventional technology will not allow you to double or triple food production.

"But neither is biotech the solution -- it's a contribution, not a solution. The best strategy is to take the best of the conventional technologies and match them with best of new technologies."

Biotech crops, James said, packaged "the most sophisticated technology into the most trusted package - the seed". The result had been a rapid adoption of biotech crops, he said -- from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 81 million hectares in 2005.

"That tells us there has been careful evaluation of this technology and it has come through with flying colours," James said. "I believe farmers are the masters of risk aversion. You may fool a farmer once, but never twice. Is it possible 30 million farmers in the developed world have been wrong nine times in the last decade? Unlikely."

Conventional wisdom that Europe would continue to lock out GM crops was already on the wane, James said. "Ten per cent of the maize crop in Spain is biotech crops," he said. "It's a big price for Europe to be locked out of this technology. Russia, we predict, will approve a biotech crop within the next two years. Growth is happening in areas that critics did not predict."

Developing markets

James said that while in 2004, 90 per cent of biotech crops had been planted in the Americas - including Brazil and Argentina as well as the US and Canada - the proportion in the developing world increased each year.

"Critics said this technology would never be accepted in developing countries," he said. "But in 2004, 7.5 million of the farmers who used it were subsistence farmers in developing countries, mostly here in Asia.

"I am convinced that the second decade will be the decade of Asia - and that's going to have very important repercussions for Australia."

As more wealth was created in nations, James said, diet changed too - for one thing, there was more meat on the menu. "More meat means more [animal] feed, such as maize, he said. "In 20 years there has been an 80 per cent increase in maize production."

The vanguard of growth in biotech crops, James said, would be in china, India, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa, which together had a combined population of 2.8 billion - half the world. Approvals of biotech crops in those countries, he said, "will be felt in Brussels".

"In these five countries, 1.3 billion people are completely dependent on agriculture, with a need to participate in a world that is more equitable," James said. "The new trade routes Australia must watch are between Asia and Latin America. This is what the rest of the world is doing - Australia must be very cognisant of that.

"When national governments look at this technology, they have to be very sure of what they are saying 'no' to.

"The most important challenge we have as a scientific community is that we want to make sure biotech crops remain as options in developing countries. We should address very clearly, in a focussed way, the worst pollutant we have in the world today -- pervasive poverty that pollutes the lives of 1.3 billion people." Australian challenges

While developing countries, including some of our major trading partners, are increasingly getting serious about biotech crops, agbiotech has had a harder time winning fans in Australia.

All the southern states have imposed moratoria on commercial biotech crops, with NSW - a state whose cotton farmers rely almost entirely on biotechnology -- recently extending its ban until 2008.

But far from making us look squeaky-clean in other markets, says the head of AusBiotech's agbiotech arm, Dr Ian Edwards, is that Australia's competitive position is being undermined. The bans, he says, mean that farmers' incomes are being reduced, and there is less private investment in agricultural R&D. Without a path to market, investors cannot devise business plans.

"It has become a Catch-22," Edwards said. "We need large-scale trials, but why would a company do a trial if there wasn't a market?"

While the states impose moratoria, the Commonwealth has backed it, Edwards said. Industry economist ABARE has predicted that 5 per cent production gains canola and wheat, and a 10 per cent gain in barley, phased in by 2010 would give us $3 billion in benefits by 2015. The states, Edwards argued, should simply not be permitted to impose moratoria.

Meanwhile, consensus is growing, including among farming groups, that moratoria should be dropped, he said. The results could be as diverse as cotton crops in northern Australia, the acceptance of GM canola, healthier oilseed crops, and salt-resistant, more nutritious wheat.

What would the community think?

Public acceptance of biotechnology is vital for its survival. But how much stock should the biotech industry place in public opinion, and how does it gauge that opinion?

Prof William Wilson of the University of North Dakota, and a visiting professor at the University of WA, pointed out that in the US, between 70 and 80 per cent of food products contained GM ingredients.

Wilson quoted a survey that claimed less than 1 per cent of US consumers were concerned about biotech and food. Much more important were issues like sanitation and food-borne illness.

"Biotech is not viewed as a food issue by most US consumers," Wilson said. "But surveys are a poor predictor of what consumers will actually do. They will say one thing and do another."

That applies even at a national level, Wilson said. "Two years ago, representatives from China told the US the country would not accept any broad-based products with GM. Two years later, China is proud of its record on GM rice."

AusBiotech's Ian Edwards said it was important to build public trust in biotech. But he laid some of the blame for public doubts about agbio at the feet of state governments that had imposed embargoes on biotech crops, in the face of regulatory approval.

"In the US and Canada, public acceptance is due to public confidence in the regulatory system [such as the US Food and Drug Administration]," Edwards said.

"We have a stringent regulatory system [in Australia]. When our Office of the Gene Technology Regulator speaks of products being safe, it is not only using a large database, but also reports from groups like the [British] Royal Society, the British Medical Association, and the Academy of Sciences.

"When public officials question OGTR decisions, they are undermining the system that was put in place by federal and state governments."