GM crops: the scientific argument's over

My Times column on genetic modification of
crops:

The European Parliament votes tomorrow on whether
to let countries decide their own policies on growing genetically
modified crops. The vote would allow countries such as Britain to
press ahead because of hard evidence that such crops are good for
the environment, good for consumers and good for farmers; and let
countries such as Austria continue to ban the things despite such
evidence. It’s an alliance of the rational with the superstitious
against the bureaucratic.

Indeed, the untold story is that it was a triumph of subtle
diplomacy by Owen Paterson — the Eurosceptic former environment
minister who knows how to work the Brussels system. Having gone out
on a limb to support GM crops in two hard-hitting speeches in 2013,
he was approached by his Spanish counterpart who was desperate to
unclog the interminable Brussels approval process for new
crops.

Spain, the only European country growing GM maize, wanted to try
a new variety. The approval process had been designed by the big
green multinationals — Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and co —
who wield enormous power in Brussels. It was taking new varieties
up to ten years to get through the maze they had built,
discouraging applicants.

So Britain and Spain set out quietly to lobby the other
countries. Those opposed to GM were won over by the argument that
repatriating the decision meant they could remain obdurate for
purely superstitious reasons, and not be forced by world trade
rules into accepting GM crops if the science supported them. So at
a ministerial meeting in Brussels last June, Mr Paterson and his
anti-GM Austrian counterpart went round the table together
persuading countries to support the proposal, whether they liked GM
crops or not.

It helped that the Greeks, who were anti-GM crops, put the
proposal forward. This lulled the French, who liked the existing
system of a de-facto ban by bureaucratic delay, into missing what
was going on until it was too late. Only Belgium and Luxembourg
abstained. Now the parliament is the last obstacle.

Scientifically, the argument over GM crops is as good as over.
With nearly half a billion acres growing GM crops worldwide, the
facts are in. Biotech crops are on average safer, cheaper and
better for the environment than conventional crops. Their benefits
accrue disproportionately to farmers in poor countries. The best
evidence comes in the form of a “meta-analysis” — a study of
studies — carried out by two scientists at Göttingen University, in
Germany.

The strength of such an analysis is that it avoids
cherry-picking and anecdotal evidence. It found that GM crops have reduced the quantity
of pesticide used by farmers by an average of 37 per cent and
increased crop yields by 22 per cent. The greatest gains in yield
and profit were in the developing world.

If Europe had adopted these crops 15 years ago: rape farmers
would be spraying far less pyrethroid or neo-nicotinoid
insecticides to control flea beetles, so there would be far less
risk to bees; potato farmers would not need to be spraying
fungicides up to 15 times a year to control blight; and wheat
farmers would not be facing stagnant yields and increasing
pesticide resistance among aphids, meaning farmland bird numbers
would be up.

Oh, and all that nonsense about GM crops giving control of seeds
to big American companies? The patent on the first GM crops has just expired, so you can grow them from your
own seed if you prefer and, anyway, conventionally bred varieties
are also controlled for a period by those who produce them.

African farmers have been mostly denied genetically modified
crops by the machinations of the churches and the greens, aided by
the European Union’s demand that imports not be transgenically
improved. Otherwise, African farmers would now be better able to
combat drought, pests, vitamin deficiency and toxic contamination,
while not having to buy so many sprays and risk their lives
applying them.

I made this point recently to a charity that works with farmers
in Africa and does not oppose GM crops but has so far not dared say
so. Put your head above the parapet, I urged. We cannot do that,
they replied, because we have to work with other, bigger green
charities and they would punish us mercilessly if we broke ranks.
Is the bullying really that bad? Yes, they replied.

Yet the Green Blob realises that it has made a mistake here. Not
a financial mistake — it made a fortune out of donations during the
heyday of stoking alarm about GM crops in the late 1990s — but the
realisation that all it has achieved is to prolong the use of
sprays and delay the retreat of hunger.

Likewise the organic farming movement made a mistake. For them
GM crops were a potential godsend that could have made organic
crops genuinely competitive, instead of a small niche for the
wealthy. Here was a technology that was organic, in that it used
biology instead of chemistry. In one case it even used the very
same substance to fight insects that organic farmers had been using
for decades — called Bt.

However, the organic movement decided to oppose GM crops and has
paid the price by shrinking into irrelevance: only 2 per cent of food sales in Britain are now organic, and in
a recent survey ethical concern was the least important of ten
factors driving shoppers’ food choices. Ironically, the organic
movement happily uses crops whose genetic material has been
modified in a much less careful way — by gamma rays or chemical
mutagens — for these are categorised as “conventional” crops and
lightly regulated. Golden Promise barley, used by organic brewers,
for example, was made in a nuclear reactor.

In practice, we in Europe may have missed most of the GM
revolution, for the next technologies are different again. The
future lies with a combination of conventional breeding with
precise gene-editing, rather than gene transplants from other
species. This should enable the last of the critics of GM crops to
climb off their high horses without anybody noticing.

Supporters of GM crops have no wish to ban conventional or
organic varieties. They just want to allow GM crops as well. Their
opponents, however, insist on total intolerance of things they
abhor. There are echoes here of the battle for free speech.