Recently in GM Category

I have just returned from a fact finding trip to Transylvania, Romania where I was disappointed not to find any vampires.

I did, however, make some very nice new farming friends - Sampson, Alberto and Radoslav.

But by far the most interesting person I met was Lucian - who claimed to be Europe's biggest farmer.

I don't mean Pavarotti-big, I mean 65,000 hectares-big, or 250 square miles-big. Big big.

Actually, whether he really is Europe's biggest farmer, I am not convinced, but he does have one other undisputed claim to fame.

Lucian has grown more genetically modified soybean than any other farmer in Europe.

You may well ask HOW? Given that the EU has strictly forbidden the commercial growth of GM soy. 

Well, 2 years ago Romania wasn't part of the EU and could do what it damn well liked.

And so while debate raged in the EU over the merits (and de-merits) of genetic technology, Romania, with its ideal soybean growing conditions, cracked on.

Lucian took full advantage, planting 20,000 hectares with Monsanto's Ready Roundup soybean.

He told me he liked GM soya because he sprayed far less pesticides on his crop which helped save him money and saved the environment from unnecessary pesticide pollution.

At the same time he said his yields doubled, which meant more livestock farmers in Romania could buy his high-protein soy for animal feed.

However, when Romania joined the EU in 2007, Lucian was prohibited from growing GM soybean. He says he can't make a profit from non-GM soybean because yields are lower, spraying costs are higher and competition from the Americas is too high.

Livestock farmers in Romania are now forced to import the very same GM soy variety they used to buy from Lucian but from Latin American farmers and at greater cost.  

It's a bizarre predicament which has left many Romanian farmers, not least big Lucian, asking - WHY?

So, for the second week running the Government has produced a big, brazen advert for the wider adoption of genetically modified food.

Defra and the Food Standards Agency have bought out a report that warns unless the EU gets its act together and starts approving the importation of more GM crops for animal feed, meat production in the UK could reach crisis point.

According to the Government, it really is THAT serious.

The report said in a worse case scenario, Europe's anti-GM stance could push the price of feed up by more than 300 per cent.

It said if the price of feed did rise by that much it could force up to 68 per cent of poultry producers and 29 per cent of pig producers out of business.

Not to mention the effect on the red meat and dairy sectors.

Furthermore it said supermarket prices would spiral and the balance of trade on meat would deteriorate measurably.  

But is GM food safe, Mr Benn?

Well, last week the Government put out another big advert for GM when Hilary Benn said there was absolutely 'no evidence' to suggest GM food carried any health issue.

Today more than 114 million hectares are planted with GM crops around the world and it is estimated more than 200 billion meals containing biotech ingredients have been eaten by hundreds of millions of people, with no health issue.

Ultimately though, Mr Benn said the consumer would decide whether the technology would become a mainstay on supermarket shelves.

And they seem to be coming round too.

According to the latest survey of attitudes from the Food Standards Agency spontaneous (ie unprompted) concern in relation to GM technology has fallen to 4 per cent from a peak of 20 per cent in December 2003.

This will please a government which seems to have become a bona fide GM PR machine.

In Whitehall the question is no longer about whether we want to embrace GM technology, it is about how long can we live without it.