Controversial GM crops encouraged

At a seminar on global perspective of biotech/genetically modified (GM) crops 2010, experts said that in face of the world’s fluctuating food market, Vietnam should further introduce biotech crops into its agricultural production as an optimal solution to produce more food, of which rice had helped Vietnam become the world’s second largest rice exporter after Thailand.

At present, Vietnam’s genetically modified crops areas remain limited.Though the government enacted in November, 2006 the Decision 11/2006/QD-TTg on GM crops development in Vietnam, the country has so far had three GM crops including rice, maize and cotton.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Crop Production Department, while the country’s farm land areas were declining due to urbanisation, its population was added with over one million per year. It is expected Vietnam would need about 50 million and 80 million tonnes of cereal by 2020 and 2050, respectively.

Meanwhile, though Vietnam was known as an agricultural country, it had to annually import over 70 per cent of its needed maize and soya beans for animal feed production. In another case, the country had to import 90 per cent of its needed cotton material annually.

“Given climate change, such challenges mean that Vietnam needs to boost the application of genetically modified crops to ensure its agricultural production and national food security,” said the department’s head Nguyen Tri Ngoc.

According to Clive James, founder and chair of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Application (ISAAA), the world had witnessed a record 87-fold increase in hectares of biotech crops between 1996-2010, which made biotech crops the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture.

There has also been strong double digit-growth of 10 per cent in 2010 reaching 148 million hectares – notably, the 14 million hectare increase is the second largest increase in 15 years.

“Trait hectares” grew from 180 million ha in 2009, to 205 million ha in 2010, up 14 per cent.

The five lead developing countries in biotech crops are China and India in Asia, Brazil and Argentina in Latin America, and South Africa on the continent of Africa.