GM crops continue to grow

Clive James, founder and chair of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Application, reported at a conference on global status of commercialized biotech/genetically modified (GM) crops for 2011 in Hanoi that due to significant benefits, strong growth in GM crops continued in 2011.

It saw a double-digit increase of 12 million hectares, at an annual growth rate of 8 per cent, reaching 160 million hectares, up from 148 million hectares in 2010.

“A 94-fold increase from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 to 160 million hectares in 2011 makes biotech crops the fastest adopted crop technology in recent history,” James said.

In 2011, a record 16.7 million farmers, up 1.3 million or 8 per cent from 2010, grew biotech crops – notably over 90 per cent, or 15 million, were small resource-poor farmers in developing countries. Farmers are the masters of risk aversion and in 2011, a record 7 million small farmers in China and another 7 million in India, elected to plant 14.5 million hectares of Bt cotton.
 
Developing countries grew about 50 per cent of global biotech crops in 2011 and are expected to exceed industrial country hectarage in 2012. In 2011, growth rate for biotech crops was twice as fast, and twice as large, in developing countries, at 11 per cent or 8.2 million hectares, versus 5 per cent or 3.8 million hectares in industrial countries.

The five lead developing countries in biotech crops are India and China in Asia, Brazil and Argentina in Latin America, and South Africa on the continent of Africa, which together represent 40 per cent of the global population, which could reach 10.1 billion by 2100.

From 1996 to 2010, biotech crops contributed to food security, sustainability and climate change by increasing crop production valued at $78.4 billion, providing a better environment by saving 443 million kilogrammes of pesticides. In 2010, GM crops helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 19 billion kg.

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

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the country’s farm land areas were declining due to urbanisation, its population grew by 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.

Besides, given climate change, such challenges mean that Vietnam needed to boost the application of genetically modified crops to ensure its agricultural production and national food security, the ministry said.

Though the government enacted in November, 2006 Decision 11/2006/QD-TTg on GM crop development in Vietnam, the country has three GM crops rice, maize and cotton.