ISAAA GM report 2011: carnival goes on… but far away
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012Elena F. Guiral
Economy suffering all around the world… and carnival goes on. While Europe is still wrapped in the blanket from his indolence and seeing the reality that comes up in a “telenovela” format. These so-called emerging countries are giving Europe a lesson in Biotechnology management.
From the 160 million hectares planted with genetically modified seeds in 2011, representing an overall growth of 8%, the highest growth belonged again to Brazil, with an impressive 20% increase.
The former pupil is about to become a teacher, and nowadays it is the second largest producer in the world with 30.3 million hectares cultivated last year. U.S. remains as the giant biotech crop producer, with 69 million hectares planted in 2011. Today 90% of the country’s major crops: soybeans, corn, cotton and sugar beets, are genetically modified.
Clive James, director of the International Service for the Acquisition of agri-biotech applications (ISAAA) in its report reveals the secrets of Brazilian miracle: “Brazil has a really fast approval system and has created two streams of technology to support GMOs growth: crops developed by agrobiotechnology companies and collaboration between public and private institutions through
EMBRAPA, which has an annual budget of one billion $”.
The result of this collaboration is the first transgenic crop developed in Brazil will triumph, a resistant virus bean. According to James, “this winning approach is a key lesson for other countries around the world.”
A good lesson for visionaries like Bill Gates, who through his foundation has established an ambitious partnership with EMBRAPA, budgeted at 2.5 million $, to develop their knowledge shares in African countries in which Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has running projects.
An invisible experience for european blind eyes, where the legal and bureaucratic
blockade has led BASF to moving their research laboratories from Germany to Raleigh
(North Carolina).
However, and from the back door, European Union funds support research projects in Costa
Rica. So Europe has deeply failed in 3D strategy defined by Clive James as the art of “developing R & D & I rationally, deregulate and diversify new applications”.
Europe experienced an increase of 26% in GMOs cultivated hectares with 114,500 hectares, mainly grown in Spain, which keeps on holding 85% of the total percentage. Only Portugal, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Romania today grown GM seeds commercially. And it seems it will not change much the picture in coming seasons, because Monsanto has just announced that won´t sell MON 810 in France.
In terms of in future promises, or rather present promises, ISAAA report points to India and China. India has already spent a decade cultivating Bt cotton, a milestone that has made this crop in the most productive and profitable in the country. In China, 3.9 million Bt cotton hectares were cultivated in 2011 mainly by small farmers and on a percentage of 71.5% of the total cultivated cotton. And this country is also attentive to the Bt corn, which will provide feed for a growing population demanding more insistently animal products, and the commercialization of Golden Rice in the Philippines in 2013.
It´s not by chance that countries with more potential in the near agrobiotech future, are economic threats to Europe in the coming years too. For years I’ve heard from experts that the EU would lose the train of biotechnology if didn´t change its policy and its attitude. The last train passed, long ago … we are still waiting in our station, abandoned in the middle of the Wild West … until Indians decide to come an take away our blanket, our television and even our hair.
Link to ISAAA report Executive Summary











