阿根廷和巴西把发展生物农业科技作为国家首要任务之一
Argentina & Brazil have made farm biotech a national priority, Obama advisor says
By Bloomberg News via Washington Post
US consumer demand for organics rose to US$29B in 2012 from US$6.1B in 2000. In Oregon, seeds sow worries as GMO and organic crops try to coexist.
SWEET HOME, Oregon — Growing organic cabbage, squash and other crops for their seeds in northwest Oregon gives Sarah Kleeger and Andrew Still plenty to worry about, from hungry insects to unexpected frosts.
A man-made concern is fast rising on their list: the encroachment of bio-engineered crops, which they say threatens the genetic purity essential to the organic and heirloom fruits and vegetables they produce in the Willamette Valley, the top US seed-growing region.
"We want to be nice to our neighbors and work together, but we can’t take any chances," said Still, inspecting plants for damage after a frost on their farm near Sweet Home, about 80 miles south of Portland. Contamination from gene-altered plants could render worthless the seeds they grow for their catalog business, Adaptive Seeds.
GMO accounts for 93% of US soy output
Twenty years after the first commercial varieties of genetically modified foods went on sale, farmers have embraced biotech crops that now account for 90 percent of all US cotton and corn and 93 percent of soybeans.
Paradoxically, this has boosted demand for organics by consumers seeking to avoid GMOs. Sales of such foods were US$29 billion in 2012, up from US$6.1 billion in 2000, according to the Organic Trade Association.
While gene-altered and organic foods share space on grocery shelves, the juxtaposition on farms has led to fears of cross-contamination as pollen blows across fields. Those fears have spawned lawsuits, referendums and even acts of vandalism: in June, 6,500 bioengineered sugar-beet plants in a Syngenta field in Jackson County, on Oregon’s southern border, were torn from the ground.
The issue has become so contentious that the federal government has considered stepping in to referee. The US Department of Agriculture is seeking comment on how best to improve the coexistence of biotech and non-biotech farms. "The markets don’t want any contamination with a genetic engineered plant," said Carol Mallory-Smith, a weed-science professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis. "It makes producers very concerned."
‘Not all farm products are equal’
While unrelated plants may grow safely side-by-side, others, such as organic Swiss Chard and biotech sugar beets, can create contamination issues. "Not all crops are equal, even in gene flow and mixing," she said.
Gene-mixing has been an issue with farmers for generations, as plant-pollen travelling by air from one field can mingle with plants from others. Combines, trucks and storage bins that haven’t been properly cleaned also are risks, as one farm’s products can be inadvertently transferred to another.
The stakes of mixing are higher when gene-altered and organic products come into contact because of the purity demanded by non-biotech buyers — and with more products under development, including vegetables and fruits, intermingling is becoming a bigger worry, Mallory-Smith said. Organic growers have more to lose, because some consumers associate biotech genes with everything from uncertain food safety to corporate control of farming, she said.
Scares that have occurred in Oregon have made it a flashpoint in the national debate over gene-altered crops. Wheat exports from the state to Japan were held up from May through July last year after a strain of unapproved genetically engineered wheat was found by a farmer in his field.
Residents of Jackson County, where the sugar beets were destroyed, will vote in May on whether to ban the planting of all genetically modified crops in the county. State lawmakers last year passed a bill in response to that referendum and others to prohibit such initiatives elsewhere, though anti- biotech activists are trying to overturn that legislation.
A likely statewide ballot initiative this fall will ask Oregon voters to require labels on gene-altered food products sold in the state. Similar initiatives have failed in neighboring Washington and California after costly campaigns.
Anti-biotech efforts have slowed the industry’s development in the United States and threatens to cede its global leadership in gene-altered plant research, said Cathy Enright, executive director of the Council for Biotechnology Information and a member of President Barack Obama’s Agricultural Policy Committee during both of his election campaigns.
Obama advisor warns about Argentina, Brazil
Regulators end up preparing for legal challenges rather than making scientifically sound decisions, she said in an interview. "The time it takes them to make their decisions have increased, wherein our competitor countries, Brazil and Argentina, for example, both of those countries have made biotechnology a national priority," she said.
Coexistence and cooperation among farmers in planting crops is nothing new, said Robert Fraley, the chief technology officer for St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., the world’s biggest seed- seller. "I understand the concern and the theory of the concern," he added, yet "there simply haven’t been issues that have developed."
The lack of gene-mixing after decades of side-by-side growing shows that keeping biotech and non-engineered crops in harmony "is a great success story," he said.
In the Willamette Valley, that has meant keeping a thriving organics industry separate from also-booming growth in genetically modified beets, as well as corn and other crops on the horizon. While agribusinesses reassure consumers that bioengineered crops pose no threat to surrounding producers, organic advocates say farming practices that eschew biotech need to be kept a safe distance from altered genes. "The Willamette Valley is the test case. You have to be able to make coexistence work there because the market is so sensitive. It’s mission-critical," said Laura Batcha, executive VP of the Organic Trade Association, a Brattleboro, Vermont-based trade group that includes WhiteWave Foods Co. among its members.
The fertile Willamette region, bordered to the east by the Cascades Mountains, is known for its seeds, hazelnuts, hops and wine. Growers there have long needed to coordinate crops among themselves to ensure one crop isn’t contaminated by another, said Barry Bushue, president of the Oregon Farm Bureau and vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the biggest US farmer group.
Valley farmers and seed companies have long followed a voluntary "pinning" system in which crops at risk of cross-pollination are isolated from one another, preserving their integrity, said Bushue, a pumpkin and berry grower from Boring, Oregon, outside the Willamette. New rules aren’t necessary to do what farmers can figure out themselves, he said. "Farmers embrace all types of agriculture," he said. Having lawmakers "take first crack at what you can grow is frightening," said Bushue, who served with Batcha on a USDA task force on co-existence.
‘Miserable coexistence’
Frank Morton, a Willamette Valley organic and heirloom seed-seller, isn’t so sure. Along with environmental groups, he helped persuade a federal judge in 2009 to rule that the USDA erred in approving gene-altered sugar beets for commercial use because it hadn’t adequately studied the environmental impacts of the crops on other plants. Still, the courts allowed biotech planting to continue to avoid threatening the national sugar supply, much of which comes from biotech beets.
"We’re co-existing, but it’s a miserable co-existence," Morton said, noting contamination is inevitable without tighter regulation.
The uncertain legal environment also has made it harder for some farmers, said John Reerslev, who raises 1,100 acres of fescue and rye grass seed along with peppermint and biotech sugar-beet seed outside Junction City, Oregon. The 2009 court order cost him US$500,000 when his buyer slashed the acreage of gene-altered beets it wanted, he said.
"When you have all these lawsuits and initiatives and ballots, yes, it’s pretty unsettling," he said. Despite what opponents may wish, biotech is here to stay, he said. "I grow modified beets because that’s why my buyers want."
For Kleeger and Still, the issue is about preserving value. "We are certainly not opposed to capitalism, but capitalism is a tool that can be used to benefit or hurt," he said. "Our goal is to have high-quality, open-pollinated seed that may not be found anywhere else," he said. "It may not be a million-dollar value, but if you lose it forever, that’s a different kind of value that’s hard to quantify."
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/153993/argentina--brazil-have-made-farm-biotech-a-national-priority-obama-advisor-says