Dialogue: Held hostage by the minority

By WILLIAM ROLLESTON*

I WAS looking back over some old papers the other day and it started me thinking; how is it that after a royal commission costing more than $6 million, we still have to go through the basics of the pros and cons of genetic modification before the Government can make its decision at the end of the month?

I think the answer lies in the fact that more than 40 per cent of New Zealanders, including politicians, still feel they don't have enough information to make a decision.

The way they have since been bombarded by misinformation has muddied the waters the commission was supposed to clarify.

Below is an article by Bio-Gro's Seagar Mason setting out the case for a GM-free New Zealand.

But the reasons the organics industry, which could be more sustainable through GM, rejects the technology bear some scrutiny.

Organic production is a choice of a very small number of New Zealand farmers, about 600 out of more than 50,000. Together they produce organically grown products worth about $120 million, about $70 million of which is exported.

This represents substantial growth over recent years but is still of less value than other niche exports, such as $250 million worth of sausage casings sold each year.

Even if the total organic market grows to its projected $500 million, it will still only equal the size of the existing biotechnology market.

The organics industry claims it is totally dependent on a GM-free clean green New Zealand image. It says its overseas markets insist on it and are demanding that we be totally organic by 2020.

What the organics industry doesn't concede is that it can do this only at the expense of the rest of our agriculture, horticulture and forestry industries, which produce about $15 billion in exports and need access to new technologies to stay competitive.

Although they like to portray themselves as being concerned about more than mere commerce, watch how quickly organic producers talk about the premiums (which they don't always get) when asked to justify their position on GM.

At its core the organic movement is about traditional farming techniques, about not using chemicals to achieve results, about working with nature and protecting the land. Organic farming is hard, labour-intensive work that struggles to produce the yields achieved by conventional farmers.

The modernisation of agriculture has been all about reducing back-breaking work and increasing yields.

New seed varieties offer farmers the opportunity to improve yields and agrochemicals enable them to protect crops against weeds and pests, but at a price to their land.

Anything that reduces chemical use must be consistent with organic farming principles. But, according to the organic certifying agencies, not GM technology, which offers such subtle, natural and sustainable ways of reducing chemical use. Why?

It's a mystery - until you realise these agencies are trying to create a commercial market niche to protect themselves against a new technology which has the potential to make the benefits of organics available to every farmer, whether certified by organisations like Bio-Gro or not.

How then would they differentiate themselves in a market where this situation applied?

Their opposition to GM is nothing more than an attempt by organic certifiers to protect their brand and the organic label by criticising a competing technology that could make their production method a commodity. It's mere commercialism dressed up.

New Zealand will one day be cleaner and greener because of the careful and responsible application of GM to reduce the use of some agrochemicals, the development of GM solutions to the pests which threaten our native forest and agriculture, and the ability to use GM crops and animals to produce high-value pharmaceuticals.

The organics movement is asking the rest of us to put aside these opportunities so it can protect an exclusive brand.

It is asking New Zealand's biggest company, Fonterra, which is responsible for about 18 per cent of our exports, to forgo research and the development of its opportunities, so it can protect its choice of production methods.

You could understand it if there was no way for specialised farming methods to co-exist.

But, having heard evidence from many experts, the royal commission decided organics and other production methods could co-exist, provided some sensible rules, such as separation distances and planting cycles, were made.

So how did we get to the position where, having spent time and money arguing the issues, we are having to do it again?

Politics - that other exercise in branding and marketing. That's where the misinformation comes in, where it becomes possible to have another bite of the cherry with assertions and fallacious arguments that have already been rejected by a legal process. It's where, the jury having decided, you get another chance to put your case.

The Government now has to exercise leadership, to explicitly support the principles underlying the outcome of the commission's inclusive and consultative process.

The Government has a duty to ensure our economy is not held hostage to the interests of a small group of people who want to protect their particular market niche.

* William Rolleston is chairman of Life Sciences Network

nzherald.co.nz/ge

Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

GE lessons from Britain

GE links

GE glossary