Cover Story: Ten years down the GMO road

Monday, November 2, 2009

In November 1999, Better Farming's first cover story documented the controversy over labelling foods derived from GMO products amid concerns about the closing of markets in consumer sensitive Europe. A decade later, growers here are enthusiastic and industry experts feel anti-GM opposition is weakening. In Europe the jury is still out but the anti-GMO wall is showing deep cracks

by NORMAN DUNN & DON STONEMAN

When Bt corn seed first came to the Ontario market, a skeptical Lloyd Crowe doubted farmers would buy it.

A $15 premium pushed the price of a unit of seed over the magic $100 mark, recalls Crowe, a Prince Edward County cash cropper and seed dealer who is now vice-chair of the Ontario Corn Producers Association and chair of its research and technology committee. Crowe didn't have to worry. Bt corn proved to be a boon to growers, according to Greg Stewart, the provincial government's corn expert, because it fought off yield robbing European corn borer.

Crowe plants 2,000 acres of corn annually and admits he looks for "the latest and greatest" in hybrids, a common buying trend that has redrawn the corn seed buying habits of Canadian farmers, even breaking down long-standing brand loyalties.

But it's not the same across the Atlantic, where politics trumps science when it comes to approving crop technologies that involve genetic manipulation. The European Union (EU) in 1999 quit approving new technologies and "genetic events," in effect placing a moratorium on their use. A decade later, that moratorium has been only partially lifted. A number of traits in seed commonly planted in Canada were finally approved by the EU last year.

But combinations of modified traits, known as "stacks," are not getting approvals.
In at least one instance, genetically modified seed approvals in Europe have been reversed. (See "GM corn in Europe: the long and winding road," page 29.)
Are Ontario producers any further ahead in terms of yield gains because they have access to genetic modifications? Has there been progress in terms of increasing crop yields as these new technologies came into play?

Stewart says provincial corn yields since the introduction of GMOs in 1998 have climbed at a rate little different to the previous 10 years, pointing out that genetics is only one factor of three that make a good corn crop; the other two being agronomics and environment.

(In Europe, where GMO use is restricted, crop yield gains have slowed for a number of reasons. See story page 18.)

Certainly, there have been a number of years in the last 10 that were hard on the crop. The dry year of 2007 rivalled the previous record dry year of 1988, and provincial corn yields dipped accordingly.

In the 10 years before the advent of the GMO age in Ontario, performance tests at the Elora research station north of Guelph flat-lined, showing almost no gains in average corn yields year over year. After 1998, there was a steady and substantial climb – 5.8 bushels of corn annually through the 2008 crop. At the Woodstock test station, gains were an annual 2.2 bushels between 1986 and 1998, and 9.2 bushels annually thereafter, with yields recorded averaging more than 200 bushels per acre every year since 2004.

At Ridgetown in the southwest, yields gained 6.5 bushels per year pre-GMO, and 4.78 bushels after. (The average on Ridgetown plots in 2008 was 265 bushels/acre. The average yields on Ridgetown plots topped 200 bushels every year since 2001).
"Did Bt technology have more impact at Elora than at Ridgetown?" "Perhaps," is Stewart's answer to his own question.

Yields up 20 bushels
In southwestern Ontario, Bt protection didn't seem to be a big issue for many years, Stewart says. However, in the 2700 heat unit zone, earlier maturing hybrids "can get hammered" with corn borer problems.

For years, researchers like Stewart who looked at performance trial data, have wondered how corn seed companies could make claims that their herbicide-tolerant corn genetics would add a substantial number of bushels to their farm yields. Stewart thinks he understands now.

In performance trials, where weed control is well-managed and agronomics is consistent, the Bt gene shows itself, Stewart says. "So it comes down to European root worm control," Stewart says. It's worth four to six bushels per year whether it's in farm fields or in performance trials.

In farmers' fields, where conventional weed control may be less than effective because it is applied too early, too late or on a hot day, herbicide tolerance shows a benefit, he says.

Ontario corn yield averages have gone up 20 bushels in 10 years.

Provincially, a myriad of factors come into play. In a good price year, not that there has been many, more corn is planted on fields with less potential for top yield production. There are early spring plantings and late spring plantings. There have been droughty years like 2007 that rivalled 1988, the previous high water mark for testing yields. But the 2007 yields were much better than in 1988 – 135 bushels per acre with GMO technology available versus 85 bushels pre-GMO.

Meanwhile, Ontario Agri-Food Technologies president Gord Surgeoner, the Guelph scientist charged with defending and promoting GMO use in Canada, says consumer worries today about GMOs are about five to 10 per cent of what they were in 2000. "To my knowledge . . . we have never identified a headache or a sick animal, in spite of something like StarLink getting out."

StarLink, patented by Aventis Crop Sciences, contained the Cry9C Bt gene and was intended for animal feed only. In 2000, StarLink corn got into the human food chain and was found in shells used in Taco Bell restaurants.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control studied the blood of 28 complainants and concluded there was no evidence that the reactions people experienced were associated with hypersensitivity. Nevertheless, Aventis, later acquired by Bayer AG, removed StarLink from the marketplace. Surgeoner insists that Canada needs a continuing strong regulatory system to deal with GMOs. "We cannot let our vigilance down."

Less than impressed is Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario director and organic vegetable grower Maureen Bostock, Lanark. She's worried that a switch to using SmartStax, Monsanto's latest combination of modified seed traits almost exclusively, combined with a lowering of the amount of corn planted to non-Bt refugia hybrids, will give all insects too much exposure to Bt and make this acceptable tool of organic farmers useless. Corn farmers are required to plant a certain percentage
of a field with non-GMO varieties as a refugia as part of a strategy to reduce the risk of pesticides becoming resistant to the genetic modification.

Issue for Africa
The widely publicized announcement of a new generation of modified genetics didn't draw as many protesting voices as a decade ago. Growing worries about a world food shortage play a role in the acceptance of GMO crops, says Terry Daynard, former executive director of the Ontario Corn Producers Association. "My sense is the world is changing," Daynard says. "The anti-GM crowd is losing the public relations battle."

The change in Europe really started last year when food prices rocketed on the news of a world food shortage, he says, and since then, the Vatican has endorsed GM foods as a way of fighting world hunger. He expects it will take a long time for vehemently anti-GMO Austria and Italy to change their attitudes, however. "Europe has lots of food and Europe wants to set rules that don't make any sense scientifically," Daynard says.

Europe's attitude is "an annoyance" for Canada but a major issue for African countries such as South Africa and Uganda that need to protect their crops against insects. Governments there are afraid to grow them because their exports to Europe will be banned, Daynard explains. They don't have the capability to do scientific research, he says, and are heavily influenced by anti-GMO environmental groups.

Opponents have always complained that there was nothing there for the end user. But now the genetics industry is starting to give consumers what they want, as well as what suits growers. Surgeoner points out that Health Canada approved Dupont business Pioneer's genetically-modified high oleic acid soybeans last spring. The Pioneer soybeans could produce oils for consumers in 2010, offering reduced saturated fats and "negligible" amounts of trans fat. Canada approved this trait before the United States.

Still, the new Monsanto genetics are promoted for what they will do for growers. The new Monsanto Roundup Ready 2 soybean seed promises to boost yields eight to 10 per cent by reducing "(yield) drag" associated with previous gene insertion methods, says Mike Nailor, trait manager for Monsanto, based in Guelph.

Monsanto sees SmartStax as "the platform of the future," confirms Nailor. He says that in four to five years Monsanto's Dekalb brand corn will be SmartStax only, except for Roundup Ready hybrids that are a refugia option. SmartStax will give growers better yields and growers tell us that is what they want, Nailor says.

Will SmartStax use become widespread? The technology is licensed to other companies, but Nailor says he can't speak to their plans for future seed marketings.
Roundup Ready corn now has 70-80 per cent of the corn seed market in Ontario, Nailor says. "It has become the platform of choice for growers," he says.

Steve Denys, marketing manager for Pride Seeds, located in Chatham, insists there has been substantial genetic progress made through selection, even without genetic modifications.

Pride is owned by a European farmer co-op. The members in Europe get the benefit of the genetic selection improvements without the special traits that are available here, he says. Through an agreement with Monsanto, Pride is one of the companies adding SmartStax to their own genetics.

Provincial corn specialist Stewart asserts that corn yields have been improving with better stress tolerance, as well as with what's happening in the laboratory with herbicide tolerance and resistance to corn borer and corn rootworm. Put old hybrids and new hybrids in side-by-side plots at 4,000 plants per acre, Stewart says, and there's little difference in yield. Increase the density to 30,000-32,000 plants per acre and "the old hybrids simply can't handle the stress" of that population "while the new hybrids can."
Corn grower Crowe is looking ahead to a drought-tolerance gene in the corn seed he can plant in normally droughty, thin-soiled Prince Edward County.

Other companies are on the same track. Pioneer plans to launch a transgenic, drought-tolerance trait as early as 2010 if approval is granted and a second trait in another five years. Racing them to market is a BASF Monsanto collaboration aiming to launch drought tolerant hybrids as soon as 2012. Crowe can hardly wait. BF

SIDEBARS

GM canola from Canada gets a foothold in Europe

The door to marketing genetically-enhanced Canadian canola in Europe is now open. A trade panel that Canada launched against the European Union (EU) on behalf of canola growers in 2003, the same time that the United States and Argentina launched disputes over corn and soybeans, was settled this spring and Canada signed an agreement with the European Union July 15.

Canada can sell genetically modified Canola to the EU "when the price is right," Canola Council of Canada president JoAnne Buth says, even if European growers can't grow the same seed there.

If European growers can't grow the same genetically-modified seeds there, that's not her concern – and it's better for Canadian growers actually, because of cost and agronomic advantages to the GMO-trait seeds.

Seed producers might not feel the same way, she adds.

But the fight is not over on canola, says Patty Townsend, vice-president, Canadian Seed Trade Association. "We dropped the panel, but that doesn't mean the EU is in conformity." The panel only addressed specific traits that were named at the time. In the meantime, new traits have been introduced and traits have been ‘stacked.' The EU does not approve stacked traits in general.

Furthermore, says Townsend, there are a lot of individual member country bans on growing GM seeds.

Canadian and European officials are to take part in high-level discussions twice a year as part of the July agreement. They are calling it a "mutually acceptable solution on all GM issues," Townsend says.   

All GM issues are on the table, not just the traits named in the panel. The discussions will address new products, and the approval process, as well as the EU's approach to "stacks, which is a big concern to our corn members in particular."

Townsend says: "There was a huge wave of approvals a year and a half ago" that cut to a small number the hybrids ineligible for export.

In the meantime, the canola seed industry has developed a voluntary policy of commercializing a seed release in Canada only if it is also approved in major markets. The major market list, which first included the United States and Mexico, was expanded to include China, and most recently, the European Union. Monsanto will bring a Roundup Ready 2 trait to market in four or five years, Townsend says. That may test the policy. BF 

French wheat farmers change yield direction

There's no doubt that progress in overall cereal yields in Europe is slowing down. Winter wheat is the main crop. Yields are still high compared with harvests from more extensive growing areas ranging from 3,200 kilograms to 4,000 kilograms per acre. But research in France among some of the best wheat farmers in Europe indicates growers are more cautious now.
Reasons include higher prices of fertilizer and pesticides, which means the first criteria when selecting varieties is natural disease resistance and robustness instead of ever-increasing yield potential.

And although global warming effects are still not really tangible, the weather has certainly become more prone to violent fluctuations, another reason for choosing robust and strong-strawed wheats. More attention is also being paid to growing higher quality wheats for bread and baking in an effort to keep margins per acre steady in a generally sinking market.

All these factors imply that there's fertile ground indeed in Europe for all the advantages that GM crops can offer in terms of rapid developments for the above hardiness, resistance and quality traits. But there's still no clear sign that farmers would want GM wheat, even if it were available. The reason is a real fear that European consumers would reject any food products with GMO content, although this fear is receding year by year as successive surveys indicate a slow acceptance of gene technology in food production (See "Consumers – the factor ignored by European GMO producers," page 22.)

But let's have a look at what's happening with conventional wheat nowadays. From the 1950s right through to the mid-'90s, wheat yields in France increased by an average 48 kilograms per acre each year – an annual gain that has dropped to around 13 kilograms an acre nowadays. The plant breeders cannot be blamed for this performance drop, according to research by the French crop research and advisory organization ARVALIS. New wheat varieties coming onto the market for the past 15 years have offered yield increases at least as good as those of the 1970s and '80s.

Indeed, the growers themselves are mainly to blame. They are gunning for higher quality and more natural resistance to disease and weather influences. This means lower yields as far as wheat in Europe is concerned.

In fact, the sowing of high-protein bread wheats has increased on French farms over the past 10 years from 50 per cent of wheat area to 80 per cent. Another aspect of lower yield increase, according to ARVALIS, is that farmers don't stick their necks out so much nowadays and often stay with the varieties that have already proved themselves on the respective farms. BF

Consumers – the factor ignored by European GMO producers

Gene technologists couldn't do a better job of turning public opinion against GM crops in food production even if they tried. This is a statement from one of Europe's most highly regarded writers and thinkers on agricultural production, the editor of the German Agricultural Society's magazine, Thomas Preusse. "There's been talk for years of using GM crops to produce something for the consumer: more and higher quality proteins, lower fat contents, for instance. But what do the leading plant breeders and their gene technologists do? They concentrate on yield improvement and wider herbicide resistance."

These qualities, coming with the next generation of Roundup Ready (RR 2 Yield)  and, two years later, Optimal GAT soybeans, all offer advantages to the growers. Inbuilt health properties that could swing the reluctant European political and consumer machine into acceptance mode for GMO technology are even further away!

But even in the face of such blundering marketing strategies, the European consumer seems to be slowly coming round to acceptance of gene technology in crop production. The European Union supports an open platform for surveying, presenting and discussing GMO developments, the GMO-compass (www.gmo-compass.org/eng/home), and by 2007 survey results were swinging towards positive opinions and more open minds. 

Backing up the Thomas Preusse argument, around 50 per cent of respondents in such surveys nowadays indicate that, especially where there's a benefit for consumers or for the environment, gene technology is acceptable in food and out in the fields. Back in 2005, only 27 per cent of Europeans were that positive about GM food, and even that was 28 per cent better than the findings of the 2002 "Eurobarometer" – a regular
Europe-wide survey of public opinion.

Naturally, these figures are averages and there are pretty wild fluctuations between the different countries in Europe. For instance, at the last poll only 13 per cent of Luxembourg citizens and 14 per cent of Greeks said they felt good about GM foods. But 46 per cent of Czechs approved, and Spaniards and Portuguese weren't that far behind. What the European polls on GM foods really showed right from the beginning was that information is the key to acceptance. Where key questions are answered clearly, acceptance and support, when given, is more decisive and longer-lasting.

Despite this, the jury is still out because these polls also indicate that the majority of consumers have yet to form an ultimate opinion about GM foods. It is also felt that there's still a clear information deficit regarding the use of GMOs in farming.

But general approval has been increasing. For instance, a survey in 2005 indicated 51 per cent of European consumers would purchase GM foods if these foods contained less pesticides than conventionally-grown crops. And 49 per cent said they would buy more GM foods if their manufacture could be proved to be more environmentally friendly. These responses were in each case 10 per cent higher than answers given just three years before.

One of the latest polls by the Institute of Grocery Distribution in the United Kingdom reveals that the public feels GM technologies could already be an important tool in reducing global food shortages and in responding quickly to food challenges caused by climate change.

Of course, anyone who followed the polls during the so-called organic food boom in the 1980s and compared the positive answers with actual – and much lower - sales figures for bio foods in the stores will accept that what respondents say in surveys and what they actually do can be startlingly different.

This is why the EU has gone a step further in its GM foods research and traced the actual behaviour of consumers following the polls in 2006 and 2007. In the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Spain, actual purchases were recorded and it was found that only 20 per cent of consumers actively avoided the GM foods in stores.

This is a much lower figure than polls indicate. There's therefore every likelihood that the obvious European political fear of a public backlash, should more GM crops and foods be introduced, is unfounded.   

Backing this up is a survey last year in Britain by the Institute of Grocery Distribution. This found that only 21 per cent of shoppers checked food labels to ensure food was non-GM. So maybe the plant breeders are correct, after all, in giving less priority to consumer health benefits in GM crop production! BF

GM corn in Europe: the long and winding road

First approval for a GM crop within the EU was in 1998 for the Monsanto Bt corn MON810 and, to this day, Bt corn remains the only commercially grown GM crop.
But in Europe its growing area was down on the year by 16,000 acres to 266,000 acres in 2008. On top of this, there's still no clear indication of total planted area this year – even in July. This indicates the turmoil Europe finds itself in where gene technology out in the field is concerned.

EU approval for MON810 actually ran out after the 2007 season. France immediately banned further planting, so Bt corn is no longer grown in a country that combined well over 50,000 acres of the crop in 2007. Monsanto has reapplied for approval for its MON810, available in 99 different derivative varieties for the wide range of European conditions.

While the process of reapproval is ongoing, the variety can still be grown elsewhere in Europe and, in the meantime, the EU has opened the gates wider for GM crop acceptance by ruling that individual member states can now decide for themselves. Germany decided – and banned MON810 literally a few days before the 2009 planting season. Minister of Agriculture Ilse Aigner claimed it represented "a danger to the environment," basing her decision on recent work in neighbouring Luxembourg claiming that butterflies, water organisms and a particular beetle are all adversely affected by the Bt insecticide.

France, Greece, Luxembourg, Hungary and Austria are also saying "no" to Bt corn and GM crops in general. But some EU countries are expanding its use. Spain had close on 200,000 acres of Bt corn in 2008, an increase on the year of over five per cent, and an acreage increase is expected again this year.

The Czech Republic increased growing area by 60 per cent to 21,000 acres. Poland's Bt corn fields expanded from 790 acres in 2007 to 7,400 last year and, in the same period, Romania´s rose from around 1,000 to 17,000 acres. The signs are plain: where there's the political freedom to grow the crop, there's expansion (albeit from a very small base so far).

While many German farmers are angry at the sudden ban in their country this year, after some 8,000 acres were successfully grown in 2008, there is also an undercurrent of disenchantment with Btmaize which might have led to a slight decrease in area planted this year anyway. Very discouraging from the farmers' points of view is the "coexistence regulation" development – aimed at reducing co-mixing of GMO genes within conventional crops and wild plants.

Under EU regulations, the GMO grower is responsible for any damage and also for taking all the precautions required by law. In Germany, this includes ensuring a minimum of 150 metres between GM and conventional crops or 300 metres where organically grown corn is concerned. In some states, 1,000 metres is required between Bt corn fields and any protected natural wildlife and plant areas – and there's a multitude of those in the German countryside, in part due to EU support for the establishment of such biotopes on farmland.

Such distances may not seem significant in Canadian terms, but in the west of Germany where the average farm is still under 75 acres – with most fields under 10 acres – they create huge difficulties.

Also, state farm extension advisers, for instance those from the Saxony Ministry of Agriculture, have announced that Bt corn is only really profitable under their conditions, where incidence of the European corn borer is very high and where the corn yield can be boosted at least five per cent through this protection. Two years of trials in Saxony showed Bt corn offered no financial advantage over conventional when these conditions are not present, claimed the advisers.

Most Bt corn in Europe is growing in Spain, where corn borer pressure is also highest. A study by the European Institute for Prospective Technological Studies under the EU's Joint Research Centre looked at the experiences and opinions of 402 maize growers there between 2002 and 2004. Result: despite higher seed costs, average crop gross margin was higher for Bt crops, up to C$77 per acre better in the best regions.

But many of the Spanish farmers felt a worthwhile return depended almost entirely on reducing corn borer pressure and researchers concluded that often Bt corn was seen as simply another crop insurance. They also pointed out that the relatively new "co-existence" regulations, as described above, could well nullify even these fragile advantages. BF