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ISIS Report 26/03/08
“UK Farmers Upbeat about GM Crops” Debunked
Government Funding Industry to Market GM Crops. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Peter Saunders
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How UK government funding agency misled the public
The UK Government’s Economic
and Social Research Council (ESRC) recently put out a press release entitled,
“What farmers think about GM crops” [1], which began: “Farmers are upbeat
about genetically modified crops”, according to research it funded.
It went to say that a research team at the Open University has taken “the first
systematic look” at what large-scale, commodity
farmers (specifically
excluding those mainly involved in organic growing) think about GM crops.
The research, aimed at the attitudes of farmers expected to be most favourably
disposed to using GM crops, found that they regard GM as a simple extension
of previous plant breeding techniques, and GM crops an innovation that “they
would assess on its merits.” Their real interest is in “how GM crops would
work in practice and whether they can contribute to the profitability of their
farms.”
The research was actually done in 2005 [2], and involved interviewing
just 30 commodity farmers. Half of the farmers, selected by
SCIMAC (the Supply Chain Initiative on Modified Agricultural Crops), the industry
group that supports GM crops, were among those who had hosted the three-year
Farm Scale Evaluation of GM crops that SCIMAC had got the UK government to
fund in 2000. And even this small, restricted group of farmers,
expected to be most favourably inclined towards GM crops, have adopted a wait-and-see
attitude.
But the ESRC press release quoted the lead researcher Prof. Andy Lane saying: “New technology such
as GM is attractive to farmers. They want to produce high-quality food profitably
and they want to farm in an environmentally sensitive way. GM may allow them
to reconcile this conundrum by doing both of these things at once….A particular
advantage of GM is its potential to allow farmers to grow crops with high
yields while using less herbicide.”
Lane’s statements
are not based on any evidence provided by the Open University research team,
the ESRC or anywhere else, and have been contradicted again and again by data
from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and studies carried out in universities
(see below).
Predictably,
the misleading message from the ESRC was widely repeated, often with embellishment, in the popular
press. One headline went as far as saying: “UK farmers want to grow GM crops” [3]. Julian Little, Chair
of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, a GM industry group, wrote that
[4]: “A study into the attitude of farmers by the Open University this week,
announced that farmers recognise the clear economic and environmental benefits
of GM crops to themselves and the wider public. It demonstrated that new technologies
are seen as a way to achieve high quality produce at a low cost for consumers,
while being socially responsible.” He added: “Scientific trials of GM crops
must go ahead unmolested.” Biotech giant Monsanto, too, lost little time in
posting one such article on its website [5]: “Shhhh…Farmers Love Frankenfoods.
British farmers are ready to throw in the organic cotton towel and start growing
biotech crops just like their American cousins, finds a new study from Open
University.”
Data consistently show that GM crops reduce profit for farmers and increase
pesticide use
GM crops are neither profitable
for farmers nor do they result in less herbicide use. Data from the USDA and
US universities have consistently shown that GM crops gave no
increase in crops yields or profitability, and more often a reduction in both,
while increasing rather
than decreasing the use of pesticides (reviewed in The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable
World [6]. Both the two major GM traits that make up nearly 100 percent
of all GM crops, Bt and glyphosate tolerance, have decisively failed at least
as far back as 2005 [7, 8] (Scientists
Confirm Failures of Bt-Crops and Roundup Ready Sudden Death, Superweeds,
Allergens..., SiS 28), and
promoting them can be a recipe for ecological and agronomic disaster.
The Friends of the
Earth report [9] released January 2008 confirms those findings. It highlights
the more than 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate herbicide on the major
crops - soybeans, corn and cotton - from 1994 (when GM crops were first introduced)
to 2005, based on data from the USDA. The increase in glyphosate is not compensated
by a decrease in other herbicides. While farmers growing glyphosate tolerant
Roundup Ready crops initially used lower quantities of herbicides other than
glyphosate, that trend soon reversed. Increasingly, farmers have found it
necessary to apply larger amounts of both glyphosate and other herbicides
to kill weeds that have become resistant to glypohsate. From 2002 to 2006,
the use of the second leading soya herbicide 2,3-D more than doubled from
1.39 to 3.67 million lbs, while glyphosate use on soybeans increased by 29
million lbs (a
43 percent rise). Similarly, glyphosate on corn increased 5-fold from 2002
to 2005 simultaneously with a rise of atrazine by nearly 7 million lbs (12 percent up). Atrazine, the most heavily used
herbicide on corn in the US, is banned in Europe because of its links to serious health
problems such as endocrine disruption, breast and prostate cancer.
Finally, a 4-year
study just completed by researchers at the University of Georgia
and the USDA concluded that the use of transgenic cotton does not provide
increased returns to the farmer [10]. They found that no transgenic technology system
produced significantly greater returns than a non-transgenic system in any
year or location.
ESRC complicit in supporting marketing for the biotech industry disguised
as research
ESRC spokesperson Astrid
Wissenburg stated in a reply to Dr. Brian John of GM-Free Cymru [11] that
while accepting “the phrasing of the opening line of the press
release could have been more precise, … the facts as stated in the press release
are accurate and stand as written [though obviously the quotes attributed
to Andy Lane are not accurate]…The purpose of the research was never to undertake
a survey of views on GM, but to undertake an in-depth study of farmers’ views
on GM crops as a new technology and investigating the major influences on
their views and decisions.” The original proposal was to interview 60 farmers,
but for “both funding and scientific reasons” the total number was scaled
back to thirty.
Why was such a research
project undertaken at all? It cost the taxpayer at least £131 000 to interview
a select group of 30 farmers and it did not tell us anything remarkable or new. Wissenburg explained: “Given the very limited extent of GM trials
in the UK, and the decision not to proceed with licensed
GM varieties, the pool of those who could have participated is quite small,
so the project could not draw upon a random sample from the whole UK farming population.”
That makes it
clear why this research
was carried out and why no conclusions about UK farmers can be drawn from it. A representative sample of
the whole UK farming population would indeed have included
only a very few farmers who have grown GM crop, simply because only a small
proportion of UK farmers have grown GM crops. A survey based
on such a sample could have provided a basis for determining the views of
UK farmers about GM, which is what is claimed
in the title of the project, in the press release, and in subsequent articles
in the media.
The next sentence in Wissenburg’s reply confirms the real purpose of the research:
“The group involved in the research was therefore relatively small, but not
'unrepresentative' of farmers with experience of GM crops. Because of
the sensitive nature of the project, access to GM farmers was facilitated by
SCIMAC.” (italics added).
The project was intended to target “farmers with experience of GM crops”. In
reality, it was little more than a marketing exercise aimed at promoting GM
crops to commodity farmers [12] (see Marketing
Exercise Masquerading as Scientific Research, SiS 38). SCIMAC and
the biotech industry had more than a facilitating role. The nine project advisors
included Bob Fiddaman and Daniel Pearsall, respectively chair and secretary
of SCIMAC, Helen Ferrier, NFU Food Science Advisor, responsible for assembling
and distributing the GM propaganda newsletter called Agbiotech News Roundup;
and Richard Powell and Karen Holt from Syngenta Seeds Ltd.
The ESRC later told Times Higher Education that the report had been
“subject to peer review” [13] but as recently as 17 March 2008, the ESRC specifically
said on its own website that the final report had not been peer reviewed [2].
It had certainly not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal.
The Farm Scale Evaluation revisited
What Wissenburg said of
the GM crop trials was also inaccurate. The UK government had agreed to fund
the 3-year Farm Scale Evaluations for SCIMAC to the tune of £3 million of
taxpayer’s money, which critics generally regarded as commercialisation via
the backdoor.
The trials were rigged
in favour of GM crops right from the start, and crucial aspects such as safety
or crop yields were not investigated [14] ("Cynical & Dishonest Science"
in GM Maize Trials, SiS
20) because it would have revealed GM in a bad light, as exposed by citizens
monitoring their local trials, who provided photographic evidence that the
GM maize was severely stunted with fewer and much smaller cobs compared to
the conventional maize variety [15]
Bogus Comparison in
GM Maize Trial, SiS 22).
Despite all attempts to manipulate the trials and conceal unfavourable data,
the official findings went against GM crops. But the UK government gave the
go ahead to grow GM maize without a debate in Parliament, a move condemned
by the influential all party Environment Audit Committee. In the event, gene
giant Bayer withdrew, saying it was “economically non-viable” [16].
So it was against
such a background of failures that this ‘research project’ was funded, presumably
in the hope of resuscitating GM crops for Britain. It would actually have been interesting
to find out what UK farmers in general think about GM crops, but perhaps the
researchers and their funders were as sure as we are about what the outcome
would have been and would rather not ask the question.
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