Soil Association: GM technology past its sell-by date

The Soil Association strongly disagrees with the call from the Royal Society report ‘Reaping the benefits: towards sustainable intensification of global agriculture’ that GM crops are needed to prevent a catastrophic food crisis by 2050. Emma Hockridge, Soil Association policy coordinator, said: “GM is past its sell-by date. For over two decades huge claims have been made about the potential for GM, which have not come to fruition. Why is an organisation like the Royal Society banging the drum for a failing technology when exciting new developments such as Marker Assisted Selection, included in the report recommendations, are producing almost all of the successful innovations in crop breeding.”
 

She continued that scientific evidence proved that low input systems, such as organic, could provide sustainable solutions to food security. The IAASTD report, produced by 400 international scientists and supported by 60 governments, including the UK, had backed organic agriculture and similar 'agro-ecological' approaches as part of a 'radical change' in the way the world produced food. In her opinion, the report was trying to overturn the findings of IAASTD, which she found strange, given the fact that the UK Government had actually signed up to it. In the USA, there had been two federal court cases which had banned new GM crops because they removed the right of farmers to grow non-GM crops. The stark reality was that if there were GM crops grown in the UK, it would eventually destroy the livelihoods of organic farmers, according to Ms Hockridge.

Soil Association