ISAAA foresees increase in global value of biotech crops

An international agency foresees global value of biotechnology crops in the world market to grow to 0.5 billion in 2006, indicating a more stellar growth than the previous decade’s adoption even as their use expands from pest-resistance to the more novel nutrient-fortification. "I am cautiously optimistic the stellar growth in the first decade of commercialization will be surpassed in the second. The number of countries and farmers growing biotech crops is expected to grow, particularly in developing countries," said Clive James, chairman of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), in a press briefing. What is apparently drawing farmers to tap biotechnology crops is their tremendous benefit of upgrading livelihood with higher farm yield, higher income, and substantially-reduced use of inputs, mainly the expensive and health-hazardous pesticides. "A decade ago, critics suggested biotech crops would not be valuable in the developing world. Now 90 percent of farmers who benefit are resource-poor farmers in developing countries. These helped alleviate 7.7 million subsistence farmers in China, India, South Africa, the Philippines from abject poverty," said James. In 2005, developing countries accounted for 38 percent of biotech crop area world wide, and growth rate in biotechnology adoption in these countries have been swifter, over four times that of industrial countries. Biotechnology authorities picture the next 10 years to be highly prospective for novel crops including nutritional genetically modified (GM) food and feed and renewable resources such as biofuel. Research agencies are hopeful Vitamin-A rich GM rice or multi-nutrient-rich rice (with Vitamin A, iron, zinc) will come out in the market in the next five years. A milestone in biotechnology in 2005 is Iran’s propagation of the first GM rice. Since rice is the world’s most important food crop being a staple of 1.3 billion poor, GM rice will contribute to the UN’s Millennium development goal of easing hunger and malnutrition by 50 percent in 2015. China’s expected commercialization of Bt rice in the near term will also usher in an important growth considering China’s huge market. Advancement of GM crops worldwide has also been noted with the emergence of multiple traits or stacked trait (GM corn’s herbicide tolerance and borer-resistance). Stacked products in the US ate up 20 percent of total acreage, and the three-trait crop was first introduced in the US last year. In 2005, global biotechnology crop area reached 90 million hectares, up by 11 percent the previous year, involving 8.5 million farmers in 21 countries with Brazil posting the fastest growth with its GM soybean. Considered biotech "mega countries," those with at least 50,000 hectares, are 14 out of 21 countries using GM technologies. The first seven of these includes the US (49.8 million hectares of GM soybean, corn, cotton, canola, squash, papaya), Argentina (17.1 million, soybean, corn, cotton), Brazil (9.4 million, soybean), Canada (5.8 million, canola, corn, soybean), China (3.3 million, cotton), Paraguay (1.8 million, soybean), and India (1.3 million, cotton). The rest are South Africa (500,000, corn, soybean, cotton), Uruguay (300,000, soybean, corn), Australia (300,000, cotton), Mexico (100,000, cotton, soybean), Romania (100,000, soybean), the Philippines (Bt corn, 70,000, and Spain (100,000, corn). Herbicide-tolerant soybeans remained the most widely-adopted trait followed by insect-resistant corn. Countries which just started planting biotechnology crops in 2005 include three European countries—Czech Republic (Bt corn) which is planting for the first time while France (corn), and Portugal) resumed planting the GM products. Other biotechnology planting countries are Colombia, (cotton), Honduras (corn), Portugal (corn), Spain (corn), Germany (corn), and Iran (rice). For 2006, Brazil looks forward to its national agricultural system’s development of virus-resistant biotech beans and papaya that can deliver significant benefits to resource-poor farmers. "Source":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=news&doc_id=12105&start=1&control=179&page_start=1&page_nr=101&pg=1]

---