GM crops. Trade trouble ahead

The fast spread of genetically modified crops means transatlantic trouble

GREENS may hate them, but farmers love them: that is the lesson of statistics out this week on the spread of genetically modified (GM) crops. The area sown with them worldwide last year was up by a startling 20% on 2003, to 81m hectares.

So says the ISAAA (a pro-GM body but the best source of data there is). After an 11% rise, America still accounts for nearly 60% of the total, but GM areas in other big food exporters, bar Australia, were rising fast: in Argentina by 17%, Canada by 23%, Brazil by 66% (maybe: no one can be sure how much of its soya is GM, but certainly plenty and the potential there is huge). Maize and soya remain by far the biggest GM food crops. Wheat has got nowhere. China, though it has rushed into GM cotton, is still dithering about GM rice.

What does the rise of GM mean for business? For specialists in GM seeds such as Monsanto or its European rival Syngenta, very good news. Monsanto has just released quarterly results showing its herbicide sales flat but its seeds business 20% up; after a rough period, the firm is now heading back into profit. But there may be trade trouble ahead. The European Union (EU), whose consumers mostly fear GM, is already under fire from America, Canada and Argentina for its past ban on their GM exports. And though the ban has gone and the EU recently approved some GM varieties of maize, its new GM rules look - from the prairies - just as obstructive, and its national governments, with their voters in mind, are mostly dragging their feet.

Yet the EU has a fifth column inside: Spain plants a small but rapidly increasing area with GM maize and Romania, which is likely to join the EU in 2007, grows GM soya.

The fast spread of genetically modified crops means tensions between the US and other GM growing areas, and the EU, although even within the EU Spain is growing GM crops, as is future member Romania.

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