The issues of yield increases for GM and no price premiums for non-GM were hot in the GM debate. Maarten Stapper wrote letters to the editor about these issues in late August 2007.
It was published as GM is losing clout in The Land of 23 August, which is shown below. The same letter appeared, without direct reference to Mark Martin’s article, in the Stock & Land of 30 August as GM no proven yield boon .
With some changes, There’s no yield advantage appeared in The Weekly Times of 29 August and shown at the bottom of this page.
In these letters, however, the statement “and creation of healthy soils, thereby increasing drought tolerance”, was omitted as the important management factor in more productive farming systems, following the stated need for skillful breeding and appropriate agronomy.
GM is losing clout
SIR: In the ongoing GM debate, Mark Martin, MarketAg, Willow Tree, stated on marketing (“Canola boom prices for lucky ‘06 growers”, The Land, August 2, p83) that developments in Europe: “could place additional demand on the Australian crop, as it could become a major supplier of non-GM canola for most of 2008.” He repeated that in his outlook of 16 August (“GM debate goes national, p92).
He makes a hypothetical comparison between high-yield GM and high-price non-GM as choice for our drought and crop-rotation affected canola.
This was followed by the question: “So which farmer will be the winner of a future Government decision on GM technology?”
GM option seems wishful thinking. There is no proven yield advantage for GM, certainly not related to drought tolerance or disease resistance. GM genes are not directly related to yield. In released varieties they are stacked on high-yielding non-GM traits.
Any yield improvement can be achieved by skillful breeding using markers, the useful component of gene technology, and by appropriate agronomy.
In northern America, however, these traits are increasingly not becoming available in (government funded) non-GM varieties. Hence, they slowly disappear.
In a 2002 survey only 19 per cent of Canadian GM canola growers gave as their reason ‘better yield, better return, more profit’.
Promised advances in GM are stalling. Herbicide tolerance was in 2006 still accounting for 81pc of global GM crop acreage. Only in the first years after introduction was there a reduction in herbicide use. In subsequent years the weeds not killed by glyphosate become a problem, followed by glyphosate resistance in others.
Dr Maarten Stapper
Fellow of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology
Belconnen ACT
There’s no yield advantage
GENETIC modification seems wishful thinking.
There is no proven yield advantage for GM, certainly not related to drought tolerance or disease resistance.
GM genes that provide herbicide tolerance are not directly related to yield. Any yield improvement can be achieved by skillful breeding using markers, the useful component of gene technology, and by appropriate agronomy.
In Northern America, however, these traits are increasingly not becoming available in (government-funded) non-GM varieties, so they slowly disappear.
In a 2002 survey, only 19 percent of Canadian GM canola growers gave as reason to use GM ‘better yield, better return, more profit’.
Have you ever seen a table with yield results of to-be-released GM and best current varieties in the same trial?
Promised advances in GM are stalling. Herbicide tolerance last year was still accounting for 81 per cent of global GM crop acreage. Only in the first years after introduction was there a reduction in herbicide use. In subsequent years the weeds not killed by glyphosate become a problem, followed by glyphosate resistance in others.
Maarten Stapper
Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology Fellow
Belconnen ACT