By Wendy Barnaby
St George’s Hall in Exeter is a big space, and the 60 or so people who turned up there for Monday evening’s debate on the farm-scale evaluations of GM crops must have wondered where the rest of the crowd was. Two hours later, after questions had sprung from all parts of the audience, it was obvious that the people who are still interested in the evaluations are very interested indeed.
The farm-scale evaluations were set up by Defra to find out how the growing of GM crops would affect farmland wildlife. When they reported, in October 2003, the headline results were that conventional rape and beet harboured more wildlife than their GM varieties, but that GM maize was richer in biodiversity than conventional maize.
Behind the headlines, the situation is more nuanced. “No crop type was really good or really bad,” said Dr Les Firbank of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology at Lancaster University, who analysed the evaluations. “Different conditions are good for different biodiversity. The biggest variation was between conventional rape and conventional maize, not between conventional and GM anything.”
Many of the questions arose from strong feelings about GM as a technology. Did the evaluations collect information from organic farms as well as conventional ones? What about the societal benefit of GM? How can farmers produce grain which will compete with world prices, but still nurture biodiversity? Must we divide farms into grain-producing areas and fields for biodiversity, or can we mix the two? If you change one gene in a plant, aren’t you changing the nature of the crop?
In spite of the event being advertised as a debate, most questions involved only the questioner and the panel member who answered. One participant wanted to hammer home his suspicions that GM food might damage our health.
Moderator Vivienne Parry darted round the hall with her radio microphone. “It’s quite difficult to give everybody the space they need without letting one train of thought dominate,” she said later. “It’s difficult when people come expecting to talk about their own particular hobby-horse, when in fact the hobby-horse is not anything to do with the subject - so it’s quite hard to generate genuine debate rather than a question-and-answer session.”
“Livestock has already screwed up agriculture in the south-west”, argued Professor Chris Pollock, Director of the Institute of Environmental and Grassland Research at Aberystwyth, who chaired the scientific steering group for the evaluations. “Most biodiversity disappeared from Britain’s country side between 1880 and 1970. That was after the Enclosures and the beginning of intensive agriculture.” In his opinion, British agriculture has to face questions far more difficult than GM. “We need to design a sustainable food system,” he said. “But if you offer one to people, they won’t choose to pay for it. People buy on price.”
The participants I spoke to found the evening valuable. “I wish we’d had more time,” said one member of the audience as we trooped out.
The event was organized by the BA Agriculture and Food Section and Rothamsted Research and supported by the Natural Environment Research Council and The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. The other members of the panel were Professor Joe Perry from Rothamsted Research, Dr Brian Johnson of English Nature, and Jim Orson of The Arable Group.