Early GM use holds large benefits
Canterbury - Early adoption of GM technology in arable crops would bring clear farm level and environmental benefits for Poland according to a new report by Graham Brookes, of Brooks West, UK, and Prof. Andrzej Aniol, from the Polish Plant Breeding and Acclimatization Institute, published in the journal Biotechnologica.
The report shows that the application and use of the GM agronomic traits of herbicide tolerance to oilseed rape, sugar beet and maize, and insect (Bt) resistance in maize offers Poland both economic and environmental benefits.
The authors claim that Polish arable farmers have the potential to gain more from early adoption of GM technology than their EU 15 counterparts because they are starting from a lower average level of technical efficiency that enables Polish producers to compete more effectively, and earlier than they might otherwise have been capable of, if they did not use GM technology. Key findings forecast that adoption of GM technology would result in annual increases in output of between 10% and 19% for crops like oilseed rape (for export and as a raw material for bio-fuels) and sugar beet (for export without EU subsidy or for use in non-food sectors like bio-ethanol).
This represents an increase in farm (gross margin) income of between Euro67 million and Euro123 million. There will be greater opportunities to move to low tillage cultivation methods, which reduce soil disruption, erosion, and the release of carbon dioxide from ploughing and hence make a positive contribution to reducing the impact of global warming.