Constraints to biotechnology introduction for poverty alleviation

Abstract

Poverty in developing countries is usually linked to low agricultural productivity. Inadequate quantity and quality of food impacts human development potential, physically and mentally. Reduced immunity to disease due to poor nutrition increases the burden and kills. Current technologies (fertiliser, improved seed, irrigation, pesticides) correctly applied can sustainably and safely increase crop yields. Purchase cost and infrastructural issues (lack of roads, credit, market access and market-affecting-trade-distortions), however, severely limit small scale farmers’ ability to adopt these life sustaining and life saving technologies. Plant Biotechnology has great potential to improve the situation. Delivery of the technology in the seed largely overcomes the logistical problems of distribution involved with packaged products: farmers can pass seed to each other. Once the initial research is completed the ‘cost of goods’ (that is of a biotechnologically delivered trait delivered in a seed) is zero. Total time to market is comparable between biotechnology products and conventionally bred seed. For some traits conventional breeding is not an option: the only way to introduce such a trait is by genetic engineering. Even for traits that can be improved by traditional breeding, genetic engineering may facilitate and speed up the process. Intellectual property issues are usually not a constraint in developing countries and in pro-poor agriculture. It is notable that agricultural biotechnology uptake for commercially introduced traits has been extremely rapid, including in developing countries. However, for public good products from the public sector, despite much research in developing countries, this potential has not materialised. The politicisation of the regulatory process is an extremely significant impediment to use of biotechnology by public institutions for public goods. Costs, time and complexity of product introduction are severely and negatively affected (without such political impediment the technology is very appropriate for adoption by developing country scientists and farmers: it does not require intensive capitalisation). The regulatory process in place is bureaucratic and unwarranted by the science: despite rigorous investigation over more than a decade of the commercial use of genetically engineered (GE) plants, no substantiated environmental or health risks have been noted. Opposition to biotechnology in agriculture is usually ideological. The huge potential of plant biotechnology to produce more, and more nutritive, food for the poor will be lost, if GE-regulation is not changed from being driven by ‘extreme precaution’ principles to being driven by ‘science-based’ principles. Changing societal attitudes, including the regulatory processes involved, is extremely important if we are to save biotechnology, in its broadest applications, for the poor, so that public institutions in developing as well as industrialised countries, can harness its power for good. Against this background the programme of the study week was organised into the following sections. The Introduction to the Study Week presents the problem of increasing food insecurity in developing countries, the need for continued improvement of crop plants and agricultural productivity to address the problem, the track record and perspective of genetic engineering (GE) technology, and the roadblock to efficient use by the established concept of ‘extreme precautionary regulation’. Contributions From Transgenic Plants will highlight what important contributions in the areas of tolerance to abiotic stress, resistance to biological stress, improved water use efficiency, improved nutritional quality, inactivation of allergens and reduction of toxins, are already in use or in the R&D pipeline. Following an account of the state-of-the-art of the technology and the world-wide, radical opposition on the use of the technology in agriculture, this session continues with the question of whether or not GE-plants diminish or promote biodiversity and describe what is necessary to achieve sustainable yield, including the contributions from the private sector. In the section on the State of Application of the Technology concrete examples from Argentina show which products have made it over the hurdles of the regulatory regimes. This session concludes with a paper on the problems of and possible solutions Fo re w o rd