Abstract
Summary The Green Revolution, which brought together improved varieties, increased use of fertiliser, irrigation and synthetic pesticides, is credited with helping to feed the current global population of 6 billion. While this paper recognises the ability of pesticides to reduce crop losses, it also discusses their potential negative effects on public health, with particular emphasis in developing countries, and the environment. The response of the agricultural industry in bringing forward new technology such as reduced application rates of targeted pesticides with lower toxicity and persistency is noted. However, with increasing world population, a slowing of the rate of crop improvement through conventional breeding and a declining area of land available for food production there is a need for new technologies to produce more food of improved nutritional value in an environmentally acceptable and sustainable manner. Whilst the authors recognise that the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops is controversial, the benefits of these crops, including their effect on pesticide use is only now beginning to be documented. Published data are used to estimate what effect GM crops have had on pesticide use first on a global basis, and then to predict what effect they would have if widely grown in the European Union (EU). On a global basis GM technology has reduced pesticide use, with the size of the reduction varying between crops and the introduced trait. It is estimated that the use of GM soybean, oil seed rape, cotton and maize varieties modified for herbicide tolerance and insect protected GM varieties of cotton reduced pesticide use by a total of 22.3 million kg of formulated product in the year 2000. Estimates indicate that if 50% of the maize, oil seed rape, sugar beet, and cotton grown in the EU were GM varieties, pesticide used in the EU/annum would decrease by 14.5 million kg of formulated product (4.4 million kg active ingredient). In addition there would be a reduction of 7.5 million ha sprayed which would save 20.5 million litres of diesel and result in a reduction of approximately 73,000 t of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. The paper also points to areas where GM technology may make further marked reductions in global pesticide use.
Highlights
The Green Revolution, which brought together improved varieties, increased use of fertilizer, irrigation and synthetic pesticides, is credited with helping to feed the current global population of 6 billion
While the authors recognise that there are many controversial issues associated with the introduction o f G M crops, the aim of this paper is to review published data relating to the effect o f introducing G M crops on the amount of pesticide used, first on a global basis and to estimate the effect in Europe i f G M crops were widely adopted
Glyphosate and glufosinate-ammonium are the two main herbicides for which crops have been modified for herbicide tolerance, while insect protection has been achieved through the introduction o f genes encoding for truncated enterotoxins produced by strains o f Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) (Betz et al, 2000)
Summary
The Green Revolution, fathered in the 1960's by Norman Borlaug, heralded one o f the major agricultural developments o f the last century. The production of new cereal varieties, coupled with increased use o f fertilizers, irrigation and pesticides, provided many o f the technological inputs required to feed an expanding world population. Since their introduction in 1947, synthetic pesticides have been widely used to reduce crop losses due to insects, diseases and weeds. Even so these losses for eight of the world's major crops are estimated at US$ 244 billion/annum, representing 43% o f world production (Oerke et al, 1995) and post-harvest losses contribute a further 10%. Pesticides have been associated with a number o f negative events that were unforeseen at the time o f their adoption
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