HIGH FLYERS THINK TANK

Biotechnology and the future of Australian agriculture

The Shine Dome, Canberra, 26 July 2005

General discussion 2
Chair: Dr Jim Peacock

Question – There are two comments I wanted to make. One is in relation to the global situation, ‘good’ biotech, ‘bad’ biotech. Over in the United States recently it became very apparent, at a biotech communications forum I was at, that the Europeans and Americans have a very different perception of what is good biotech and bad biotech. It does change. From the American point of view, good biotech is crops and food, and bad biotech is GM medicines. They are starting to go on the nose big time over there, with a lot of negative attitudes to pharmaceutical companies. But in Europe, of course, it is the other way round. Good biotech is health/medical, and bad biotech is agricultural. If I was asked to pick out what will be the next big thing we will see in the next 5 years, I would say a lot of concern being raised in the health and medical arena. That is broad-spread across the pharmaceutical companies, health and medicals; that is going to overlap into health uses of biotechnology, so it won’t be segregated away.

On the other one, pharming, I think something that does have to be addressed at some time is food crops versus non-food crops, because there is a phenomenal difference in people’s minds. If you have a choice of putting a pharmaceutical crop into corn or poppies, it’s a no-brainer which one you are going to choose. Also, if you are looking at a fruit with a type of benefit to it, you are much better off producing something like the ‘tange-apple’ than you would be putting it into a tangerine or an apple.

Chair – In pharming, where the hectarage may not be great for any given product, I think it is possible to think of more non-food crops than we might otherwise think about adopting.

Question – On behalf, actually, of AusBiotech, our biotechnology industry association, perhaps as a minority opinion: as I listen to some of the comments this afternoon I think we are becoming more European than the Europeans, in terms of our attitude to GM crops. We are running for cover. We are saying, ‘Oh, we’re actually in biotech but it’s non-GM, we’re okay.’ Where are we going?

The fact of the matter is that GM crops have attained a double-digit growth for 10 years. It is the fastest-growing technology in the world. Three hundred million Americans, Canadians and others have voted for it. Adoption in the developing world is now, today, at a higher percentage rate – though not the greatest share yet – than here. Folks, when China adopts GM rice, it’s all over. We’re going to move forward. And they are desperately close to doing that right now.

What we are going to find is that the underdeveloped world will adopt these crops. So will a number of other economies. And at the end of the day, with our current attitude, we in Australia are going to be left behind, because in the bigger context of things we are only a small-leverage country in the greater global play.

I think we are allowing anti-globalisation, anti-multinational, to so cloud our thinking that there are some real dangers. GM is nothing more than part of our toolbox. It is part of overcoming barriers that we cannot overcome by conventional means. From the way we are running for cover, as I listen to some people I think, ‘Have the NGOs won already?’ We can do better than this.

Question – I am from GRDC. On Friday I was speaking to some of the representatives of the marketers – that is, AWB and ABB, the Barley Board and Wheat Board. They were saying that at the moment they have to consider the fact that most of their customers, which are the grain millers that they provide to, do not want GM. But what they were saying is that their attitude is not opposed to the technology.

One of them was saying that if there were to be a market – and he did mention China – if that changed, things would change overnight and they would then have a market for, let’s say, Australian grains. And my perception was that he was saying there would be a market for it that would be created, and they would be willing to service that, and that their policy, their opposition to, say, GM – if there is one like that – would change pretty quickly because they would say that there was a market.

So that is the only point, that if China were to change, his view was that that would be pretty substantial. So I think that that just backs up what was said.

Chair – There are 81 million hectares, 5 per cent of agricultural land, already under GM crops – much of it in China. And it is growing at double-digits every year. All of those products are finding ready markets.