Andrew Pierce and Caroline Gammell, The Telegraph 14 Aug 08;
The Prince of Wales has been plunged into an extraordinary row with scientists after they accused him of seriously abusing his position over his comments on GM food.
Scientists reacted angrily to the warning from the Prince in his interview in the Daily Telegraph that GM crops risked causing the world's worse environmental disaster.
MPs accused him of being a "luddite" who risked inflicting starvation on millions of people in Africa.
But the Prince will be heartened by the revelation that there is now only one GM trial ongoing in Britain - in Cambridgeshire - and there are no plans to licence any more.
Some 54 have been conducted since they were approved by the government in 2000.
Prof Ottoline Leyser, a plant geneticist at the University of York who is a Fellow of the Royal Society, said: "I am disappointed with the whole environmental movement.
"This is rabid anti GM. Misguidedly demonising GM results in the real issues being sidelined, creating the very problems that Prince Charles is trying to address.
"There are several issues that have been muddled together, resulting in serious dangers to the future direction of agriculture.
"He has confused the dominance of multinational companies and its consequences for food security with the use GM in agriculture. If there were a total world ban on GM tomorrow, it would have no effect at all on the dominance on big multinational companies."
Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey, said: "Prince Charles is talking biased baloney.
"Prince Charles, like many wealthy people, has no concept of the hardships of other parts of the world. He wants to retain his vision of a rural idyll by telling the poor to eat organic cake while he pours wine into the fuel tank of his sports car.
"He is using the privileged position of a prince of the realm to try to influence us with a one sided, irresponsible, view of food technology. He is like a romantic 19th century poet writing and painting pictures of rural life.
"Environmentalists have been saying for years all we need to do is redistribute wealth to feed the poor. It has not happened so we have to produce more food. The most effective way is through GM crops."
Professor Alison Smith, senior researcher at John Innes Centre, Europe's premier plant science laboratory, said: "I was shocked and saddened to read what Prince Charles said. Shocked because it was so ill-informed, one-sided and generally negative.
"Saddened because the Prince is in a position to lead this country in solving some of the massive problems he identifies. He could bring together our world-class scientists and agricultural experts to catalyse constructive debate and action that would benefit the UK and the rest of the planet.
"Instead, he indulges in diatribes in which he appears to blame the problems of the planet on a single technological advance that he has completely misunderstood."
The Prince, in the Daily Telegraph, challenged the view that GM foods will be crucial to the developing world. He said: "What we should be talking about is food security, not food production - that is what matters and that is what people will not understand."
But the Royal Society, in a statement said: "Food security is an important issue. We do need to evaluate a range of techniques and technologies which have been proposed for enhancing food-crop production and the Royal Society is currently undertaking a study looking at this."
In his interview the Prince accused large corporations of conducting experiments with nature, which had "gone seriously wrong".
He was backed by Patrick Holden from the Soil Association who said: "If we go down this path I think we will put this country at risk. There could be a period of great difficulty in the next 10 or 20 years."
Mike Childs, campaign director for Friends of the Earth, said: "GM crops will not solve the food crisis - and forging ahead with an industrialised farming system will continue to fail people and the environment around the world.
Des Turner, a Labour MP on the Commons science committee, said: "Prince Charles has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong. It's an entirely Luddite attitude to simply reject them out of hand."
Phil Willis, the chairman of the Commons science committee, said the Prince's "lack of scientific understanding" would "condemn millions of people to starvation in areas like sub-Saharan Africa".
Why Prince Charles is right about agribusiness
It's easy to scoff at the Prince's latest 'green' intervention, but if you really look at what he's saying, it's completely cogent
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 13 Aug 08;
Prince Charles' warnings that genetically modified crops and industrial agriculture will lead to ecological disaster appear only to be adding a dose of passion to the cooler analysis of world's leading agronomists, climate scientists and grassroots groups in developing countries, who have been saying much the same about farming and ecology for some time.
When asked whether "industrial scale food conglomerates are the way ahead", he said: "What, all run by gigantic corporations? Is that really the answer? I think not. That would be the absolute destruction of everything."
Anaylsis: Charles echoes Third World Network and Via Campesina, the world's two most authoritative farm analysis groups, and is aiming at global agribusinesses which dominate the food chain, and controls seed supplies, chemicals, and food processing as well as transport and retail sales. He also echoes Food Matters, a report from the No 10 Strategy Unit, which recognises that the agribusiness model of food production based on global competition has failed to deliver.
"Corporations [are] conducting a gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong. Why else are we facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?"
Analysis: Charles links climate change and world hunger with the growth of agribusiness and its reliance on oil, large amounts of scarce water, and chemicals. The UN, the UK government and the EU recognise that industrial agriculture, including biofuel, soy and palm oil industries, have been responsible for large-scale deforestation, as well as hunger and a growth in carbon emissions, soil erosion and social problems.
The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation said in 2006: "The [global] livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth's increasingly scarce water resources."
"A nightmare vision ... in which millions of small farmers are driven off their land and into unsustainable unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness."
Analysis: According to UN Habitat, cities are growing by 180,000 people a day and the world's urban infrastructure is unable to cope. Roughly one billion people in Latin America, Asia, and Africa live in slums. The UK government's Commission for Africa said in 2005: "These slums are filled with the unemployed and disaffected. Africa's cities are becoming a powder keg of ... instability and discontent." According to a major UN report in 2003, the greatest underlying reason for the growth in slums has been globalisation.
"We are missing the point. We should be discussing food security, not food production. that is what matters and that is what people will not understand."
Analysis: Charles echoes the G8 world leaders who stated in Japan in July: "We are deeply concerned that the steep rise in global food prices coupled with availability problems in a number of developing countries is threatening global food security." The UN declared in May: "Securing world food security may be one of the biggest challenges we face in this century."
"And if they think its somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
Analysis: The UN International Assessment of Agriculture (IAASTD), carried out by 400 leading agronomists and scientists with the help of the World Bank found no conclusive evidence that GM crops increase crop yields or that they were the single answer to global hunger. The report, endorsed by 60 countries including the UK this year, stated that science and technology must be combined with traditional knowledge, working with communities on localised farming solutions.
"Small farmers ... would be the victims of gigantic corporations taking over the mass production of food."
Analysis: The FAO, the World Bank and nearly all international development groups argue strongly that peasant farmers must be helped to produce more food. The World Bank, the UK's National Farmers' Union and the EU all recognise that the growth of agribusiness is linked to a worldwide decrease in the number of small farms.
"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place ..."
Analysis: The Punjab in India was the centre of the Green Revolution which introduced hybrid seeds, intensive irrigation and chemical fertlisers and pesticides in the 1960s and 70s. According to Reith lecturer and Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva: "Today every farmer is in debt and despair. Vast stretches of land have become water-logged desert."
"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture."
Analysis: The government of western Australia says on its website: "Salinity is one of the greatest environmental threats facing Western Australia's agricultural land, water, biodiversity and infrastructure. It is caused by too much water containing dissolved salts in the wrong places in the landscape."
"I think it's heading for real disaster."
Analysis: Prince Charles is referring to global ecological problems. Here he echoes many climate change scientists, UN figures and politicians. His language – "unmentionable awfulness", etc – may be quaint, but is he the crank some would have us believe him to be? Absolutely not.
Missing the signs of genetic irrelevance
Richard Black, BBC News 13 Aug 08;
Prince Charles usually speaks from the heart; and his latest outpouring on genetically modified crops is expressed in terms that are forthright even for him.
Judging by readers' comments appended to the Daily Telegraph article outlining his position, he has struck a chord.
This should not be surprising. There are few, if any, such divisive subjects in the scientific firmament; and in the UK at least, polls show deep public suspicion.
But the prominence given to the Prince's words across a range of news media prompt the question: is he right?
While he is adamant that food supplied through genetic technologies would be "guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time", he offers not a jot of evidence to support the claim.
GM agriculture is often treated as a single entity which must in its entirety be regarded as good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, environmentally benign or destructive.
In the real world, biology is rarely that simple.
Take the example of gene flow, the spread of introduced genes from a GM plant into non-GM neighbours, either weeds or conventional crops
How likely it is to happen depends on many factors, among them the type of crop, how its genes may be carried (for example by insects), the way farmers manage it, the weather, and whether any related plants are growing nearby.
So even though it has been shown to occur in some situations - for example, between hybrid radishes grown on the farms of Michigan and wild radishes growing nearby - in others, it does not.
Even if gene flow is documented, it does not automatically cause problems.
And that is just one example of an isolated environmental question.
Global trends
Everyone will have their own opinion about the risks involved; and humans are notoriously bad at assessing risk, as evidenced by a common instinct that driving is safer than flying.
But it is clear that if we look at what science tells us, the GM world is considerably more complex than the one Prince Charles has painted; and you can multiply the complexity a thousand-fold if you include all the environmental, social and economic questions.
But the Prince also had some harsh things to say about the modern system of food production and distribution.
There were some apparent omissions and confusions. For example, the Green Revolution crops he mentions - the rice, maize and wheat hybrids developed half a century ago that sent yields through the roof in Asia and Latin America - were not products of genetic technologies but of conventional cross-breeding.
True, problems are now arising with the crops in some areas with water shortages - they are heavy on irrigation - and soil degradation. But the Prince does not mention that the Green Revolution changed India from a country that regularly needed liberal doses of food aid to one that was self-sufficient and food secure.
Nevertheless, many of the issues he raises - pressure on small-scale farmers, the hunger of modern farming methods for water, food security - are all too real in some parts of the world.
Food production, and more especially food distribution, are increasingly in the hands of giant multinational companies. Farming has already had its industrial revolution in developed countries, and the developing world is following suit.
For society and for the environment, this is a much bigger issue than whether those industrialised farms are growing GM or non-GM crops.
Both mean increased use of pesticides and fertilisers, the trading of machinery for human muscle and the consequent loss of labour compared to traditional agriculture.
In Britain, where GM crops have never been widely grown, intensive farming has been a factor behind a wide range of environmental ills ranging from water pollution to biodiversity decline.
European and national schemes that encourage farmers to look after the environment are repairing some of the damage.
Perhaps the most telling comments on the Farm-Scale Evaluations (FSE), the biggest UK trial of GM crops, came after the event from environmentalists who said what was really needed was a trial of intensive versus non-intensive farming methods.
They could have added that such studies might not restrict themselves to environmental questions; it would also be worthwhile investigating social and economic questions, such as whether intensive or artisanal farming benefits the entire economy more, rather than specific players such as supermarkets, and trying to find some objective answers rather than relying on the theologies of rival schools of economics.
Broken promises
Would the uptake of genetically modified crops across the world make these issues worse?
Perhaps. There are conflicting studies from different areas - often prepared by institutions with a vested interest - showing that GM crops either produce higher or lower yields, need a higher or lower chemical input, and generate higher or lower profits for farmers compared to their conventional equivalents.
A few indisputable facts leap out, however. One is that commercial GM farming is dominated by four crops - soybean, maize, cotton, and canola - and has been wholeheartedly embraced by only a few countries, among them the US, China, Argentina and Canada.
A second is that consumers in Europe do not want to eat GM food, which is one reason why farmers in the EU and in regions supplying food to Europe, especially Africa, are not going to be making a large-scale switch any time soon.
A third - and the one most pertinent to Prince Charles' argument - is that the people and institutions behind the technology have failed to deliver on promises to right their original wrongs and develop strains that would benefit people in poorer countries and loosen corporate control.
Almost exactly four years ago, I was in Cologne, Germany to cover the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (Abic). Scientist after scientist (many of them working in the commercial sector) told me how companies had messed up by appearing to force GM products on an unsuspecting world, and how narrow the lines of research had been.
A second wave of crops, they pledged, would bring things that people actually wanted and needed, from drought-resistant rice for Africa to vitamin-enhanced fruit for Europeans, and would largely used technologies that did not involve transferring genes from one organism to another.
On a commercial scale, these developments have not arrived.
Earlier the same year, at the Indian Science Congress in Chandigarh, I listened to Indian scientists from the president down explain how national research institutions were going to develop strains with traits such as enhanced nutrition and salt resistance, and give them away to farming communities.
That, also, has not happened.
The strains being grown commercially today have been engineered either to help farmers control weeds through proprietary herbicides or to reduce pest damage, and remain products jealously guarded by the companies that market them.
Against this backdrop it is perhaps not surprising that many commentators on Prince Charles' interview share his apparent view that GM crops would only add to the woes of farmers and the hungry in poorer countries.
But it is also possible to argue that as things stand, GM crops are irrelevant to the wider patterns of increased corporate control of food chains, the stubborn and enduring hunger felt by much of the developing world, and the global trend of environmental decline.
Prince Charles says GMO crops will be "disaster"
Reuters 13 Aug 08;
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prince Charles said on Wednesday the widespread use of genetically modified crops would be the biggest environmental disaster of all time.
The 59-year-old heir to the British throne is well known for supporting organic farming, but his comments published in an interview with the Daily Telegraph were his most outspoken yet on GMO foods.
His views will strike a chord in Britain where biotech crops -- widely grown in North and South America -- have faced significant opposition with concerns centered on food safety and possible environmental impacts.
Charles said multinational food companies were conducting a "gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong".
If large companies took over the mass production of food, it would hurt small farmers and the environment, while "excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture" had damaged water supplies in India's Punjab and in Western Australia, he said.
"What we should be talking about is food security, not food production -- that is what matters and that is what people will not understand," he said.
"And if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
His comments come as a wave of food inflation has reopened the debate on how science can boost agricultural production.
Critics of GMO crops say they are environmentally unfriendly and could potentially harm those who eat them. But supporters say they can raise yields, cut costs, and provide other benefits to improve food and feed the world's hungry.
Earlier this year Britain's chief scientist John Beddington said GMO crops should not be shunned as agriculture seeks to respond to rising food demand, particularly from China and India, at a time when climate change is expected to hit yields.
(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Michael Winfrey)
Prince Charles sees red over GM crops
Yahoo News 13 Aug 08;
Prince Charles drew criticism with an outspoken attack on industrial farming Wednesday, warning genetically modified food could be the "biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
Charles said millions of small farmers around the world could be driven off their land into "degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness" by the rise of global conglomerates.
The heir to the throne is a long-term supporter of sustainability and locally produced food and often speaks out on environmental issues.
He has an organic farm on his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire and set up the Duchy Originals brand, which sells exclusively organic produce, in 1990.
But his latest comments have drawn criticism that he is a "Luddite".
The Daily Telegraph journalist who conducted the interview wrote that Charles "let rip" and started "jabbing his finger" and "bouncing in his chair" when asked whether large-scale food production was the future.
"What, all run by gigantic corporations? Is that really the answer? I think not. That would be the absolute destruction of everything and... the classic way of ensuring that there is no food in the future," Charles told the paper.
He added that "clever" genetic engineers had put the world on course for the "biggest disaster environmentally of all time."
The world should be working "with nature. We have gone working against nature for too long," Charles said.
Labour lawmaker Des Turner, who is on the House of Commons science and technology select committee, criticised the comments, telling London's Evening Standard paper that Charles "has got a way of getting things absolutely wrong.
"It's an entirely Luddite attitude to simply reject them (GM crops) out of hand," he added.
Another Labour lawmaker, Ian Gibson, told the paper: "Prince Charles should stick to his royal role rather than spout(ing) off about something which he has clearly got wrong."
But the future king attracted support from environmental groups including Friends of the Earth.
"Prince Charles has hit the nail on the head about the damaging false solution that GM crops present," said its campaign director Mike Childs.
"GM crops will not solve the food crisis -- and forging ahead with an industrialised farming system will continue to fail people and the environment around the world."
The comments come amid rising concerns worldwide over rapidly rising food prices.
The World Bank estimates that food prices have almost doubled over the past three years, and its president Robert Zoellick has said two billion people are affected by the food crisis.
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