Spanish Farmers, EU's Lone GMO Sowers, Want More
Date: 01-Mar-05
Country: SPAIN
Author: Emma Ross-Thomas
Spain is the only country in the European Union to grow GMO maize commercially and production of the pest-proof crop is growing rapidly.
Some 60,000 hectares were sown to GMO maize in 2004, farmers' unions estimate, about twice as much as the year before, out of a total of some 480,000 maize-sown hectares.
The biotech seeds used in Spain are adapted to resist the corn borer pest, which farmers in the affected areas say in a normal year can destroy 15 percent of the crop, rising to 60 percent in a bad year.
Farmers say that although biotech seeds cost 10 to 15 percent more than conventional seeds, they are willing to pay the price as they save money and effort on pesticides.
Nearly all maize grown in Spain is for animal feed and in that market there is no price difference between GMO and conventional maize, traders say.
Even Antonio Abad, who sows conventional maize because British food group Tate & Lyle pays his cooperative a premium to keep their crop GMO-free for products for human consumption, envies his GM-growing colleagues.
"When you sow a protected plant ... that gives the farmer peace of mind," Abad said. "If there weren't problems in the market we would grow GMO, of course ... the more protected plants the better."
Abad says he spends 100 euros per hectare on pesticides each year which he could avoid with GMO seeds. However, some GMO seeds used elsewhere require custom-made chemical treatments.
Spanish farmers are lobbying for more GMO seeds to be approved, including ones they hope will reduce the cost of growing sugar beet.
"UNCONTROLLED EXPERIMENT"
"Europeans see it as going against nature. This perfects nature," Agustin Marine, president of the Spanish Maize Producers' Association told Reuters.
Environmental group Greenpeace begs to differ. They say it is an uncontrolled experiment on the environment and an attack on biodiversity. Also, they say it causes irreversible damage.
"There is no going back ... because the (GMO) genes are mixed in with the very building blocks of life," Juan Felipe Carrasco, head of the anti-GMO campaign for Greenpeace said.
Greenpeace is also concerned that pests become resistent to the plants designed to repel them and some farmers say corn borers have reappeared in GMO fields.
Spain's government approved GMO seeds before the European Union stopped authorising biotech products in 1998. While the last government was greatly in favour of GMO use, the new Socialist government is treading more cautiously.
While the last government tended to vote "yes" in Brussels meetings on biotech, the Socialists have abstained seven times in a row.
"It is not against GMOs. It wants to deal with the issue very cautiously, with great transparency, and on a case by case basis," a government source told Reuters.
Even before it began planting GMO crops, Spain -- a net importer of grain and soy for animal feed -- bought GMO soy from Argentina and the United States.
Most animals in Spain have been fed on GMO products -- although EU legislation does not oblige food retailers to label meat from GMO-fed animals.
"Unless it's an animal which has never eaten feed, which practically doesn't exist or unless it's been certified ecological then in almost all certainty it will have eaten GMOs," a technician at union ASAJA Jesus Rivera said.
Some farmers argue that as Spain imports it anyway, and humans eat engineered crops via meat, it is illogical not to grow it.