Genetically Modified Crops and Other Organisms : Implications for Agricultural Sustainability and Biodiversity Brian

W e are at the dawn of a revolution in how we grow food and many other products on this planet, a revolution that is pushing society into rethinking what we want out of agriculture. Biotechnology and other advances in plant and animal breeding and crop technology are already offering an unprecedented range of choices for how we use agricultural land, and how we produce fish and forests. Visions of the future for agricultural land vary between weedless and pestless " green concrete " and visions of a new organic agriculture producing high-quality, high-yield crops yet protecting and nurturing biodiversity. Given the rapid pace of new developments in agricultural biotechnology and the culture of the research world, consumers , farmers, policymakers and regulators throughout the world are struggling to come to terms with these choices. Some consumers, especially those in Europe, are perplexed, anxious, and desperate for information about the potential effects of biotechnology on their food and their environment. The media have sensed that this issue is not going to go away from public consciousness in the foreseeable future, and are actively promoting widespread debate on how we should best use the profound discoveries emanating from the new genetics. This is perhaps the most important debate of the new millennium, because its outcomes will have global implications for food and raw material production for the rest of our history. I will explore some of the implications of using the present outputs from the agricultural biotechnology industry, draw attention to the science which seems to be missing from the debate, and to look toward the future, when we may well turn to biotechnology to build a more sustainable agriculture. The views are mostly those of the UK statutory conservation bodies and inevitably Eurocentric, but I will try to pose some fundamental questions about the implications of agricultural biotechnology for developing countries. Statutory conservation advisors in the UK are not opposed to genetic modification as a technique for changing the characteristics of plants and animals. It is simply another, but very powerful , tool for plant and animal breeding. On the contrary, we see real promise in genetic modification for eventually producing more sustainable and environmentally friendly crops and farming. Biotechnology could give us a future where perennial crops have in-built resistance to pests and diseases, fix their own nitrogen, and give higher yields. We may eventually be able to produce …