Since 1981, through structural adjustment programme, the agricultural sector has undergone several reforms which were expected to raise the incomes of smallholder farmers and hence increase their entitlement to food through the market. Data from the national household survey, however, show that most of smallholder farming remains subsistence. Only 10 percent of households sold their maize while...

Of the 102 million hectares that made up the global area of biotech crops in 2006, less than 8% (7.6 million ha) were in Asia. Three biotech crops are currently planted in significant areas in four Asian countries with government regulatory approval; namely, cotton, corn (maize), and canola. However, the amount of GM crop material imported into the Asian region for processing into food and anim...

Maize is widely grown in Africa including in drier areas where alternate crops will often perform better. Although maize will fail in drought years, it produces substantially higher yields than alternates, such as sorghum and millet, in wet years. Although people tend to select which crops to grow based on recent experience with crop harvests and prices, there is a widespread preference for mai...

Does GM work? Is GM technology too imprecise? Are GM genes more unstable than resident genes? Is it necessary to produce many transgenic plants to obtain an acceptable one? Could GM derived food be more toxic, more carcinogenic, or nutritionally less adequate when compared to other foods? And what is the potential for GM technology to produce foods with enhanced nutritional content or reduced t...

There is currently intense debate in parts of Europe about the commercial production of transgenic food crops. Information from the press and lobbying groups has not encouraged an informed and balanced consideration of the issues. In marked contrast, there is widespread acceptance of transgenic food crops in North America.

A five year Joint Project between SASEX and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs was initiated in 1996, aimed at improving the crop production capabilities of small scale cane growers. As part of this Project, research trials were conducted to investigate the economics and practicalities of intercropping cane with food crops. Results from the first two years of ...

Animal pollinators contribute to human food production and security thereby ensuring an important component of human well-being. The recent decline of these agents in Europe and North America has aroused the concern of a potential global pollinator crisis. In order to prioritize efforts for pollinator conservation, we evaluated the extent to which food production depends on animal pollinators i...

well known in rats fed similar diets, and that the sample size (six rats) was too small to draw any conclusions. Following the production of the first transgenic plants, health issues The report by Ewen and Pusztai (1999) was seized concerning the safety of using genetically modified (GM) crops in foods and feeds have been discussed, debated, and evaluated. The upon by anti-GM advocates to supp...

In the relatively short time since their commercial introduction in 1996, genetically modified (GM) crops have been rapidly adopted in the United States GM crops are regulated through a coordinated framework developed in 1992 and administered by three agencies-the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) that ensures the products are safe to grow, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that ensur...

The genetic modification of crop plants from the methodology involved in their production through to the current debate on their use in agriculture are reviewed. Techniques for plant transformation by Agrobacterium tumefaciens and particle bombardment, and for the selection of transgenic plants using marker genes are described. The benefits of currently available genetically modified (GM) crops...