Farming On-Line

GM Crops: Less Risk To Neighbours Than Organic Ones

A Cornish potato grower has told Farmers on Line that he is more concerned about the risk to his crops from organic growers nearby than he is about GM crop trials, and a south west Conservative MEP has called for the trials to continue.

"It is all very well for organic growers to demand compensation if their crops are affected by GM trials, but who should I go to if an outbreak of blight from an organic crop moves into my potatoes?", asked farmer Simon Rogers.

"Blight is a very major problem, particularly in West Cornwall where the humidity is regularly high", he went on. "As a potato grower myself, the thought of someone using the likes of Bordeaux mixture for blight control on my boundary is frightening".

"The potential problem is not confined to potatoes. A considerable acreage of brassicas are grown down here which may suffer from uncontrolled ring spot, alternaria and so on".

"I don't think that is a problem confined to organic growers", commented Richard Young, from the Soil Association. "A lot of diseases are spread from crop to crop, but organics are not a major reservoir of disease".

"I accept that there could be a problem with potato blight, but most growers will be selecting varieties that are more resistant to the disease - after all, they don't want to lose a crop to it either".

GM trials should go ahead, says Tory MEP

Caroline Jackson, Conservative MEP for the South West, has called for the GM trials in Cornwall to go ahead. In her newsletter to constituents, she says that the trials are needed to answer key questions about the role of such crops in the environment.

"Nothing I have yet seen convinces me that GM Crops will produce a net benefit in Europe", she writes, "but they could result in a dramatic fall in the use of pesticides, which would be welcome".

"They might also result in potentially irreversible changes in the natural world, but will they be worse than man's activities, which have, for example, brought about a dramatic decline in West country bird life over the last 100 years, unaided by GMOs?"

Ms Jackson will be leading a delegation from the European Parliament to discuss the matter with the Council of Ministers, but she warns that making Europe a no-go area for GM would result in the rapid switch of bio-tech jobs to the US and Japan.

"What will that leave us with", she concludes. "Car manufacturing? Selling heritage teabags to tourists?"