1.Global GM Crops Area Exaggerated
2.Food Security - Any Case Against 'Artificial' Crops
3.Re: Monsanto contradicts ISAAA's figures for GM plantings in South Africa?

GM WATCH COMMENT: Note that Monsanto's response to Mariam Mayet's query (item 3) suggests ISAAA's figures are dependent on no more than Monsanto's projections of land use based on seed sales. No wonder ISAAA is so loath to disclose its sources.
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1.Global GM Crops Area Exaggerated
Sam Burcher
ISIS Press Release 29/01/07
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GlobalGMCropsAreaExaggerated.php

EXTRACT ONLY

Ten years on, and the 'growth' in GM crops area is exposed to be more hype than substance as opposition heightens

PR masquerading as fact

The biotech industryÕs mouthpiece, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agrobiotechnology Applications (ISAAA), has been exposed for grossly inflating the figures of GM crops grown globally. Its latest report lists countries growing GM crops that do not grow them, or that have banned them. For example, Iran is down as having grown tens of thousands of hectares of commercial GM rice in 2006, despite the fact Iran has never approved or grown GM rice on any commercial scale.

Bob Phelps of Gene Ethics Network criticizes the report for making these unsupported claims and ignoring the negative impacts of GM crops: "The report emphasizes that 10.3 million farmers grew GM crops in 2006, but this is just 0.7 percent of farmers world-wide. And just 600 000 farmers grew 85 percent of all GM crops on industrial farms in North and South America.ÊSmall Third World farmers are misused as fodder in the ISAAA's PR war."

READ ON AT: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GlobalGMCropsAreaExaggerated.php

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2.Food Security - Any Case Against 'Artificial' Crops
Godwin Haruna This Day (Nigeria), 30 January 2007 http://allafrica.com/stories/200701300090.html

Penultimate week, Friends of the Earth International published a new report that shows genetically modified (GM) crops have failed to address the main challenges facing farmers in most countries of the world. Although more than 70 per cent of large scale GM planting is still limited to United States and Argentina, the report alerts other countries on the danger in embracing the GM technology as panacea to food shortages. Godwin Haruna witnessed the presentation in Lagos.

During the presentation of the ten-year report of the performance of genetically modified (GM) crops in Lagos penultimate week, Mr. Nnimmo Bassey, executive director, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), did not mince words in exposing the dangers inherent in the GM technology. As Bassey has often maintained in previous fora on the subject matter, he made it clear that any country that embraces that technology in its food production, does so at its peril. He advised the developing countries where food crisis is already manifest not to jeopardise their precarious position by relying on the technology to solve their food crisis.

The Report titled: "Who Benefits from GM Crops? An analysis of the global performance of genetically modified (GM) crops 1996-2006", noted that in 2006, the spread of GM crops worldwide showed signs of stalling. It added that production of GM crops on a large scale continued to be limited to a few crops and countries and have not addressed the main agricultural problems and challenges facing farmers in most countries of the world.

"They have not proven to be superior to conventional cropand in addition, the second generationâ GM farm crops with attractive food traits promised by the industry has not appeared", he stated.

Bassey said no GM crop on the market today offers benefits to the consumer in terms of quality or price, and to date these crops have done nothing to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere.

According to him, the great majority of GM crops cultivated today are used as high-priced animal feed to supply rich nations with meat.

As indicated in the report, Bassey stressed that GM crops commercialized today have on the whole increased rather than decreased pesticide use, and do not yield more than conventional varieties. He added that the environment has not benefited, and GM crops will become increasingly unsustainable over the medium to long term.

In 2006 the US Department of Agriculture, a chief proponent of GM crops, for the first time acknowledged that GM crop yields are not greater than those of conventional crops, and a compelling number of studies by independent scientists demonstrate that GM crop yields are lower than, or at best equivalent to, yields from non-GM varieties.

According to the report, in 2006, due to a soybean sector crisis and lower yields in Brazil and Paraguay, Monsanto had to scale down its expectations in both countries. The company was forced to publicly announce in Paraguay a reduction in the royalties they demanded from soy producers. The Ministry of Environment in Paraguay detected higher losses in Roundup Ready soy yields than in the conventional varieties, verifying that the GM varieties were highly sensitive to drought.

The report further noted that in the last decade, cotton production has declined in the majority of countries that have adopted GM cotton like Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa and Australia, and significant drops in GM cotton production specifically are forecasted in 2006 for South Africa and Mexico.

Also in In 2006 a European Union-wide survey of public views reconfirmed the European public's opposition to GM food. Also, last year, the rice food supply on four continents was contaminated with an illegal GM rice supposedly field-tested only until 2001, proving once again the inability or unwillingness of the biotech industry to control its products.

"No genetically modified crop on the market today has done anything to alleviate hunger or poverty in Africa or elsewhere. The biotech industry fails to provide a shred of evidence to support their figures and conveniently fails to mention the problems associated with growing genetically modified crops. Evidence shows that they need more pesticides, provide lower yields and cause widespread contamination. GM crops are cl