Europe's Farmers Call for Access to GM Crops

A global poll run of six leading farming magazines gave farmers an opportunity to air their opinion on the technologies which they think would feed the world. Votes were expressed in the UK Farmers Weekly and the Dutch Boerderij, and farmer views from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, USA and Canada also joined in. Results showed that 37.1% of the farmers are amenable to new technologies, and genetic modification was by far the most popular of the five presented key factors. Farmers voted for education and training at 20.3%, investment in research and development (18%), removal of trade barriers (14.7%), and government intervention in food production (10%).

Morten Nielsen, Director of Agricultural Biotech at EuropaBio commented that, "Throughout history, farmers have used new technologies in order to meet the needs of society; these results show that things are no different today. Food security and climate change will be two of the major challenges that the world will face in the 21st century. This will require significant changes in how we produce food and while policy makers can play a part, at the end of the day farmers need practical solutions to practical problems. This poll reinforces the message from many European farmers who have been calling for access to GM crops for several years." 

For details, see the press release at http://www.europabio.org/PressReleases/green/PR_09022010Farmers.pdf