Australia, Europe farmers want diverse gene giants
Friday May 21, 5:08 am Eastern Time
By Michael Byrnes
LONGREACH, Australia, May 21 (Reuters) - Australian farm leaders and the head of Paris-based International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) have voiced concern about concentration of biotechnology ownership among a small number of world giants.
This concentration mean that farmers growing genetically modified crops could be held to ransom on the price of seed, farm leaders said at the annual council meeting of Australia's National Farmers Federation this week.
''We're watching very closely as to whether they (biotechnology companies) are good world citizens or pariahs,'' Xavier Martin, vice president of the New South Wales Farmers Association, told Reuters.
Australian farmers were now satisfied that biotechnology did not produce calves with 10 heads and
three tails, he said.
But they were concerned at the direction some technology companies had taken with price premiums, he said.
''The jury is still out (on the biotechnology companies)...there's always a question mark on whether it's fair or extortion,'' he said.
Australian and European farm leaders broadly supported gene technology in food products at this week's annual conference. IFAP leader Gerard Doornbos predicted an explosion in the worldwide production of biotechnology foods in coming years.
But concern about the ownership of biotechnology by a small number of big corporations was growing, he said.
The NFF called on the Australian government to make its planned Gene Technology Office a statutory authority, to better regulate gene technology.
This reflected Australian farmers' concern over the potential for intellectual property to be owned from planting to the retail shelf, NFF president Ian Donges said.
The Australia farm sector has already had one confrontation with a multinational chemicals company.
In 1997 U.S. chemical giant Monsanto Co (NYSE:MTC - news) introduced to Australia genetically modified Ingard cottonseed, which produces a cotton plant which internally generates its own pesticide.
But Monsanto's price for Ingard cottonseed generated such serious rumblings among Australian growers that the U.S. company was forced to cut its price to A$185 a hectare from the initial price of A$210.
The small number of biotechnology companies was ''certainly a concern,'' said Peter Corish, chairman of the main cotton industry body Cotton Australia. Biotechnology was very important to the cotton industry's future and Australia should try to ensure that technology was kept in as wide a
range of hands as possible, he said.
IFAP leader Doornbos sees biotechnology playing a major role in satisfying a projected doubling of worldwide food demand over the next 25 years.
''(But) if one multinational buys a lot of companies that have the latest developments in biotechnology...(it is) becoming a fairly small number (of companies),'' he said.
The picture was also increasingly clouded by consumer emotionalism, with the British press referring to genetically modified organisms as ''Frankenstein food,'' he said.
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