Area cultivated to biotech
crops breaches 1-B hectares

Dr. Clive James reports 87-fold increase in just 15 years

BIOTECH crops are now cultivated in one billion hectares of farms worldwide, representing an 87-fold increase from 1996, when they were first commercialized.

Dr. Clive James, founder and president of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agribiotech Applications (ISAAA), told newsmen that with he accumulated hectarage, equivalent to the territory of China or the United States, shows that biotech crops are here to stay.

This record alone makes biotech crops are the fastest adopted crop technology in modern agriculture.

Accumulated hectarage from 1996 to 2010 exceeded 1 billion hectares (equivalent to the total vast area of USA or China ), clearly signifying that biotech crops staying for keeps.

James added that last year alone, the expansion of farms using biotech crops was 10 percent, and the 14 million hectare rise in one year is the second largest such increase in 15 years.

He revealed that "trait hectares” grew from 180 million in 2009 to 205 million hectares in 2010, for an increase of 25 million or 14 percent.

Overall, the number of countries planting biotech crops ratcheted up to 29 from only 25 the previous year.

    Moreover, the top 10 adopting the technology cultivated the crops in one million hectares each.

To show that this is most significant, James revealed that 59 percent, or 4 billion, of the entire global population live in the 29 countries patronizing biotech crops.

Three new countries, Pakistan, Myanmar and Sweden, reported planting biotech crops officially for the first time in 2010 while Germany also resumed planting, an indication that these crops have hurdled strict scientific measures imposed on genetically modified organisms (GMOs.)

James told journalists that the unprecedented growth of hectarage devoted to biotech crops indicate that there is growing acceptance of a technology that had long been hobbled by criticisms, particularly from those who insisted that there is no ironclad guarantees that these crops would not pose risks to human safety and environmental integrity in the long run.

These criticisms had gone to pasture, as in the case of the Philippines, which adopted Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn in 2003.

No less than 440,000 hectares of farms have been devoted to Bt corn, a crop that has passed strict biosafety rules imposed by the government and reviewed by independent scientists.

With higher yields and tolerance to herbicides, and the reduce use of chemical inputs, Bt corn has been a boon to farmers who benefit from higher incomes.