THE battle rages to prevent Brazil caving in to pressure to authorise GM crops. Brazil is coming under increasing pressure to authorise genetically modified (GM) crops in the wake of India’s decision last month to open its doors to this technology.
For four years a small group of underfunded Brazilian environmentalists and consumers has succeeded against all the odds in keeping a GM ban in place, but many observers now believe it is only a matter of time before Brazil, too, follows the worldwide trend.
Brazil is a key piece in the global biotech jigsaw. The area under GM cultivation throughout the world rose from 1,7-million hectares in 1996 to 52,6-million hectares last year. About two-thirds of this area was planted with a variety of soya beans genetically engineered by the bio-technology multinational Monsanto to be resistant to the company’s herbicide Round-Up.
Both the United States, which is the leading soya producer, and Argentina, which is in third position, have authorised GM crops. Only Brazil, the second-largest producer, is still holding out against GM crops.
The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies is expected shortly to approve a Bill that will authorise the cultivation and consumption of GM products. As a first step the chamber’s special commission on GM foods approved a highly favourable report on GM products last month.
If Brazil gives the go-ahead, it will become increasingly difficult for Europe and Asia to purchase non-GM soya beans at normal prices. They will become a niche product, for which health-conscious and environmentally aware consumers will have to pay a hefty premium. The GM crop will be the norm.
Bob Callanan, from the American Soybean Association, which is fervently pro-GM products, said last year: “We are hopeful that the last domino will fall shortly. That’s why the environmentalists are putting up such a stink in Brazil. They know that, if that goes, it’s all gone.”
Brazil’s stubborn resistance to GM crops took the biotech companies by surprise. Four years ago Monsanto expected Brazil to authorise GM crops on the nod, just as had happened in neighbouring Argentina.
As part of its global strategy Monsanto had bought up seed companies in Brazil and was poised to dominate biotech farming. The Brazilian government had expressed its support for GM crops and was helping to fund a $360-million factory that Monsanto was building in the north-east of the country to supply the whole of South America with the raw materials for Round-Up. In early 2000 Monsanto even imported GM seeds to sell to farmers in the following planting season, after the anticipated authorisation.
But Greenpeace and the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defence (Idec) had other ideas. They jointly appealed to the courts that the government had no authority to allow Monsanto to produce GM seeds when the country’s environmental legislation demanded that studies must first be carried out into the long-term health and environmental impacts of transgenic crops. In a historic ruling in May 2000 a Brazilian judge found in favour of the plaintiffs. Monsanto immediately appealed, and is waiting for a final decision, expected shortly.
Until recently the anti-GM product lobby had little support from Brazil’s powerful farming community. Enticed by reports of high GM yields and low production costs, farmers in the south of Brazil began to purchase GM seeds smuggled over from Argentina.
According to some reports, up to half of the soya planted in Brazil’s most southerly state, Rio Grande do Sul, may be transgenic.
However, over the past year some of Brazil’s farmers have been having second thoughts. A massive soya front has been moving north, taking over first the plains of Mato Grosso and now moving into the Amazon basin. These farmers have been very successful with their non-GM exports, with some soya beans now going directly to Europe through the new port of Itacoatiara on the Amazon river.
Over the past two years Brazil’s share of the world soya market has risen from 24% to 30%, while the US’s slice has declined from 57% to 46%. A farming association recently said that it would be “very foolish” for Brazil to authorise GM crops, because “we would risk throwing away a market we have worked very hard to win”.
However, Brazil’s Agriculture Minister, Pratini de Moraes, is a firm advocate of GM crops. On two occasions he tried unsuccessfully to authorise some GM varieties. On a trip to the US last year he said that Brazil was planning to invest heavily in GM crops. “We must not run the risk of being left behind in the technological race,” he said.
Over the past few months the battle over GM crops has become more heated. In January Anthony Harrington, former US ambassador to Brazil and now a lobbyist for Monsanto, held a private meeting with President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, now in his eighth and final year in office. Shortly afterwards Cardoso called together all ministers involved in the GM debate and imposed what amounted to a gagging order on the Environment Minister, JosÃ