Environment Secretary Owen Paterson today made a speech in which he promised that genetic modification technology could provide a host of benefits for the UK's agriculture and scientific research sectors. However, the Defra head has come under fire for his partisan stance, as the latest polling data show the British and European public remain staunchly opposed to GM and there remains no clear scientific consensus on the technology.

Speaking on Thursday at Rothamsted Research Institute, home to a deeply controversial field trial of GM wheat, Mr Paterson said the adoption of GM crops would benefit farmers, consumers and the environment, and that European agriculture "risks being left behind" unless it embraces the technology.

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However, despite his claims to the contrary, it is Paterson's beliefs that have been rejected as anachronistic by his opponents; they maintain that promises have been made about the potential of GM for over two decades, and have yet to come true. Instead they insist that, were the UK to embrace the technology, the only beneficiaries would be biotech companies themselves.

Sceptics point out that public opinion in the United States, the spiritual home of GM technology, is clearly shifting, as evidenced by a growing organic and small farm lobby and pushes to introduce GM labelling in 37 US states. In Australia, too, the formerly pro-GM government is now shifting its position.

Even so, Science Minister David Willets, Farming Minister David Heath and Chief Scientific Advisor Mark Walport have all publicly vouched for GM within the past month.

On Thursday, Mr Paterson made his clearest declaration of support yet for GM technolhgy, which he said has clear potential for environmental, agricultural and social betterment. The Defra secretary said that, since 1996 there has been a 100-fold increase in the use of GM around the world (1996 was the year in which the first commercial GM crops field crops were developed). He added that, last year, GM crops were grown by 17.3 million farmers in 28 countries over 170 million hectares (or 12 per cent of global arable area).

However, figures from the ISAAA, an organisation that seeks to promote the use of GM technology around the world, show that in 2011, just three countries (the United States, Brazil and Argentina) accounted for 77 percent of all GM crops grown worldwide. Five countries account for 90 percent of global GM crop production.

Paterson claims GM could raise yields while reducing farmed area

Nevertheless, Paterson stressed that "The use of GM could be as transformative as the original agricultural revolution was," and urged that "The UK should be at the forefront… now, as it was then."

The environment secretary continued, "GM crops offer a genuine prospect of high-yielding, low-or-no chemical agricultural production. If we want to reduce the use of chemicals in agriculture, while safeguarding yields and maintaining efficient production, we need to encourage innovation - not deter it."

He added that the technology could release an area "the size of France from production," giving a boost to wildlife and conservation efforts. He went on to claim that it would provide crops that can deal with adverse weather conditions and the effects of climate change, achieve food security and end malnutrition through fortification with vitamin A.

The Defra secretary plans to push for a relaxation of European regulations on GM; conflicts within the EU's legislative apparatus have led to an effective deadlock on the approval of new GM crops. Paterson will try and persuade fellow EU environment ministers of the crops' benefits, though many EU leaders remain staunchly sceptical; eight EU states have introduced and maintained bans on the bloc's only licensed GM crop despite repeated legal challenges.       

NFU president welcomes Paterson speech

In the wake of his speech, the NFU welcomed the Environment Secretary's remarks and said it "now wants to ensure that there is a clear framework in place, sooner rather than later, to enable farmers to use GM technology." Union president Peter Kendall said, "I applaud Owen Paterson for the leadership he is showing on this issue. I also want British farmers to be able to develop the latest technologies so they can reap economic and environmental benefits."

Although Mr Paterson gained the support of the UK's landowner and industrial farm lobbies, and claimed "technologies like GM… may hold the answers to the very serious challenges ahead," critics rejected his assertions out of hand. Sustainable farming and GM-sceptic groups including GeneWatch stressed that "Despite more than 14,000 field trials conducted in the United States, only herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant crops have reached the market," they maintain that the rest is industry propaganda, and Paterson is merely the latest mouthpiece, albeit an influential one, in an ongoing PR campaign.

GeneWatch spokesperson Dr Helen Wallace offered a rebuttal to the Defra secretary's speech. "Why is the UK Environment Secretary wasting taxpayers' time and money doing PR for Monsanto and the other GM companies?" she asked.

Dr Wallace pointed to the spread of superweeds resistant to the weedkillers sprayed on herbicide-tolerant GM crops, which, USDA research suggests, may have driven an increase in herbicide use in the United States. She also highlighted the problem of resistance in insect pests, which was the subject of an international study published earlier this month, and claimed the use of agricultural chemicals associated with growing GM crops has led to a reduction in biodiversity in areas where they are grown.

She added, "GM crops that are tolerant to drought or fix nitrogen have been promised for more than thirty years but have not been delivered. Complex traits are being delivered more effectively by conventional breeding, helped by advanced technologies such as marker assisted selection (MAS)."

Agroecology a viable option for achieving food security

The GeneWatch spokesperson urged the environment secretary to put his efforts into supporting agroecology, the marriage of cutting-edge agriculture techniques and social sciences, which is advocated by UN farming and development organisations and has this year been championed by France's national agricultural research institute (INRA).

Olivier de Schutter, UN Special rapporteur on the Right to Food, touted the benefits of the approach in 2011, but warned that its uptake has so far been limited due to its conflicts with the dominant agricultural paradigm. He said, "Agroecology is a knowledge-intensive approach. It requires public policies supporting agricultural research and participative extension services. Private companies will not invest time and money in practices that cannot be rewarded by patents and which don't open markets for chemical products or improved seeds."

On Thursday, Dr Wallace concluded, "Ministers and farmers would be foolish to ignore warnings that extensive monocultures lack resilience to pests, diseases, droughts and floods. This is not a problem that is going to be solved by genetically identical GM crops, it requires higher resilience farming practices and more diverse varieties of seeds.

"Claims that GM crops deliver higher yields, or are better suited to bad weather, or reduce the use of weedkillers, are PR messages that bear no relation to reality. The Government should not be wasting taxpayers' money on promoting and investing in GM."

Soil Association Policy director joined the attack on Defra's vision for UK agriculture. He said, "Owen Patterson's GM dream will make it harder to feed the world. The British Government constantly claim that GM crops are just one tool in the toolbox for the future of farming.

"In fact, GM is the cuckoo in the nest. It drives out and destroys the systems that international scientists agree we need to feed the world. We need farming that helps poorer African and Asian farmers produce food, not farming that helps Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto produce profits."

Despite the Environment Secretary's obvious enthusiasm for more GM research to take place in the UK, the governments of Scotland and Wales have both adopted anti-GM policies and any of the regulatory changes the Defra chief is seeking would require serious negotiations within the European Union, where opinion over GM currently seems irreparably split.