The Royal Society has produced a guide to genetically modified (GM) crops, aimed at members of the public, ahead of a series of debates the scientific society is organising in the Summer. However, the Society’s online guide - which the scientific organisation maintains is intended to provide clear, unbiased explanations of the science behind GM, so that readers can form their own views - has been condemned as one-sided by environmentalists.

In an interview with the BBC, coinciding with the guide’s release, the organisation’s president Professor Venki Ramakrishnan said that bans on GM crops introduced by some EU countries are misconceived and claimed the public has misunderstood the technology. The majority of EU citizens remain sceptical of GM crops and national bans were enshrined in EU law when compromise measures on GM planting were passed last year.

Prof Ramakrishnan wants each GM product to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. He discussed the guide, which is in the form of a Q&A, with questions drawn up by market researcher Ipsos MORI and answered by a team of “expert, independent scientists,” saying it acknowledged areas of risks and gaps in understanding. He said one such risk is for large businesses to develop monopolies on GM crops, continuing the decline in agricultural biodiversity, but told the BBC’s Pallab Ghosh, ”We should not conflate the issue of GM's reputation with its potential.”

Writing a blog post for the Royal Society last week, the UK government’s Food Security Champion and Leeds University professor Tim Benton echoed Prof Ramakrishnan’s claims that GM-scepticism means giving up on a technology that could prove useful in ‘feeding the world’ and counterposed the technology with “doing nothing,” which will lock humanity into more serious climate change, increase environmental destruction and exacerbate world hunger.

He acknowledged that making diet more sustainable (by reducing consumption of animal products), improving farming practices to conserve resources and reduce waste, and balancing food production with environmentally restorative management to create more stable farm systems are all of undeniable importance. However, he believes some leaps forward will involve “Developing new animal and plant varieties that are more efficient, more productive or better able to cope with the changing environment”, and that this cannot be achieved fast enough through conventional means. Prof benton looked at high tech breeding techniques that are still considered conventional practices, and said GM has been linked with ‘triffidophobia’ - evoking John Wyndham’s 1950s sci-fi novel, published just as the Green Revolution was taking off.

Green farmers question GM Q&A

However, the Soil Association has countered the conclusions drawn by the Royal Society scientists, and said its guide is partisan, rather than the dispassionate primer the Society claims it to be.

On Tuesday, Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett said, “This Royal Society document about GM crops, like every other one they have issued over the last nearly 20 years, argues in favour of GM. Everyone knows that there are at least some scientific controversies, and disagreements about evidence concerning GM crops. None of these are mentioned in the Royal Society document.

“This may not be surprising, given that there are no scientists who have consistently expressed scepticism about the application of GM technology to agriculture listed among the authors. Scientific enquiry normally proceeds by open discussion of disagreements about evidence – the Royal Societies’ involvement in GM has been consistently one-sided, ignoring scientists with dissenting views, and overlooking facts which do not fit with the views of supporters of GM crops.”

Peter Melchett said figures used in the guide on where GM crops are grown worldwide are taken without acknowledgement from an industry source, and that no mention is made when giving details of the 28 countries growing GM crops in 2015 that, for the first time in at least 15 years, there was a slight decrease in the area planted. he also questioned claims made in the guide that GM food is safe, arguing that this confuses an “Absence of evidence with evidence of absence,” and said a large-scale, five-year study funded by the UK government associated GM crops with evidence of environmental damage, but was not mentioned.

Touching on the environment issue, Melchett said, “It is clear just how disingenuous this is, from the fact that every time this document claims some advantage for GM crops, it turns out that this is entirely because of GM, and nothing to do with farming practice. However, when there is clear evidence of damage, it's nothing to do with GM, and all down to what farmers do.”
 
Given the threats of soil degradation, climate change and all it entails, plateauing yields, poor nutrition and unsustainable dietary habits and growing resistance to agricultural chemicals - which are subject to increasingly tight regulations in the EU - independent experts around the world are saying a new approach to food is needed. UN rapporteurs and large independent roadmaps tasked with investigating questions of the ‘right to food’ and sustainable global food production have tended to view GM as something of a peripheral issue, though they have expressed concern about corporate interests driving agricultural technology in unsustainable directions.

The UN’s special envoys have recommended the focus be on creating a new farming paradigm, and noted that agroecology has a role in helping rural communities, restoring agricultural ecosystems and improving yields sustainably. The biotech industry model - of which GM is one infamous example - is one of high R&D spending, and generating returns from patented technologies, how could such a model of enclosure be expected to create viable world food security, given the challenges we face?

Delivering his final report five years ago, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter touted agroecology, a knowledge-intensive approach, which uses the latest in scientific understanding, as well as ecology and social sciences to balance food production with environmental and social concerns.  De Schutter said the approach will allow the world to feed itself, but that in order to succeed it “Requires public policies supporting agricultural research and participative extension services.”

He continued, “States and donors have a key role to play here. 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. We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations. The solution lies in supporting small-scale farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, and in raising incomes of smallholders so as to contribute to rural development.”