Bayer has suggested that Europe's acceptance of gene-edited crops could, over time, ease decades of resistance to genetically modified (GM) crops, AgNavigator reported. Speaking at a webinar on a Bayer-commissioned report on farm competitiveness, the company's head of public affairs, Matthias Berninger, said: "As we demonstrate the benefits of new breeding technologies, I think the conversation on biotechnology will soften."
Berninger likened the EU's recent political agreement on new genomic techniques (NGTs) to "the Westphalian peace" after "30 years of conflicts on biotechnology." He also pointed to what he called a contradiction in EU policy: GM crops are in effect banned from cultivation in Europe, yet GM feed is imported as standard.
The report, which combines economic analysis by Oxford Economics, consumer polling and interviews with farmers in eight European markets, says crop production grew just 0.1% a year in the EU between 2011 and 2023 and not at all in the UK, against 1% in the US and 3.3% in Brazil. Crop agriculture adds €246bn to EU GDP and €5.7bn to UK GDP. It calls for faster, more predictable approval of genome editing, seed traits, crop protection, AI and precision farming.
Bayer executives returned repeatedly to crop protection. "In the last seven years alone, 92 products or active substances went off the market, and at the same time we only had one new synthetic crop protection product registered," said Frank Terhorst, Bayer's head of strategy and sustainability for crop science, adding that oilseed rape and horticulture growers now have "significant gaps" in their protection. Berninger said the system is "clogged with reapproval processes" and called for "a fast lane" for innovative biological and chemical products, citing the fungicide Iblon, approved in the UK but still stuck in the EU process.
The views are those of a company that sells seeds and crop protection products; the report was commissioned by Bayer.
Photo: Florian Siebeck / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: AgNavigator
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