US Takes GM Crop Battle to Brazil

RAYMOND COLITT / Financial Times (UK) 19jun03

Rebuffed in attempts to sell genetically modified products to Europe, the US government and the American biotech industry are focusing on Brazil, one of the world's leading agricultural producers.

Washington this week is helping pay for a group of 20 Brazilian politicians, scientists and environmentalists to study the use of GM crops in the US and South Africa.

The study trip includes dinner with executives of Monsanto, the US bio-technology giant. Brazil's agricultural seed industry is also contributing to the tour cost.

The study comes as Brazil's government drafts legislation that could determine the future of GM crops there. With an estimated harvest of 115m tonnes of grains and billions of dollars in annual seed and pesticide sales, much is at stake.

Critics say the US government has been overtly promoting GM crops in developing countries after it challenged European Union restrictions on biotechnology in the World Trade Organisation last month. "This is blatant lobbying by Monsanto through the US government," says Mariana Paoli, with Greenpeace in São Paolo.

The US embassy in Brasília says the objective of the trip is simply to provide the delegation with information on the issue.

Monsanto has been seeking permission to sell its GM crops in Brazil for eight years. Yet it remains stuck in a regulatory quagmire and long, drawn-out court cases. Landless peasants and environmentalists have repeatedly invaded its experimental GM crop farms.

"It's been a long and frustrating process for us in Brazil," Rick Greubel, head of Monsanto in Brazil, said in an interview last week. Part of the problem, he admits, is that Monsanto underestimated public opinion. "We missed the opportunity to communicate with the general public," he says.

In Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's most southern state, farmers have been planting GM soybeans illegally for years. This year they had an estimated harvest of 7m tonnes. The seeds were smuggled from Argentina years ago and then reproduced locally, according to Mr Greubel. GM crops, which use less pesticide, are popular there because the state's long-cultivated depleted soils are more vulnerable to disease, agronomists say.

However, on more newly farmed lands in the country's central-western grain belt, which require fewer pesticides, GM crops may be more expensive to cultivate than conventional varieties, says Antonio Ernesto de Salvo, head of the agricultural confederation (CNA).

And by targeting a niche market for GM-free foods at home and abroad, Brazilian farmers obtain a premium of roughly $1 per 60kg bag for conventional soybeans over the GM variety, says Carlos Rivaci Sperotto, head of Rio Grande do Sul's agricultural federation.

Backed by public opinion surveys showing most Brazilians sceptical of GM crops, Greenpeace and the Consumer Defence Institute (Idec) obtained two court rulings that annulled the authorisation Monsanto obtained from CTNBio, the biotechnology regulator, in 1998, to plant and sell its GM Roundup Ready soybean. The rulings also ordered Monsanto to conduct an environmental impact study.

In an unusual move, two out of three judges on a court of appeal in February last year went into recess after the third judge voted in favour of Monsanto. They have not returned since, some believe under political pressure.

With Greenpeace and Idec pledging to fight Monsanto all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, a judicial solution seems unlikely in the short term.

Monsanto last year changed its strategy, sponsoring scientific seminars, publishing Brazil-specific research results, and launching an advertisement campaign in the local media to highlight the alleged benefits of GM crops.

Last month, the new government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has traditionally sided with the GM crop sceptics, exceptionally authorised the sale of this year's illegal GM soybean crop until March of next year.

Yet at the same time it introduced fines for those planting biotech crops in the next season. It also introduced strict labelling requirements for foods, grains and even fodder containing more than 1 per cent of GM material.

Under legislation passed last year, all biotechnology applications require separate environmental permits for research and for cultivation. The state agricultural research company Embrapa obtained the first such licences to research GM foods, including its own disease-resistant variety of papaya.

For Monsanto, one of the key issues is whether it too will be required to conduct an environmental impact study in Brazil, which could delay its approval process by years.

Defendants of Brazil-specific environmental studies argue that the country's ecosystem differs entirely from that of the US, for instance, and that its immense biodiversity, including numerous wild species of corn and cotton, are potentially at risk. "We are concerned about the risk of genetic transferral - imagine the impact in the Amazon rainforest," says Joao Paulo Capobianco, secretary of biodiversity in the environment ministry.

Given the level of controversy over GM foods, some observers caution, the government may fail to produce all-encompassing and definitive legislation. "It will seek a compromise with temporary legislation," says Mr de Salvo. "The balance of forces in the GM battle is not defined yet."

Many thanks for sending this file to the Natural Law Party Wessex