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New Markets for Biotech Technology Review
By Alexandra Stikeman
July/August 2001
http://www.technologyreview.com/magazine/jul01/innovation1.asp
Much of the push to commercialize the first generation of genetically
engineered crops has come from large companies in the United States and
Western Europe. But the next big producers of biotech crops could very
well be nations in the developing world. While battles over genetically
modified foods have slowed the technology's progress in Europe and North
America, countries such as China and India are now gearing up to commercialize
dozens of genetically modified plants in the next few years (see "Eating
the Genes").
The first such plants hit the market in the mid-1990s, and last year
13 nations allowed them to be grown commercially. Of those, five are in
the developing world: Argentina, China, Mexico, South Africa and Uruguay.
In fact, China and Argentina now rank among the top four growers, alongside
the United States and Canada, in number of hectares planted.
And the adoption of the technology is spreading fastest in some of the
world's poorer countries, according to a report by the nonprofit International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. Between 1999
and 2000 (the most recent year for which data were available), the amount
of genetically modified crops planted in the world increased by 4.3 million
hectares. While industrial nations—mainly the United States and Canada—still
produce three-quarters of the world's biotech crops, 84 percent of the
4.3-million-hectare increase occurred in developing countries. That boost
came mainly from Argentina, China and South Africa. Canada, on the other
hand, decreased its biotech crop hectarage by 25 percent.
Governments and nonprofit research centers in a number of developing
countries are investing in their own genetically modified plants, in the
hope of protecting crops from droughts, floods and insects and of getting
higher yields out of plants such as rice and cassava that are staples
in local diets. "With more than a billion people in India, the government
came to the conclusion that it cannot afford to not develop biotech crops,"
says Claude Fauquet, who heads a training program for international scientists
at the Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO.
To date, China is the only developing nation to have engineered its own
genetically modified crop—insect-resistant cotton—and brought seeds to
market. The country has more than 80 state-funded institutions focused
on agricultural genetic engineering. Though China's investment pales in
comparison to that of the large agricultural firms, the Chinese government
spent roughly $12 million annually on biotech crops in recent years. Similarly,
the governments of India and Brazil continue to funnel millions of dollars
toward plant biotechnology. All in all, it "dispels the notion that all
of the biotech research so far has been going on in developed countries
and is all in the private sector," says C. S. Prakash, director of the
Center for Plant Biotechnology Research at Tuskegee University in Alabama.
But there are potential roadblocks ahead. Some developing nations, concerned
that agricultural exports could be negatively affected by existing or
future bans on plant biotech in Europe and elsewhere, are putting the
brakes on research. For instance, Thailand, the world's number one exporter
of rice, has placed a moratorium on field trials. Other countries have
plenty of homegrown resistance to genetic engineering. Mexico, for one,
has instituted a field-test moratorium in response to local environmental
groups that oppose biotech crops, according to Luis Herrera-Estrella of
the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Irapuato, Mexico. His
center is still awaiting government approval of its virus-resistant potato,
which is ready to be marketed. But Prakash, for one, believes the hesitance
is only temporary. "When the international hysteria over biotech crops
settles down, a lot of these countries will come forward," predicts Prakash.
"You're going to see huge increases [in genetically modified crops] in
these countries."
Alexandra Stikeman is an associate editor at Technology Review.
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