19 Project probes protein values Vol 16 No 11, March 20, 2017
Bailey backs GM use Stephen Bell stephen.bell@nzx.com
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ENETIC technologies must be embraced by New Zealand if its primary industries are to survive and thrive, key speakers at the Future Farms conference say. And they must also get into artificial foods and food printing unless they want to go the same way as the wool industry, which stuck its head in the sand when faced with competition from synthetic fibres. AgriFood Investment Week chairman Malcolm Bailey, a Manawatu dairy farmer, former Fonterra director and now Dairy Companies Association chairman, said asking scientists to work on solutions with genetic technologies was like asking them to use an abacus to compete with a computer. Those scientists would be lost overseas if they couldn’t use the technology.
Genetic technologies were at the front of innovation and were now mainstream in many parts of the world. “This technology has got better and better.” Bailey, also a Westpac and Red Meat Profit Partnership director, said he was talking about tools like gene editing where traits could be turned on or off, mostly off, rather than transgenic operations where genes were swapped between dissimilar organisms. “What are we prepared to do if we are not sure of our attitude to these technologies?” Many countries did not now class gene editing as genetic engineering – it was just speeding up what breeders could do naturally. “We have to take consumers with us and explain why this technology is so good,” he said. It could be used to fix nitrate escape or give drought tolerance and pest resistance. “We mustn’t let unfounded fears of genetic modification override our ability to make a better planet.”
farmersweekly.co.nz
Trucking on at field days
REVVED UP AND READY: David Marsom, 4, of Palmerston North was keen to bridge the rural-urban divide when he visited the Central Districts field days in Feilding and get on with the job of getting on the Allied Petroleum tanker. No genetic modification meant the loss of more rainforest. The industry had to advocate for things to change. Bailey said he opened the conference because Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy was unable to attend. Guy had provided the title for his speech, Unlocking the Potential of New Zealand’s Agricultural Silicon Valley, and he was happy to run with it. Keynote speaker, KPMG global agribusiness head Ian Proudfoot said the world could expect much greater diversity of food in the future. “And a lot of that will come from GM.” But genetic technology was a broad church and needed to be broken up. Some techniques would be ethically acceptable and some would not. Proudfoot also suggest global
healthcare would soon become unaffordable so the focus would move away from treating the sick to stopping people getting sick and that would be done not just by promoting healthy and nutraceutical foods but by more constraints on foods, more taxes and limits being imposed on portion sizes. And vaporised food that people could inhale was on the horizon. That would let people get proteins without calories. Expensive artificial proteins would become cheaper as big companies became involved and would be used to feed the bottom of the market which those who could afford them would buy more expensive natural foods. But he had a warning. “Natural products could go the same way as wool unless we protect our share.” Being faced with a rapidly changing marketplace where
various technologies such as digital and biological were fusing the biggest danger was complacency. Conference chairman and Agmardt general manager Malcolm Nitschke said the primary sector had been slow to adopt change. Farmers had treated farming as a way of life rather than a business and optimistically thought “she’ll be right” but young farmers were not prepared to accept the status quo. They were prepared to challenge old paradigms, adapt and innovate. But adapting did not mean going with the flow or taking the path of least resistance. Farmers should be leading the change. “Technology continues to advance and we must embrace these opportunities to ensure we maintain our relevance on the world stage.”