xlvi Sustainable Agriculture and Food
As indicated earlier, agroecological approaches and agricultural sustainability
are now an increasingly viable option for many farmers in developing and indus-
trialized countries alike. But where there are no alternatives to specific problems,
then GM could bring forth novel and effective options. If research is conducted by
public-interest bodies, such as universities, non-government organizations and
governments themselves, whose concern is to produce public goods, then biotech-
nology could result in the spread of technologies that have immense benefits.
Genetically modified organisms are not a single, homogeneous technology.
Each application brings different potential benefits and risks for different stake-
holders. Regulators, therefore, face special challenges in the face of rapidly devel-
oping technical applications. To date, the general approach to risk assessment in
agriculture as a whole has been to establish rigorous procedures prior to release,
but then to assume that farmers engage in ‘good agricultural practice’. The novel
nature of emerging policies centres on a fundamental shift in risk assessment to a
need to understand the effects of technologies in the field and on the farm. Much
of the harm to the environment arises when technologies, whether pesticides, fer-
tilizers or machinery, are not used in accordance with regulators’ criteria. The
assessment of GMs will, however, now contain new requirements to assess the
effects in the context of diverse farm practices, and how this interaction will affect
desirable environmental outcomes, such as the integrity of local biodiversity. Such
new risk assessments could have a positive side effect by increasing our under-
standing of agricultural–environment interactions in agricultural systems at large.
There are many types of application of biotechnology, and likely to be several
distinct generations of released technologies. It would be wrong, therefore, to gen-
eralize about genetic modification – each application needs to be addressed on a
case-by-case basis. We need to ask questions about who produces each technology
and why; whether it can benefit the poorest, and if so how will they access it; and
whether it will have adverse or positive environmental and health side effects. It is
likely that biotechnology will make some contributions to agricultural sustainabil-
ity, but developing the research systems, institutions and policies to make them
pro-poor will be more difficult.
Policy Challenges
What we do not yet know is whether a transition to sustainable agriculture will
result in enough food to meet the current food needs in developing and industrial-
ized countries, let alone the future needs after continued population growth and the
adoption of more urban and meat-rich diets. But what we are seeing is highly prom-
ising. There is also scope for additional confidence, as evidence indicates that pro-
ductivity can grow over time if natural, social and human assets are accumulated.
Sustainable agriculture systems appear to become more productive when
human capacity increases, particularly in the form of farmers’ capacity to innovate