Thank you for inviting me to present to the committee on the topic of the biotechnology industry.
I should preface my remarks by outlining my background and expertise. I'm an agricultural economist in the department of bioresource policy, business, and economics in the faculty of agriculture and bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan.
My research area is international trade policy, and biotechnology is perhaps the most contentious issue in international trade at this time. It has been the focal point of my research for more than two decades. I published my first paper on biotechnology in 1989. I have co-authored a number of books on biotechnology, including The Economics of Biotechnology, International Environmental Liability and Barriers to Trade, and Regulating the Liabilities of Agricultural Biotechnology. I have over 300 academic publications, many of them dealing with biotechnology.
I sit on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals, including Journal of Environmental Management, AgBioForum, and the Journal of International Food and Agribusiness Marketing. I'm a founding editor of an international trade policy journal. I'm a fellow of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society.
International trade issues pertaining to biotechnology relate primarily to the compatibility or incompatibility of domestic regulatory regimes in different countries. Thus, while I have an international orientation, I have had to learn a great deal about domestic regulatory regimes for biotechnology.
On the future of the global agrifood industry, there are two striking challenges, and biotechnology can play a major role in meeting those challenges.
The first challenge is that we are going to have to produce a lot more food globally. Between 2010 and 2050, as previously stated, the world population is expected to grow from almost 7 billion to 9.5 billion people. There will be 2.5 billion more mouths to feed, a 38% increase. To feed those extra billions, we need a rapid rate of technological improvement, and agricultural biotechnology is the best hope to be able to meet that challenge.
The second major challenge is that the climate is changing. The crops we have bred to date will not be as productive under the new climatic regime. We'll have to breed new crops, and we'll likely need to breed them quickly. Biotechnology is the key to doing that.
International trade in agricultural products is also going to increase dramatically if these challenges are going to be met. The goal of agricultural self-sufficiency is a pipe dream. The areas of the world that will have both the most rapid increases in population and the largest increases in income already suffer from stressed ecosystems and water shortages, which will only become more acute because of climate change. If that is true, where will the extra food come from?
It can only come from areas of the world where agricultural land can increase in productivity and where population is relatively stable. Canada, and particularly the Canadian prairies, is one of the few areas of the globe that has that potential. However, it can only contribute to meeting these challenges and have farmers reap the benefits that come with higher prices and yields if farmers have the appropriate technology. Again, biotechnology is likely the key.
Those who object to biotechnology often make reference to its being a risky technology. What are the risks? The risks that are often suggested are largely speculative. In other words, they're hard to test. What does the evidence actually suggest? It is often forgotten that in Canada, the United States, and a number of other countries, there has been a large-scale population-sized trial going on for approximately 20 years. We've all been eating GM foods, and GM crops are in use over a wide range of ecosystems. After all this time, there's no evidence of risk to human health or of measurable risk to the environment.
Those who oppose biotechnology are quick to point out, however, that no evidence of risk is not the same thing as no risk. Of course one needs to be vigilant and vigorous when licensing new genetically modified products and in monitoring human health and the environment after they are released. The evidence does, however, suggest that the current regulatory system is working and that biotechnological advances should not be hindered.
Those who oppose biotechnology would like to have a regulatory regime based on the strict version of the precautionary principle, whereby no risk is allowed. I ask myself what would have happened if that principle had been applied to past transformative technologies. If this were 1910 and the new technology were the automobile, I suspect it would have been banned. After all, in 1910 we knew that cars killed people. Certainly no one in 1910 could have foreseen all of the changes the automobile would bring to society--both beneficial changes, such as the ability to travel long distances, and negative changes, such as pollution and gridlock. Still, I don't think you'd find many people today who would like to have seen the automobile banned in 1910.
New technologies will have a negative effect on the well-being of some members of society. Automobiles ruined the horse, buggy, harness, and animal feed industries. It it the nature of progress. The economist Joseph Schumpeter called it “creative destruction”. Denying a technology on the basis that it will have negative economic impacts on some is to deny progress and to deny increases in societal well-being. This is very different from denying technology on the grounds of risk to human health or the environment.
There are issues of industry concentration and sharing in intellectual property in biotechnology that others are probably better qualified to speak to, but I will make one observation. At some point a decision was made that most of the research on biotechnology should be done in the private sector. To my mind, the best way to reduce the anti-competitive influences that the private sector might have on agriculture is to rebalance the research effort so that the public sector has a greater role, particularly at the universities, and as I said before, in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Studies consistently show that public sector research in agriculture is chronically underfunded. The scientists in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan, for example, have made huge contributions to the welfare of prairie farmers and Canadian society. They continue to contribute, but they could do a lot more.
If the public sector creates more biotechnology products, it will lessen the influence the private sector can have. The public-private contribution to biotechnology research needs to be rethought if the current challenges of increasing food production and adaptation to climate change are to be met. If Canada is not part of meeting the challenges, other countries will reap the benefits--for example, China is investing heavily in the development of biotechnology, all of it being done by government.
Finally, international market access for genetically modified products remains an issue. A major impediment to market access is the European Union. However, the European Union is showing signs of weakening in its position, particularly over animal feeds and biofuel crops. They have had to loosen up their imports of genetically modified products. The EU is finally approving new varieties, but there is a major split among EU member states. Canada needs to continue to actively push for science-based rules for trade in the products of biotechnology.
The challenges of global population growth and climate change are real. In part, success in meeting these challenges lies in biotechnology. To benefit from the effort required to meet these challenges, Canadian farmers need to improve their technological efficiencies.
Thank you.