Pushing something that is not profitable for farmers has a backlash.
R&D future if GM was introduced?

- Under government agreements, governments would withdraw from funding R&D in exchange for encouraging corporate investment and providing a path to market for GM.

- the GM industry will stop funding and start collecting from the R&D industry to profit from previous investments.

- GM farmers will be dissillusioned because costs are higher and yields do not stack up to promises. All farmers will be very ticked off to find we are selling at a far lower price than we would if we were selling non-GM.

- Farmers will not continue funding GRDC if we can't afford it and do not own the intellectual property we pay for. We certainly don't agree to take over the unprofitable "common good" R&D that governments did. To disolve the current compulsory levies, GRDC may corporatise (as rumoured) and because farmers paid the majority of R&D belonging to GRDC, farmers will insist on the majority of share allocation as per equity -: payments. GRDC will need to offer good dividends and share value to encourage investmentors. If not, buyers will not be interested and farmers would sell their shares. A corporate GRDC will not be viable if it is not possible to produce a massively improved return on their current R&D investments.

Where would that leave the R&D sector?

R&D Income: No charity based income (government/farmers) and no GM funding (they want returns on their investments they have already made, not continued losses)

R&D Liabilities: Must provide good profits for investors. Must pay heavily for the many IP and patents required for GM plant breeding.

Profit-making target? Farmers! But... don't expect to charge more for R&D developments becauses farmers will not adopt varieties unless they give a benefit higher than the cost. Everyone plans on making a fortune out of GM but only farmers are expected to pay more... Reality check! ...We can not and we will not!

I can't see the government bailing farmers or the R&D sector out, do you?

A couple of points -

The word 'science' is bandied around with gay abandon and used as a definitive when attempting to support an argument. I'd like to delve a little deeper in to how (good and bad)'science' is derived.

Terms of Reference define the parameters of research and studies are confined to these. If the Terms of Reference are narrowly confined, no other information is included in the final report and rarely are extrapolation of the final results projected into possible situations. Research outcomes are not always a useful end-product in themselves as there is a glaring shortfall in applying the research into possible real-life situations and undertaking sensitivity analyses to at least gain some ideas of the effects in longer-term timeframes.

Another thought - In last week's The Land (Thursday 5th July 2007, pp 13) there is an interesting article entitled 'Farmers try to block seed royalty sting' with the opening paragraph......'Farmers risk losing their right to be exempt from paying royalties on home-grown grain and pasture seed retained for future plantings unless they put a strong case to a national review of Plant Breeders Rights (PBR).'

I'm confused..... why is the NSW Farmers Association Grains Committee opposing any attempt to place royalties on seeds harvested by farmers for their own use yet seemingly overwhelming supportive for genetically engineered seeds which have these requirements already built in to the Technical User Agreement......

to quote someone else..... please explain?

Hi Safe, to be honest, I would suggest you were totally sympathetic to the non-GM campaign before you joined this forum. Your position has not changed despite the presentation of lots of information about health concerns.

On the subject of independence and company support, did you know that Julie “Non-GM Farmer” Newman once accepted support from Bayer? Do you think her independence is compromised any less than Chris Boerboom and Mike Owen? If so, why do you make the distinction?

Safe, do you believe in homeopathy? How else could you expect that oil with no DNA, no protein and no differences in composition from GM canola needs health testing?

Julie, the Canadians gave up growing Atrazine-resistant canola when the GM canola varieties were introduced because of the vastly improved yield of the latter. There is no way that atrazine-resistant canola could compete with the best varieties in Canada. The reference I gave you to yields was for Australian canola grown in Australia. The varieties in question were Surpass 600 and Surpass 600TT, both released in 1999. The former had 26% yield increase across 22 environments.

More on Australian canola growing here, which confirms most of what I have said. Except, according to the Pioneer Seeds, Clearfield canola makes up 25% of plantings.
http://www.pioneer.com/australia/media/canola_yields_canada.htm

The information on subsidies was given to you to demonstrate that subsidies were alive and well before the introduction of GM crops and the proportions given to various crops have not changed a whole lot. You seemed to want to make out they were invented for GM crops. In 2005, the major programs were Corn, cotton, disaster relief, conservation and wheat in that order. http://farm.ewg.org/farm/region.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&yr=2005

Even the scientists are realising there is problem with ramming a gene where it's not welcome. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/business/yourmoney/01frame.html?ex=1184040000&en=412b911ec1e1b180&ei=5070 is a recent article by scientists that are backtracking from their pro-GM stance and looking at the safety of individual genes. This is only happening now which should have happened before GM was let out onto the market. The safety implications of what this could mean for GM is astounding.
“The $73.5 billion global biotech business may soon have to grapple with a discovery that calls into question the scientific principles on which it was founded. Last month, a consortium of scientists published findings that challenge the traditional view of how genes function. The exhaustive four-year effort was organized by the United States National Human Genome Research Institute and carried out by 35 groups from 80 organizations around the world. To their surprise, researchers found that the human genome might not be a “tidy collection of independent genes” after all, with each sequence of DNA linked to a single function, such as a predisposition to diabetes or heart disease.

Instead, genes appear to operate in a complex network, and interact and overlap with one another and with other components in ways not yet fully understood. According to the institute, these findings will challenge scientists “to rethink some long-held views about what genes are and what they do.”

One molecular biologist calls “the industrial gene.” is one that can be defined, owned, tracked, proven acceptably safe, proven to have uniform effect, sold and recalled,” said Jack Heinemann, a professor of molecular biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and director of its Center for Integrated Research in Biosafety. “

So you pro-GM’ers, the reason why we cannot show reference to the dangers of GM is because there is no way to track, prove it’s unacceptably safe, prove to have a uniform effect, or recalled. That makes your industrial gene a biohazard doesn’t it?

Is it really safe.

It would appear you did not go to the link I provided. In it the world's largest body of scientist make it very clear that there has not been a single case of harm from a decade of consuming food containing GM ingredients. That is called safe food any way you care to slice it. As for testing sorry you are completely wrong re GM testing. Each and every GM event has to go through a very extensive evaluation (read testing) procedure BEFORE it is allowed to be commercialized. This regiment is from 10-50 times the testing done on novel non-GM events. GM crops are the ONLY crops tested for allergen content BEFORE they are commercialized.

Say if one were to randomly mutate DNA with radiation or nasty chemicals and then commercialize the mutated plant without ever knowing what DNA was mutated, would that bother you?

Why is it everytime it is demonstrated that scientists have been examining in detail many aspects of safety on GM crops critics switch over to suggest they know better how to evluate safety testing then the experts. Hmmm.

http://web.mala.bc.ca/wager

It is pleasing to see this discussion is expanding beyond what is allegedly 'good for farmers' to postulate potential effects on human health.

No, there may be no specific cases of ill-health attributed to the consumption of ge foods..... similarly, it is unlikely one cigarette will cause instantaenous death. However, the cumulative effects of continuous smoking are well described and require billions of dollars each year for 'curative' treatment. I see a similarity between the two products - nicotene and ge foods - over a period of time, there will be repercussions and finally, a few people will scratch their heads and ask... 'Why didn't we see this coming?'

Short-term 'gains' are the mantra..... long-term vision is poo-poohed to the detriment of human and ecological health. With existing (non-ge) technology already providing substantial productivity results in canola, why embrace and be held tightly by a new modus operandi that will irrevocably alter the landscapes.