Thanks to the generosity of people on the GM Action mailing list, I was  able to attend this important conference on the future of global agriculture. I was also part of the 2020 Vision Collective, who organised a number of alternative events during the week. Here are my personal views on what  went on.

Part One - Wednesday 18th April

We assembled at The Greenhouse, Norwich's Environmental Resource Centre,  for a press conference and the unveiling of a magnificent metal statue made by John Miller, featuring the globe and its food supply locked up by a number of padlocks, representing biotechnology companies. The Lord and Lady Mayor of Norwich unveiled the statue and made a speech and I gave a short interview for BBC Norwich, which was shown on television as part of the early and late evening local news programmes.

The press conference featured our visitors from India, who were due to  speak at a meeting that evening. Our guests were Devinder Sharma, Chair of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, New Delhi, who was well known  to me through his excellent articles on food security, Umnapur Lakshimi and Salome Yesudas, women farmers from the Andhra Pradesh region of India who are working with the Deccan Development Society to advance sustainable agriculture and Michelle Chawla of Greenpeace India.

After the press conference a number of us headed up to the John Innes Centre, which is on the western outskirts of Norwich, to register for the conference or to hand out leaflets to the delegates to publicise our  evening meeting. I studied Plant Genetics at John Innes in the late 1980s, back in the days when it was the John Innes Institute, when it was about a quarter of its present size. The conference was held in a modern, purpose built  lecture theatre, which also hosted the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) meeting in Norwich earlier this year. There were about  240 people on the delegates list, the majority from the UK but from as far afield as China, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, USA, Australia, the Philippines and Mongolia.

Professor Chris Lamb, the Director of the John Innes Centre, gave a welcoming address then the first speaker was M. S. Swaminathan (MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, India), whose talk was entitled "Towards food-supply security and quality". Prof. Swaminathan set the scene by talking about the challenges facing agriculture, such as pressures on land and water resources and climate change. He talked about the sovereign  rights of nations to their biological resources, widening the number of crop  types and using land races of rice to enhance food security. So far, so good.

But then he moved on to mention golden rice and other GM applications such as putting Amaranthus genes into potato to enhance the protein content, although he is "heavily on the side of caution", whatever that means, and mentioned the "precautionary principle", though that wasn't defined  either.

He also talked of moving from the Green Revolution to a new "Evergreen Revolution". An article on his website (http://www.mssrf.org/) also uses this terminology. "The use of GMOs has the potential to be of help in promoting an evergreen revolution rooted in the principles of ecology, economics, equity and ethics. GMOs can confer real benefits in agriculture, food quality, nutrition and health" (see http://www.mssrf.org/gmo99.html). Hmm...

Another phrase Swaminathan used was the "Triple Helix Model", which is apparently the relationship between research institutes, the private sector and farming families. Somehow a mental image of a  parasitic, strangling creeper came into my mind and wouldn't go away. (I think you  can guess which of the three are going to be strangled.)

Prof. Alan Gray was the next speaker, with a talk entitled "Agriculture  and the environment". He works at the UK's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and is also Chairman of ACRE.

His main theme was that, in the UK, agriculture is environment. (I agree.) Prof. Gray argued that biodiversity exists because of, rather than in spite of, the intervention of human beings (also partly true). To illustrate this he used the example of the reintroduction of the Large Blue butterfly and the decline in numbers of some bird species (e.g. the skylark by 52% between 1968 and 1998, see www.bto.org/birdtrends for more details). He  then cited the restoration of chalk grassland at Twyford Down as a superb  example of how habitat restoration can work and used this to support his arguement that we can maintain biodiversity by tinkering with the edges of modern agriculture rather than making more widespread reforms. (Oh, that's  alright then!)

Incidentally, he thinks that the "general public is ignorant about  genetics" and "vulnerable to campaigning organisations"(!)

Next was Dr. Barbara Mazur from Dupont Agricultural Products Experiment Station, USA, whose talk was entitled "Agricultural R&D in a competitive global economy". Dr. Mazur's talk focussed on ways to alter levels of  oils, sugars and amino acids in crops such as soya and maize, in particular for animal feed and soya products. A mixture of GM and non-GM techniques are used. GM is used to raise lysine levels in maize and conventional breeding is used to produce high sucrose lines of soya that can then be used to  make more digestible soya milk products. (Food = commodity.)

After a tea break there was a Round Table Discussion entitled "Setting the Agenda for Global Agriculture". As well as the afternoon's three speakers the participants were Prof,. Jikun Huang (Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy, China), Prof. Robin Grove-White (University of Lancaster, AEBC,  UK), Dr. Robin Simpson (National Consumer Council, UK) and Dr. Idah  Sithole-Niang (University of Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe). Various topics were discussed,  including how to enhance entitlement to biotechnology, availability of water,  meeting the needs of small farmers, technologies for poorer farmers must be of low cost and low risk, bias towards spending on biotechnology.

Highlights of the discussion:

Marc van Montagu, (the "father of GM", who pioneered gene transfer via Agrobacterium) said, in connection with GM "there is no time left - we  have to go ahead". (You'll have to imagine the Belgian accent). Bernard Marantelli from Monsanto asked "Whose role is it to ensure that advances in technology are risk free?" (Yours, you idiot, was the general consensus).

Then there was the Welcome Reception and buffet, which we had to leave  early to get to the University of East Anglia for the evening's alternative  event. Our Indian guests, Devinder Sharma, Umnapur Lakshimi, Salome Yesudas and Michelle Chawla were joined by Patrick Mulvany of Intermediate Technology for the talk "Feeding or Fooling the World", ably chaired by Tim O'Riordan from UEA. Two Monsanto representatives shared our minibus to the talk and a few other conference delegates came over later on but unfortunately most delegates stayed for the buffet. (My stomach wished I had too.)

It was an excellent talk and a welcome change after an afternoon at the conference. Dervinder Sharma talked of the food surpluses India is  currently experiencing, while simultaneously having poor, starving people who are hungry because they cannot afford to buy food. It is not production of  food that is the problem, but the distribution.

Lakshimi was most impressive. With Salome translating, she spoke  powerfully of her experiences of farming in southern India, where she and other  farmers have set up a community gene bank and grow around 85 varieties of plants. These include millet, pulses, green leafy vegetables and oilseeds such as safflower, which provides her with edible oil. She has no need to buy in grain. She grows marigold, castor oil plants and sunflowers as attractants for pollinators and also to draw pests away from her crops. Creepers are used to cover the soil to prevent erosion.

There are two seasons a year - June to October and October to March. When crops are over, the soil is deep ploughed to expose pests to predators. Farmyard manure is used to add nutrients to the soil. Two and a half acres provides food for her, her parents, her daughter and herself.

She grew hybrid sorghum for a number of years but found that her diet  became less rich and she was worse off, even though she had access to cash, so  she went back to her more appropriate, traditional farming methods.

Lakshimi was followed by Michelle Chawla then Patrick Mulvany from Intermediate Technology, who talked about the threat to food security and biosafety caused by growing GM crops. He also spoke of the proven, sustainable farming methods being used by farmers in at least twenty countries, involving over 2 million families on 4 - 5 million hectares, where yields have increased two to three-fold since adoption of these techniques. He also mentioned current talks taking place at Spoleto in Italy.

Then we came to our special guest, Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian farmer  sued by Monsanto for having his land contaminated by their GM canola (oilseed rape). I won't go into details of the case as most of you will know lots about it already. Percy has his own website at www.percyschmeiser.com/, which includes details of his court case.

Percy is a superb speaker and he came across as full of honesty and integrity and the audience were moved and also very angry about the way Monsanto have treated him. One of the Monsanto guys had left to get some food but Bernard Marantelli was there at the back of the meeting and Tim O'Riordan had been tipped off that he was there so asked for his comments on the case. He referred us to a press release on the Monsanto website (www.monsanto.com/). There was a strong feeling of anger in the lecture theatre and, as Percy continued talking, Monsanto Man looked like he was wanting the ground to swallow him up. However, he kept on writing down comments in his notebook, doubtless so he could pass them to his Public Relations department for them to twist around at some later date.

To be continued...