From left to right: Michael Doane, Monsanto; Maria Wellisch, Natural Resources Canada; McKenna Long and Alderidge rep; Terry McIntyre, Environment Canada. Photo Credit, Nigel Tunnacliffe.

The final session of the conference, called “Sustainable Development of Bioenergy and Biofuels Production Systems”, was the most representative of the relationship between industry and our government when it comes to biotechnology and biofuels. The speakers were:

Host: Maria Wellisch, Research Advisor, Sustainable Conversion of Bioresources, Natural Resources Canada

After a quick googling revealed that Maria Wellisch moved from being an industry consultant working with forestry to convert wood to biomass to working with the Canadian Government in essentially the same role.

The first speaker: a last minute replacement, so I dont have a name. However, he was from McKenna Long & Alderidge LLP, a legal organization that specializes in lobby work.

The second speaker: Michael Doane, Director, Global Biotech Acceptence, Monsanto

The third speaker: Terry McIntyre, Chief, Environmental Biotechnology Applications Division, Environment Canada

The session was framed around the concept of “sustainable yields”, which was defined as

Meeting the needs of a growing demand for agricultural products while decreasing the impact on the land, while at the same time helping farmers out along the way.

The input from Monsanto was the most noteworthy, as they are working extremely hard to deal with the PR problem around genetic engineering.

According to Doane, Monsanto’s research has indicated that energy use, soil loss, irrigated water use, net carbon emissions, and land use have decreased for corn, cotton, and soy. They claim that wheat has not made such gains because it is not genetically engineered. What Doane did not mention was that Japan submitted a petition to the Canadian Government which had over a million signatures stating they would not import wheat from Canada if they approved GE wheat. Also, Monsanto “data” is always a little suspect given their record of falsifying scientific reports.

What about chemical use? If we are evaluating the sustainability of crops, it is essential that we evaluate the amount of toxic chemicals which are sprayed onto the land, and genetically engineered crops have demonstrated a dramatically increased requirement. Chemical use was conspicuously absent from the presentation. It is also worthy to note that the USDA has recently stopped recording chemical use data, and some believe this was due to Monsanto’s lobby work [source].

When pressed, Michael Doan claimed that pesticide use on cotton crops has greatly decreased in the United States. What about India? He also claimed that herbicide use has decreased on genetically engineered crops, but Benbrook would disagree.

During his presentation, Doane stated that demand for food would double by 2050, meaning that humans would have to increase food production as much in the next 40 years as we have in the last 10,000 years. The implication was that technology would have to play a part. At the end of the presentation I asked why Monsanto and Environment Canada were pursuing biofuels if there was such a huge demand for food crops. The answer he gave, which is typical, is increasing yields.

If we already have to double our production just to meet the needs of hungry people, it does not make sense that we should be using food crops for fuel.