Pesticide Potpourri

• Canadian farm groups say the Ontario Minister of Agriculture has given an ‘ironclad guarantee’ that agriculture will be exempt when the province, under pressure from activist groups, moves to ban the use of pesticides from lawns and gardens this spring.  They are worried that inevitably activists will question the benefits of crop protection products because science has been taken out of the equation.  CropLife Canada revealed the results of surveys conducted last fall and again this spring which show consumer concern about the use of pesticides in food production is growing.  The CropLife polls conducted last fall found 61 percent opposed the use of these products on lawns and gardens and 31 percent opposed to pesticide use on farms.  Only 13 percent of those polled thought their use is vital to growing crops.  In another poll taken earlier this spring for CropLife, 56 percent said regulations should be the same for farm/urban environments and 64 percent said pesticides should be banned from all uses.  Interestingly, Ontario farmers’ personal lawns and gardens will fall under the act.  (BetterFarming.com, 4/21/08). 
•  Mounting evidence points to China's clear intent to become a world biotechnology leader, disseminate and utilize the technology itself, and avoid dependence on imported technologies.  Crops manipulated with modern technology now commercialized in China - including several rice varieties, sweet pepper, papaya, tomato, and poplar - have been developed by Chinese state institutions with public sector funding.  By 2010, GM rice and cotton, taken together, are estimated to potentially generate $5 billion annually in economic benefits for up to 110 million Chinese households.  An additional dozen or more GM crops are being field tested currently.  (CROP PROT. Monthly, 220, March 2008).

•  A member of BASF’s board of executive directors stated that the German chemical company may take legal action against the European Commission if approval of its genetically modified (GMO) potato is not issued soon.  After an inconclusive meeting in mid-April with EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, BASF sent him an open letter - printed across German media, the Financial Times and other newspapers - demanding that the Commission approve its Amflora potato “without any further delay.”  If approval is given, it would be the EU's first authorization of a GMO product for cultivation in a decade.  Only one GMO crop may be grown commercially in the EU, maize made by U.S. biotech company Monsanto and approved in 1998.  Previously, BASF wanted approval by April for farmers to plant its potato for the 2008 harvest - now no longer possible.  (Reuters, 4/17/08). 

• The U.S. Patent and Trademark office recently overturned a controversial patent on a breed of yellow bean.  Opponents of the patent say the bean has been eaten in Latin America for more than a century, raising issues of biopiracy.  The patent was granted in 1999 to Larry Proctor of Delta, Colorado.  According to the patent application, Proctor bought yellow beans in Mexico and bred them for two years to grow plants that gave a better harvest and produce beans with a distinctive yellow color.  Proctor then began charging licensing fees on imports of yellow beans from Mexico, prompting the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, based in Cali, Colombia, to challenge the patent in 2001.  But the battle may continue.  Proctor has the option of contesting the decision in federal court, and says he is consulting his lawyer.  “Everybody may not be happy with what we’re fixing to do now,” he said, and declined to comment further.  (Nature, Vol. 453 No. 7192, 5/7/08). 

•  All three U.S. presidential candidates were invited by a bipartisan group of Nobel laureates and other scholars called ScienceDebate 2008 to step on stage at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and explain how they will ensure that America continues to support the sciences.  All three candidates declined.  (Wall Street Journal Opinion, 4/17/08).