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Farm group says GM acres way up in Ontario

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Published: July 26, 2001

Ontario farmers sharply increased their use of genetically modified seed this year, despite warnings by critics of consumer unease and market resistance.

Agcare, a pro-biotech Ontario farm coalition that claims to be a coalition representing 45,000 cash crop and horticultural farmers in Ontario, said this year’s corn, soybean and canola acreages all contain record amounts of GM seed.

“It’s clear that farmers see the advantages that the technology offers,” Agcare chair and Guelph-area farmer Jim Fischer said.

“Each year, the adoption rate for biotech crops increases as more farmers experience the benefits and incorporate the technology … .”

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The group says preliminary estimates indicate that up to 30 percent of soybeans, 40 percent of corn and 80 percent of the small canola crop are GM varieties.

Agcare executive director Brenda Cassidy said it shows that farmers have been testing and learning about the benefits of herbicide- and pest-resistant varieties and are willing to embrace them.

Farmers will grow a variety that gives them good economic results and for which there is a market, she said. All varieties on the market have been approved by federal regulatory agencies and the threatened market resistance is not evident in Ontario.

“It’s certainly not evident yet,” she said.

“There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of markets for GM crops.”

GM critic Michael Khoo with Greenpeace Canada scoffed at the report as unsubstantiated hype by a pro-biotech group.

“These are very unofficial numbers,” he said from Toronto.

“I see a lot of hype and I don’t see a lot of substantiation.”

Khoo said farmers cannot avoid the consistent poll results indicating that many consumers are skeptical and a vast majority favor mandatory labelling for food containing GM material.

“The consumer concern about this is not going to go away,” he said.

Cassidy readily conceded that GM food is controversial in the market and Ontario farmers are aware of it.

“If a major marketer were to say, ‘no, we won’t take a GM variety,’ that affects the level, certainly it would,” she said.

“We have seen that with Bt potatoes, which are now off the market. But we have not seen that yet in our products.”

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