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GM Crop Yields are Lower than Conventional According to Soil Association Report

A recent report from the Soil Association shows that genetically modified crops typically have a lower yield than their conventional equivalents. The report collates a number of studies from the past ten years, and concludes that GM crops produce a yield that is at best equal to, and often lower than, conventional varieties.

Monsanto's GM Soya beans, which are modified to resist their Roundup weed killer, are shown to have a 4%-12% lower yield than conventional varieties. In the most recent of these studies, published by Professor Barney Gordon of Kansas State University in 2007, a Monsanto soya bean was found to yield 9% less than an almost identical conventional soya bean.

A similar study in Nebraska found that GM soya crops were 6% less productive than their nearest relatives, and 11% less productive than contemporary high-yield conventional varieties. It concluded that lower yields could partly be attributed to the increase in productivity in conventional crops during the years it can take to engineer a GM strain, but also to a reduction in productivity that directly results from the modification.

The Kansas study supports this latter conclusion. It found that the GM crop increased its yield with the addition of extra manganese, which suggests its ability to take up this nutrient was reduced by the modification.

Soil Association policy director, Peter Melchett, said: "GM chemical companies constantly claim they have the answer to world hunger while selling products which have never led to overall increases in production, and which have sometimes decreased yields or even led to crop failures."

The report points out that intrinsic increases in productivity are 'in no way' the purpose of genetic modification, and that these claims of an 'answer to world hunger' are refuted by a number of reports from the United States Department of Agriculture, the United Nations and others.

"As oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, we need to move away from oil dependent GM crops to producing food sustainably, using renewable energy, as is the case with organic farming", concluded Melchett.