February 13 2008.
The global use of GM crops increased by 12% last year to reach 114m hectares across 23 countries, a report showed today.
Around 11 million out of the 12 million farmers now growing biotech crops are "resource-poor", according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).
The report claimed that growing GM plants such as maize and cotton, which ISAAA said produced higher yields and incomes and involved lower pesticide use, helps small farmers gain financially and provides social benefits such as higher school enrolment as a result of growing.
But while the report's author, Clive James, said GM crops would be increasingly important for cutting poverty and hunger by 2015, Friends of the Earth claimed biotech farming was not delivering on the promised benefits.
The group's GM campaigner, Clare Oxborrow, said: "This report comes from a body funded by the GM industry on a mission to promote GM crops around the world, despite the evidence that they are causing damaging environmental and social impacts.
"GM crops have lead to a massive increase in pesticide use around the world and have failed to increase yields or tackle hunger and poverty.
In Europe, there was a 77% growth in biotech crops with more than 100,000 hectares cultivated - most of which was maize grown in Spain.
The National Farmers' Union's chief science and regulatory affairs adviser, Helen Ferrier, said the growth of GM around the world showed the UK was getting left behind.
Competitors to British farmers were benefiting from GM crops such as wheat and oil seed rape and products grown for animal feed, she said.
"It highlights the fact that the UK can't put its head in the sand with biotech crops. It needs the whole issue looked at in the context of global production," she said.
The Agricultural Biotechnology Council said there had been a 70-fold increase in GM crops over the last decade and farmers were choosing to grow them because of the better yields, environmental benefits and lower pesticide use.
Dr Julian Little, the chairman of the council, also said: "GM crops are one of a range of tools that have the potential to help farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions and minimise the environmental footprint of agriculture.
"Climate change is a reality we cannot afford to ignore and we look forward to a time when UK farmers and consumers can benefit from the safe and responsible use of GM technology."
Across the world 12 developing nations and 11 industrialised countries are now growing GM crops, with Chile and Poland cultivating them for the first time last year.
The majority of small farmers growing biotech crops are Chinese and Indian cotton farmers, while small numbers of producers in the Philippines and South Africa and other countries grew crops including cotton, maize and soybeans.
Mr James said: "Already those farmers who began adopting biotech crops a few years ago are beginning to see socioeconomic advantages compared to their peers who haven't adopted the crops.
"If we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of cutting hunger and poverty in half by 2015, biotech crops must play an even bigger role in the next decade.
"To reach these goals, a continued broadening and deepening of biotech crop use is crucial to meeting food, feed, fibre and fuel needs in the future."
According to the research, yield gains in the first 11 years of biotech crops were $34bn.
The report also said biotech crops had already cut pesticide use and decreased CO2 emissions and fossil fuel use by less spraying and tillage - with CO2 savings of 14.9 million tonnes in 2007.
But a Friends of the Earth report released ahead of the annual announcement said damaging pesticides were on the increase as a result of widespread farming of the plants.
And rather than tackling poverty in developing countries, much of the GM crops grown - the vast majority of which are in North and South America - is used for animal feed or for biofuels, the environmental group's report said.
Genetically modified soya, maize and cotton make up 95% of the total acreage of GM and none of the crops introduced so far has increased yield, enhanced nutrition, drought-tolerance or salt-tolerance, the environment group's report said.
Because they are genetically engineered to be tolerant of pesticides they allow farmers to spray herbicides more frequently - which in turn encourages the growth of herbicide-resistant plants.
The report claims widespread take-up of GM crops resistant to the herbicide glyphosate and the emergence of weeds tolerant of the chemical have caused a 15-fold increase in the use of the herbicide between 1994 and 2005.
