Question of co-existence

A senior consultant at Macquarie Franklin, Thom Goodwin, said the State's debate on GM needed to move forward, and co-existence could be the answer.

Mr Goodwin told delegates at a Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC) farm business update at Launceston last week the majority of Tasmanians had adopted a "wait-and-see" approach on GM food crops but this was sending out mixed messages.

"The problem with different signals is that it may be viewed by outsiders as disunity," he said.

"Agriculture has the most to gain and lose from GM policy yet there is disunity within industries over the issue - and disunity means death."

He said this disunity could allow outsider groups with specialist interests to use the "divide-and-rule" tactic - and own the GM debate to retain the status quo.

Macquarie Franklin was commissioned by the State Government last year to examine the potential market advantage of Tasmania's GM-free status.

Mr Goodwin said the moratorium was able to be put in place by the State Government under section 21 of the Commonwealth Gene Technology Act, which allowed States to establish GM-free zones for marketing purposes alone.

GM-free canola was used to demonstrate the example of Tasmania's GM-free status and search for any tangible benefits.

"The only tangible benefit of Tasmania's GM-free status we could identify was the production of GM-free canola seed and some GM-free canola being shipped to Japan," he said.

But Mr Goodwin said if States without a moratorium also produced GM-free canola and exported to the same consumers as Tasmania, this did not offer a marketing point of difference.

"This led us to conclude Tasmania's point of difference was the brand image associated with the moratorium itself," he said.

"That is the promotion of Tasmania's clean, green, GM-free status."

These benefits were difficult to measure, with some people suggesting the advantages partly centred on being able to evade GM animal feed.

"Tasmanian beef is marketed as being GM-free, mostly to Japan," Mr Goodwin said. "However, others States are able to avoid GM animal feed too."

After discussion with a range of stakeholders, he said the conclusion was businesses using a GM-free status to support branding were a small minority, contributing less than 5pc of Tasmania's agriculture value.

And while the moratorium offered an advantage to those operations, Mr Goodwin said a larger group of producers was prohibited from growing GM products.

He said the debate needed to consider Tasmanian dairy farmers who currently paid levies that were used for research into GM pastures.

At the moment, the Dairy Futures CRC is developing two GM technologies: white clover and high-energy ryegrass.

The GM ryegrass is expected to be released commercially by 2015-20, with modelling estimates suggesting the technology will boost farm productivity by $200 a hectare per year.

But Tasmania's moratorium means its dairy farmers will not have access to this technology and could be disadvantaged.

Mr Goodwin did not expect policies to change but he hoped the industry would look at other options.

"What I am arguing for is that we move beyond this wait-and-see approach," he said. "Could industry advocate for the co-existence of non-GM food crops and GM food crops?"

But Brand Tasmania executive director Robert Heazlewood said co-existence would not work.

"Based on market expectations, I don't think there would be an appetite for that here," he said.

He said the Macquarie Franklin report failed to look at market access issues.

About 50,000-60,000 tonnes of onions from Tasmania are shipped to Europe each year.

Mr Heazlewood said these had to be certified GM-free in order to gain entrance to the EU.

"We are a long way from markets saying they want GM products," he said.

Although Mr Goodwin highlighted the fact that some Tasmanian producers were disadvantaged due to the moratorium, Mr Heazlewood said GM ryegrasses and even poppies were yet to be proven.

"We are dealing with unknowns here," he said. "Let's calm down until we get the hard facts."

More from the GRDC updates next week