I'm not against GMOs per se: the hand of man has been improving the unkind nature since the dawn of the times. I know that much of the fruit we have been eating for centuries is "genetically engineered" somehow, that lemons don't grow from lemon seeds.
However, saying that Europe
needs genetically engineered crops is hyperbolic at best.
I frequently hear tales of GMOs saving the world and whatnot. But when I ask for a scientific measurement of their effect, all I get is studies - often sponsored by GMO proposers themselves - showing that, in developed countries (as Europe is), they can lead to modest increments in yeld (in the order of magnitude of 10% over ten years), and sometimes they don't (e.g. in Australia).
I can't talk about what happens in the vasty plains of Germany, but here on the terraced slopes of southern Europe tons of fruits are left to rot on the branches because picking them up would cost more than you'd earn by selling them (also because of the european subsidies which transfer money to latifondists no matter what they do with their land), and still no hungry mobs are plundering those fields. We can't compete with China on growing cheaper rice, no matter what seeds we use. What we can do is to promote our centuries-old cultivars, and the traditional foods based on them, and sell them for a premium because they don't taste like shit.
You'll forgive my diffidence, but in the latest years, every single time we've been told to drop a time-honoured habit of us in order to copy some other country's recipe for success, it ended up in grief and hunger (this one scientifically measured) for us. Timeo multinationals et dona ferentes.
