So Europe is stifling innovation in agriculture

On November 10, the Financial Times published a strange article on the prospects of new plant breeding techniques within European legislation. He begins by confusing corn with wheat when speaking of GMO plants grown in Europe; then he claims that the European Court of Justice has “condemned” genome editing by classifying it as any GMO, but in that ruling there is no mention of genome editing or Crispr (the refined technology awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2020 to two female scientists: Charpentier and Doudna). In that sentence we only talk about “site-directed mutagenesis”, and words weigh and count. Then he makes a choice that is not neutral: lobbyists, agricultural associations and farmers speak in favor of genome editing, while the only scientist heard is against the technology. To find a contrary one, the FT had to go and look for it with its lantern. But above all, it fails to comment on a survey by the European Commission at the end of September 2022 where 79 percent of those who responded judge the interpretation of the European Court’s ruling as inadequate, which associates all interventions with Crispr to the halter of the GMO legislation of the century last. Worse, he cites one of the opposite sign, the result of opinions photocopied by the thousands and then archived.

But some merits the piece of Ft has them. First of all, it gives the sensation of the trickle that exists on these issues among the nation states, which are asking the European Commission to find the courage they lack to enter the third millennium with modern agriculture. Without providing the necessary numbers, he hints at the environmental and strategic advantages that can derive from making Europe less dependent on the monumental imports of foodstuffs to which it is a slave and which are causing part of the rise in inflation, since they arrive via sea ​​on ships that do not use renewable energy. Not to mention Ukrainian foodstuffs, just 18 months ago the blockade of the Suez Canal put at risk not only our wine exports, but also the arrival in Italy of 70,000 tons of tomato paste from China. It has the merit of showing a map of the world where it is seen that in practice only Europe does not allow scientists and farmers to benefit from the progress of Crispr technology, condemning us to increase imports of any type of food, therefore no longer just feed (all based on the classic GMOs) that the whole of Europe has been importing for a quarter of a century and with which we feed our most valuable productions, namely those Doc and Igp. And the old bogus bogey of the ferocious stars and stripes multinationals is no longer valid because now all the major countries on the planet are liberalizing the use of genome editing in agriculture: China, India, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Canada, as well as Russia and United States. With China being the world leader in the filing of patents on these technologies, which are as simple as they are effective. Suffice it to say that Italian scientists have closed varieties of rice, grapes and then apple trees and tomatoes in their laboratories, which almost eliminate the need to use fungicides on those crops. With Italy instead being the continental leader in the use of fungicides. Well, we in innovation and the increase in biodiversity guided (by genome editing) of plants have chosen to continue to use more and more copper sulphate which pollutes our soils (especially those grown organically).

Instead of allowing the experimentation of a “crispato” risotto rice that is tolerant of the attack of pathogenic fungi (Brusone), we boast of being able to solve phytopathologies and damages caused by climate change with magic potions and cosmic energies. The same continental strategy of the Farm to Fork with a creepy collapse of agricultural production, seems to aim to make agriculture disappear from the old continent, putting scientists into forced retirement and transforming the agricultural landscape into urban gardens for Sunday hobbyists (like myself). In short, agricultural entrepreneurs and scientists could enter a new category to assist, that of the LSI, socially useless workers.