Non-GM drought tolerant varieties of wheat are being grown in Australia.  Mrs Newman claims there are far better alternatives in non-GM biotechnology but some scientists are more interested in attracting corporate investment so are misleading farmers to believe all biotechnology is GM.

Australia: Network of Concerned Farmers Ask Why GM Crops Perform Worse in Drought - Christopher Preston , Senior Lecturer, Weed Management, University of Adelaide In my recent search for material on yields of GM canola following the comments of Julie Newman of the Network of Concerned Farmers that GM canola yields were 20% less than those of conventional canola, I came across a press release dating from 30th June 2005 (http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=2254). In this press release, the Network of Concerned Farmers are asking why GM crops perform worse in drought. This looks on the surface like a reasonable question. The problem with the question, and perhaps the intention, is that it makes the assumption that GM crops do perform worse in drought. However, is there any evidence to support such an assumption? Julie Newman thinks so and claims in the press release: "Farmers worldwide have complained that GM crops perform worse than non-GM crops during drought including GM cotton in India and Indonesia, GM soy in the United States and Brazil and GM canola in CanadaŠ." Supporting information is provided along with the press release mostly pointing to other articles on the Network of Concerned Farmers website. The main evidence provided by the Network of Concerned Farmers for their claims, both in the press release and in the supporting information is a claim that the 2004/2005 drought in Brazil had greatly reduced GM soy yields. The quote presented comes from a press release from the Polaris Institute of 29th June 2005. The Polaris Institute describes its mission as "retooling citizen movements for democratic social change in an age of corporate-driven globalization". This press release quotes an unnamed "president of the Rio Grande do Sul seed association" as saying crop losses were 25% higher for GM soy crops as compared to conventional ones. The press release takes as its basis a news report, originally on Tierramerica, written by Mario Osava in March 2005. In this report we find that the unnamed president is in fact Narciso Barison, president of APASSUL, a state association of seed producers. In addition, the quote about yield losses was "because transgenic seeds are smuggled into Brazil from Argentina and are not intended for the local climate, so have proved less resistant to the water shortage. The conventional varieties, developed by national Brazilian agencies, certified and adapted to the region, had better results. The differences in crop loss varied according to the conditions of each field, reaching "a maximum of 25 percent" for non-GM soy, he said." Therefore, rather than a 25% yield reduction on account of the soybeans being GM we have a problem with less well adapted varieties being smuggled into Brazil and the yield loss is mostly less than 25%. As all farmers would realise, less well-adapted varieties are likely to have lower yields. The farmers growing these varieties would have decided to grow GM soy for the other advantages they provide. The second example provided by the Network of Concerned Farmers comes from an article in NewFarm (www.newfarm.org/features/0904/soybeans/index_print.shtml) published by the Rodale Institute following a presentation by Ron Eliason at the 2004 Midwest Soybean Conference. The Rodale Institute promotes organic agriculture. The author of the article, Dan Sullivan, has a sidebar that repeats a number of the usual dubious claims of the anti-GM movement. I have previously looked into this claim, as Charles Benbrook has used this presentation as evidence for lower yields of GM soybeans, and repeat here what I have previously written: A second line of evidence cited by Benbrook is that yield improvement in soybeans has been essentially nil since 1995 and that this is due to the high adoption of Roundup Ready soybeans. In evidence, Benbrook cites a presentation by Eliason and Jones at the Midwest Soybean Conference in 2004 (go to http://wwwiasoybeans.com/whatnew/msc04/proceed.html and click on the link). In this presentation, Eliason and Jones contend that per acre soybean yields peaked in 1994 and have been effectively flat ever since. In 1994 there was the highest ever per acre soybean yield, whereas 2003 was the lowest yielding year for a decade. A second presentation at the same conference (J.E. Sprecht. Is soybean yield improvement stagnating? Perception and perspectives. http://wwwiasoybeans.com/whatnew/msc04/proceed.html and click on the link) examined the same problem. Sprecht showed that plateaus in soybean yields could be seen at various times since the 1970s and suggested what has happened in the last decade is not new. Soybean yields in Nebraska have mirrored soybean yields over the whole US, with no apparent yield improvement since 1995. However, a number of droughts have occurred in Nebraska over the past decade. Sprecht showed that while yields in dryland soybeans had not increased since 1995, yield improvements, with no significant reduction in rate of improvement, had occurred in irrigated soybeans. Benbrook has simply ignored Sprecht. It is clear from Sprecht's analysis and other data presented at the same conference that weather conditions rather than Roundup Ready are responsible for the apparent lack of yield improvement in the US. In this case, there is no evidence that GM soybeans are performing any worse in dry conditions than conventional crops. Indeed Sprecht was able to show similar effects for maize, much of which was not GM until more recently. The third example is Argentina where the claim is made "RR soya crops also yield 5% to 10% less compared with the non-GM varieties grown under similar soil conditions, confirming findings in the United States." This quote comes from an article written by Dr. Lilian Joensen and Mae-Wan Ho and published by the Institute of Science in Society. The article is called Argentina's GM Woes (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/AGMW.php). As a source, Joensen and Ho used an article written in 2001 by Walter Pengue for Seedling, the newsletter of GRAIN (www.grain.org/publications/seed-01-9-3-en.cfm). In this article, Pengue writes: "Evidence shows that RR soybean crops produce 5% to 10% less yield per acre as against other identical varieties grown under similar soil conditionsŠ." He cites "Troubled Times Amid Commercial Success for Roundup Ready Soybeans: Glyphosate Efficacy is Slipping and Unstable Transgene Expression Erodes Plant Defenses and Yields" by Charles Benbrook as the source of this information. Benbrook was citing his analysis of US soybean trials. Therefore, not only does the quoted 5 to 10% yield loss have nothing to do with drought, it also has nothing to do with Argentina. Joensen and Ho added the comment "confirming findings in the United States". The fourth example given is Indonesia. In this case, the quote is "In the first year of planting, there were reported failures of Bt cotton - the crop succumbed to drought and hundreds of hectares were attacked by pests. The drought had led to a pest population explosion on Bt cotton, but not on other cotton varieties". This quote is tracked backed to an Institute of Science in Society Press release of May 2004 written by Lim Li Ching (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BrokenPromises.php). Ching used a Friends of the Earth publication "Genetically-Modified Crops: A Decade of Disaster" and an article from The Jakarta Post "Pest attack genetically-modified cotton" 29 June, 2001. The quote used by the Friends of the Earth is not acknowledged in their publication, but comes from a summary produced by Sarah Hindmarsh of the Pesticide Action Network of Asia Pacific as a source of most of the quotes (there are a number of sites with this summary including www.poptel.org.uk/panap/ge/indoblurb.htm.). In the summary, Hindmarsh states: "The Bt cotton has succumbed to drought and pest infestations" and cites three Jakarta Post news articles as the source of this information. These are: Pests attack genetically modified cotton, The Jakarta Post, June 29, 2001; Pros and cons of transgenic cotton continue in S. Sulawesi, The Jakarta Post Features, July 17, 2001; Transgenic cotton irks farmers, The Jakarta Post: National News, September 15, 2001. A search of these three articles failed to find any mention of drought. It seems that Hindmarsh has added the comment about drought to the story. The story is further embellished as it goes along. The next example is India. Here the Network of Concerned Farmers relies on a Press Release from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). This Press Release touted the publication of a document "BT cotton in Andhra Pradesh: A three year assessment" published by the Deccan Development Society, Andhra Pradesh Coalition in Defense of Diversity and the Permaculture Association of India, co-written by the Project Coordinator of the Permaculture Association of India. These three organizations are implacably opposed to GM crops and are leading the opposition to Bt cotton in southern India. Within this document is a table of yields that indicate Bt cotton performed worse in Andhra Pradesh in its first year of production, the drought year of 2002/2003, than conventional hybrids. In 2003/2004 and 2004/2005 yields of Bt cotton were higher than yields of conventional hybrids. However, drought conditions were also evident in 2004/2005. Yields of conventional cotton hybrids were actually worse in 2004/2005 than in 2002/2003. Yet in this drought year, Bt cotton outperformed non-Bt cotton by 5%. In an article "Bt Cotton Controversy: Some Paradoxes Explained", written by Gopal Naik, Matin Qaim, Arjunan Subramanian and David Zilberman and published in the Economic and Political Weekly April 9 2005, the authors report the results of a survey of 341 cotton farmers in four states of India. In their report, yields of Bt and conventional cotton were analyzed across several states of India. In three out of 4 states in 2002, yields of Bt cotton were significantly higher than non-Bt cotton. In Andhra Pradesh, Bt cotton yields were lower than conventional by 3%, but this difference was not statistically significant. In Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, yields were significantly higher by 32%, 73%, and 43% respectively. Andhra Pradesh had the second highest conventional cotton yield of the three states indicating that drought was probably not of significantly greater intensity in Andhra Pradesh than elsewhere. As Naik et al. state: "If the germplasm is more susceptible to drought than a locally adapted cultivar, the Bt hybrid will underperform in a dry spell, especially when bollworm pressure is low." Next we come to South Africa, where the Network of Concerned Farmers rely on a report from Biowatch, South Africa. Biowatch is the lead anti-GM organization in South Africa. This article "Bt cotton in South Africa: the case of the Makhathini farmers" by Elfrieda Pschorn-Strauss was published in Seedling, the Newsletter of GRAIN, in 2005. This article, while highly critical of Bt cotton, does not once contain a claim that Bt cotton does less well under drought conditions than conventional cotton. Instead it indicates that drought and low cotton prices have inhibited small farmers from being as successful as larger farmers with Bt cotton. The problem being the high cost of seed is harder to justify in drought seasons. Lastly, we come to GM canola in Canada. The Network of Concerned Farmers provides no additional evidence to support their claims about reduced yields in droughts of GM canola in Canada. I also conducted a brief search of the scientific literature and was unable to find any articles that reported lower yields of GM crops under drought conditions. This does not mean that there may not be some information in articles are not out there, simply that the information is not prominent. In conclusion, the examples given by the Network of Concerned Farmers do not stack up. They can all be sourced to groups that are implacably opposed to GM crops. Has Julie Newman and the Network of Concerned Farmers ever wondered why only anti-GM groups are able to find evidence for GM crops performing worse under drought? Of the seven examples given, only two indicate the possibility that drought might preferentially lower yields of GM crops. In both cases, it was the growing of less well-adapted cultivars that was the root of the problem. At this stage, there is simply no evidence to support a conclusion that GM causes crops to perform worse in drought. One of the other points of note from this survey was that on two occasions anti-GM activists simply added material to the story to make up for the lack of evidence and on a third occasion change the wording significantly to make a quote look more damaging. This should be adequate warning to Julie Newman, and others, that they should look for the original sources of the stories instead of simply believing and parroting what is written by these groups. ##   The above article fails to mention why Australian cotton growers use an additional watering for irrigated GM cotton and relies on discrediting any adverse data by claiming anyone that is willing to stand up against GM is anti-GM. Trials during drought will assist Australian farmers to guage drought susceptibility, however Bayer Cropscience and Monsanto withdrew from the proposed NSW trials in 2004 citing drought as a reason. If there was no drought suceptibility, they would be confident that their varieties would outperform non-GM varieties.  The reason cited for Monsanto's Roundup Ready's yield penalties in "the Scientist" implied that the chemical remains active and sits in the meristems affecting the emerging buds and therefore yields. This problem would be lessened if rain is experienced not long after application as it would wash away the residual chemical.   Yields have not increased since GM introduction to Canada. See statistical graphs showing the comparison between Canadian and Australian canola acreage sown and yields  (*document here)