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10 Questions

with Nigel D.P. Thwaites
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November 14th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Nigel Thwaites of Syngenta says Czech Farmers support genetically modified crops because it allows them to be competitive worldwide.
THE THWAITES FILE

Job title: Country head, Czech & Slovak Republics, Syngenta
Age: 43
Nationality: British
Previous position: Marketing and strategy manager for Africa, Middle East and Balkans, AstraZeneca

Spun out of the agribusiness divisions of the multinational pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Novartis, Syngenta is a worldwide agriculture company selling pesticides, herbicides, crossbred plants and genetically modified (GM) crops. Europe has remained resistant to the use of GM crops, unlike the United States and Latin America. Syngenta’s Nigel D.P. Thwaites talks to The Prague Post about the need for GM crops, rising grain prices and why he doesn’t buy organic.
➊ Why have we seen such a rapid rise in grain prices this year?
We’ve got a growing population worldwide, particularly in Asia — a population that wants not just rice but meat, which requires maize to feed the chickens. And there’re biofuels, which are a fraction of the global consumption of wheat and maize but have helped bring this tipping point. Wheat is two times the price it was last year, as is maize. We were predicting this, but it’s happened much faster than expected.
Because of drought, Australia, the world’s No. 2 wheat producer, recently announced a further reduction in their harvest. It’s unlikely these prices will go back down, though wheat could a bit. Stock-to-use ratios are at the lowest they’ve been in 30 years. China is importing nearly $20 billion [366.8 billion Kč] worth of commodities for its market. By 2030, China will have some 8 billion people. We’ve got to feed them and we don’t have more land.
➋ How has Europe responded?
The rising grain prices could allow us to revise the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Forty percent of all European Union revenue is spent on supporting agriculture through the CAP. If world prices get stronger and you reduce that bill, that’s a huge amount of money for other developments. That’s the opportunity.
Europe is not sure if it wants to be an agricultural powerhouse — we’re the No. 1 exporter of produce in the world — or whether it wants to be a garden, with a bit of self-sufficiency and a nice countryside.
➌ What kind of acceptance do you see in the Czech Republic to GM crops?
There’s a positive position. If you speak to farmers, they’ll say, “Yes, we need this technology. It allows us to grow more competitively. We can reduce our chemical usage, reduce our input costs and increase our yields.”
OK, but does it hurt the environment? We argue it does nothing, positive or negative. Maybe positively you could say there is a slight reduction in chemical use. But pesticides these days are safe. If you look at the detergents you have in your home, a lot of those are more hazardous than many pesticides.
Over the past 10 years, 10 million hectares [24.7 million acres] of GM crops have been grown globally. In the United States, it’s widely used. And we haven’t seen an environmental impact, which is exactly as predicted.
All we’re doing is changing a few sequences of the chromosome. Those genes can create different levels of an enzyme or protein in the crop. But that’s all modeled and predicted as to whether it could impact human and environmental health.
➍ How far can you really model that out?
You can model it out to a great degree of certainty. And then you put in monitoring activities, which all the companies do. They’re the failsafe. We can’t say that GM crops are 100 percent safe, but we can say 99 percent.
Right now, the EU has this precautionary principle that says that if we can’t be entirely sure, we shouldn’t do it. The GM debate is heavy at the moment. Europe faces a fundamental challenge. We import half the feed we use to raise animals for meat from the U.S. and Latin America. Increasingly, those are GM crops. Yet Brussels will not come to a conclusion.

➎ The U.S. and Canada complained last year that the EU put a de-facto moratorium on approving new GM crops from 1998 to 2004. Has Syngenta had many crops approved?

Syngeta is right in the middle of this. The issue is the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), which evaluates all our data and risk assessments, reviews our proposals and says, “Yes, this is safe,” or “No, it isn’t.” Generally it’s a yes and never a no, but sometimes they need more information. They’re very effective.
But then the GM crops go to a vote in the European Parliament, which is not a scientific environment. And it comes back without a qualified majority. A lot of people sit on the fence, or countries like Austria, Hungary and Poland tend to be very against it.
We’re not going to push this too aggressively. We’re going to work with stakeholders and show them why they need GM crops. In the past, other companies have been more aggressive. We have a few crops in Europe that are registered but our GM business here is quite small. It will increase as acceptance comes.
➏ What gains would farmers get from your GM crops?
We look at insect resistance. So the plant itself produces a natural insecticide — if an insect bites the plant, it dies. You can stack several together. One chemical doesn’t kill every insect, which is good, because you have beneficial insects — you want ladybirds, because they eat aphids. The second phase is herbicide tolerance, so herbicide won’t kill the plant, only weeds.
We’re also working on producing crops that are drought-resistant. The biggest challenge in agriculture globally is water. There’s a shortage. With global warming, sunflowers are creeping up through Slovakia into Moravia. Each year or two, there’s more hectares because the weather is becoming a bit softer.
➐ There seems to be a larger question here of where we should stop in our manipulation of nature. Scientists debate the origins of maize, which has no wild equivalent and was likely bred by Native Americans thousands of years ago. Where does this end?
Exactly. We’ve been doing this for thousands of years. That’s also how wheat is what it is. Now, we have a number of techniques that are like traditional breeding but incredibly fast. You identify the right chmo somes through traditional breeding, pull them out and go again. We develop fresh produce this way. We have Dulcinea, which is a family-size sweet watermelon with no seeds. We also developed brown tomatoes — they’re called kumatoes. Now GM crops are different, in that we are introducing genes into that species that are not present in its wild genotype. It’s different from that perspective and I fully accept that.
➑ Where does Syngenta conduct most of its research?
For GM, our research is almost exclusively in the United States. We moved all of our GM research out of Europe five years ago, because it was difficult to do anything. Why invest in an environment where you’re not going to have a product to sell? There’s a brain drain inside Europe, particularly around genetic modification. It’s strange. If I said we’re going to genetically modify your mother because she has an inherited disease and we can take that out — nobody is going to say, “No, don’t do that,” except for religious reasons. Everybody would accept that. But we don’t have that inside agriculture.
➒ What do you make of the rise of organic produce?
I don’t buy organic unless I can’t find food conventionally grown. From my perspective, organic is a lifestyle choice. There may be enhanced flavor, because the product is nearer to the point of sale. But conventional food is not unhealthy. There is no scientific evidence to support that organic is better for you. And you can’t produce it on the same scale. Go to a supermarket in the West and the first products you see are fruit and vegetables. Why? Because they have the highest margins. And the highest margin inside that? Organic. Why do you think it’s being promoted? That’s cynical, but it’s the reality.
➓ Do you have any legislative changes you’re lobbying for?
The challenge is managing potential legislative changes that could impact us in five years’ time. With biofuels growth, you look at Europe in 2020, 10 percent of all transport fuels will be biofuels. We don’t have enough maize or rapeseed to do that. This is the balance between food and fuel that is under debate. We have to ask, are we making decisions as a society today with a real understanding on the impact on tomorrow?
Want your manager to answer our 10 Questions? Send a message to Paul Voosen at pvoosen@praguepost.com


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